Micro-Level Multimodal Realizations of Activity Patterns

This chapter delves into the multimodal realizations of recurrent activity patterns at the micro level of textualization in reporting-oriented, sharing-oriented and recommending-oriented posts, namely the reporting-oriented activity patterns of pure reporting, reporting with sharing, reporting with recreating in Sect. 6.1, the sharing-oriented activity patterns of pure sharing, sharing with recreating in Sect. 6.2, the recommending-oriented activity patterns of recommending with reporting, recommending with sharing, recommending with recreating in Sect. 6.3. While the multimodal realizations of activity patterns are analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively based on the primary analytical toolkits of SFG (Halliday and Matthiessen in Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar. Routledge, 2014), visual grammar (Kress and van Leeuwen in Reading images: the grammar of visual design, 2nd ed. Routledge, 2006) and visual metaphor (Feng and O’Halloran in Rev Cogn Linguist 11:320–335, 2013), they are horizontally compared between Chinese and American airlines. At the end of each section, in tandem with a summary of the comparative multimodal features for each activity pattern, their communicative functions are also discussed.