摘要
Higher education institutions(HEIs)attach great importance to the building of their brands,which can serve as their unique signs in the world education market.The increasing marketization has propelled contemporary universities to utilize web-mediated communication as an effective venue for branding practice.This study examines how an elite university in China,namely Tsinghua University,represents and brands itself through its web discourse.The hypertextual and multimodal resources presented on the university’s About webpage were compiled and analyzed by drawing upon a hypermodal approach.It finds that multimodal resources of various types on the About webpage are hypertextually interconnected to construct a prestigious university brand in a reader-friendly format.This study contributes to existing research by extending the multimodal focus to hypertextual discourse.Furthermore,the findings could help practitioners design university webpages that effectively communicate a unique brand identity to engage audiences.
基金
funded by the 2023 Teaching Reform Project of Soochow University“Building an Innovative Curriculum for English Majors by Emphasizing International Communication and Moral Integrity”.