Presence-prominence effect in multimodal eco-discourse

Abstract The insufficient ecological awareness among the public is widely acknowledged as the fundamental cause of ecological crises. To address this issue, the present study incorporates the rhetorical concept of presence with the social psychological notion of prominence effect. The aim is to explore how ecological awareness is conveyed in multimodal discourse and then how it is transmitted to the audience through the presence of multimodal resources, using the ecological public service advertisement “BLUE” as a case study. To examine the prominence effect, interviews were conducted with 12 participants to investigate the influence of the prominent elements on the audience’s understandings. The findings reveal that the ecological awareness conveyed by multimodal resources in the selected material is “Green travel”. To promote this ecological awareness, various resources in the visual, auditory, and textual modalities, such as image displays, background colors, participants’ expressions, and gestures, are employed to achieve “presence”. These prominent elements, in turn, impact the audience’s understanding and reception of the conveyed ecological awareness. Based on these findings, it can be concluded that the audience’s ecological awareness influences the prominence effect of elements designed for presence in the discourse, thereby impacting audiences’ understanding and response towards the eco-discourse, and for optimal impact, the elements emphasized in the presence of the discourse should align with the prominent elements to captivate the audience’s attention. Based on the analysis, a multidimensional model of presence-prominent effect of multimodal ecological discourse reception is proposed, and some implications for effective development of ecological awareness is then discussed.