An Investigation Into English Resumés From Perspective Of Multimodal Discourse Analysis

Abstract

Resumé plays a crucial role in an individual's career which opens opportunities to gain an ideal job. However, a question of how to create a resumé that catches the attention of recruiters and how to arrange personal information effectively is being concerned. This study aims to discover discourse features in English resumés from the perspective of Multimodal Discourse Analysis with a view to pointing out typical discourse features in English resumés. This paper is conducted with the aim of analyzing layout features, lexical choices, grammar features and the connection of these elements. Data is collected from resumé collections of universities in the world as well as from those who use resumé for getting a job, the samples of 50 resumés which range from different fields such as graphic designers, teachers, accountants, digital marketer and so on are observed carefully to find out typical discourse features. Basing on prestigious theories including Discourse Analysis, Systemic Functional Grammar of Halliday & Matthiessen, Multimodal Discourse Analysis, and the image-language relations of Unsworth, this study was carried out with the combination of several methods in which qualitative method is the main one. The findings not only indicate typical layout features, lexical choices, grammatical features focusing on six processes of transitivity system and the image-language relations, but more fascinatingly, university students can make use of the findings of this study to obtain basic knowledge in combining linguistic and visual elements to create a stunning resumé.