Cultural Theme Presentation and Reception of Multimodal Texts in Chinese Museums

Multimodal texts of Chinese Museums present the diverse and profound culture to global visitors. Its reception is key to the effectiveness of cultural communication. This paper aims to explore how multimodal texts present cultural themes, the relations between modes in thematic presentation, and the reception of these themes. The findings are that three main modes: verbal, visual and audio, can present cultural themes respectively, and the same cultural theme can be presented by a combination of various modes, whose relations are enhancement and modification. The gap between the cultural themes and expectations of global visitors hampers the proper reception of Chinese culture. The study helps Chinese museums in adopting a global perspective and a visitors-oriented approach, utilizing multimodal textual representations to present diverse cultural themes, thereby enhancing their comprehensibility and acceptability, and facilitating the global dissemination of Chinese culture.