The gate of the gateway: A hypermodal approach to university homepages
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Yiqiong Zhang,
Yiqiong Zhang (b. 1980) is a lecturer at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and a PhD candidate in the Department of English Language & Literature at National University of Singapore 〈zhangyiqiong@nus.edu.sg〉. Her research interests include cross-cultural issues in multimodal discourse analysis and science popularization in hypertextual context. Her publications include “Investigating the interpersonal function in English advertising discourse” (with R. Yang, 2004); “The Macro-structures of English Research Articles: Similarities and Differences” (with R. Yang, 2009).
and
Kay L. O'Halloran,
Kay L. O'Halloran (b. 1958) is an associate professor in the Department of English Language & Literature and Director of the Multimodal Analysis Lab and Deputy Director of the Interactive & Digital Media Institute (IDMI) at the National University of Singapore 〈kay.ohalloran@nus.edu.sg〉. Her research interests include multimodal discourse analysis, interactive digital technology for multimodal analysis, social semiotics and mathematics discourse. Her publications include “Mathematical Discourse: Language, Symbolism and Visual Images” (2005); “Multimodal Studies: Exploring Issues and Domains” (with B. A. Smith, 2011); and “Multimodal Analysis within an Interactive Software Environment: Critical Discourse Perspectives” (with S. Tan, B. A. Smith and A. Podlasov, 2011).
Abstract
This paper adopts a social semiotic perspective to investigate how hypermodal resources (e.g., text, image, hyperlinks) integrate on two university homepages to simultaneously create an official gateway and an institutional identity. In the first case, the homepage of National University of Singapore foregrounds and promotes its identity as a vibrant community that is global and welcoming by appealing images, interpersonally-orientated linguistic choices, rich navigation content, and various navigation styles. Tsinghua University in China, on the other hand, adopts a university-centric position in its homepage design by presenting its identity as a traditional and authoritative institution that keeps its distance from society at large through the impersonal nature of the images and linguistic texts, and the repetitive hierarchical navigation styles. These semiotic choices are interpreted from a socio-cultural perspective and the universities' involvement in marketization. The present study builds upon and extends multimodal approaches to hypermedia by considering the relations between hypermodal analytics and higher-level cultural and ideological meanings.
About the authors
Yiqiong Zhang (b. 1980) is a lecturer at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies and a PhD candidate in the Department of English Language & Literature at National University of Singapore 〈zhangyiqiong@nus.edu.sg〉. Her research interests include cross-cultural issues in multimodal discourse analysis and science popularization in hypertextual context. Her publications include “Investigating the interpersonal function in English advertising discourse” (with R. Yang, 2004); “The Macro-structures of English Research Articles: Similarities and Differences” (with R. Yang, 2009).
Kay L. O'Halloran (b. 1958) is an associate professor in the Department of English Language & Literature and Director of the Multimodal Analysis Lab and Deputy Director of the Interactive & Digital Media Institute (IDMI) at the National University of Singapore 〈kay.ohalloran@nus.edu.sg〉. Her research interests include multimodal discourse analysis, interactive digital technology for multimodal analysis, social semiotics and mathematics discourse. Her publications include “Mathematical Discourse: Language, Symbolism and Visual Images” (2005); “Multimodal Studies: Exploring Issues and Domains” (with B. A. Smith, 2011); and “Multimodal Analysis within an Interactive Software Environment: Critical Discourse Perspectives” (with S. Tan, B. A. Smith and A. Podlasov, 2011).
©[2012] by Walter de Gruyter Berlin Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Idealizing the life-world in the age of discovery
- Peirce's ten trichotomies: Metaphor, hypothesis, and decision
- A sociosemiotic approach to fundamental rights in China
- A comparative analysis of print advertising applying the two main plastic semiotics schools: Barthes' and Greimas'
- A note regarding unspeakable words
- The gate of the gateway: A hypermodal approach to university homepages
- Nāṭya, rasa, and abhinaya as semiotic principles in Classical Indian dance
- The social semiotic construction of chemical periodicity: A multimodal view
- The semiotic construction of worldview in film: Multimodal variations in Le Samourai, The Killer, and Ghost Dog
- What is the proper characterization of the alphabet? VI: Three-finger exercises
- Dynamic modeling of visual texts: A relational model
- Touch, vision, and diagrammatical reasoning
- The making of theatrical groupings: A cognitive perspective
- Encyclopedia of semiotics
