NURSERY RHYMES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY FROM SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL-MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

The contemporary landscape of communication is marked by the ubiquity of multimodality. However, the study of multimodal discourse is a relatively recent domain of enquiry. This paper is aimed to contribute to the current exploration of this emerging field. This paper is situated within the Systemic functional-Multimodal discourse analysis (SF-MDA) approach. The first part will explicate the aspects of Systemic Functional Theory which are pertinent to discourse of multimodal nature. Drawing on recent works, the second part will present a brief account of the SF-MDA approach. The metafunctional systems of image analysis of children’s picture books will also be presented, serving as a framework for the comparative analysis of books of nursery rhymes (NR) in English and Vietnamese to be described. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the pedagogical implications of SF-MDA in the Vietnamese educational context.