Constructing Cultural Meaning on Memorial Official Websites: A Visual Grammar Analysis of China and New Zealand

Abstract

Memorial websites serve as multimodal platforms shaping collective memory and cultural identity. While existing research prioritizes technological or textual aspects, this study employs Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar (VG) to comparatively analyze visual-cultural encoding on the Memorial of the First National Congress of the Communist Party of China (the Site of the 1st CPC National Congress) and the Auckland War Memorial Museum (AWMM) websites. Through qualitative analysis of 30 images, Findings reveal distinct strategies. In representational meaning, both websites use narrative representation for cognitive engagement.As to interactive meaning, the Site of the 1st CPC National Congress utilizes offer images, elevated shot, and vermillion tones to construct authoritative narratives and revolutionary sanctity. Conversely, the AWMM employs demand interactions, eye-level angle, and cool grays to foster democratic reflection. In terms of compositional meaning, it highlights the Site of the 1st CPC National Congress’s vertical axis emphasizing ideological symbolism versus the AWMM’s horizontal divisions enabling informational democratization. This study empirically validates the explanatory capacity of VG in non-Western contexts and broadens its cross-cultural relevance. It also offers theoretical frameworks for the internationalization of memorial museum websites, aids in achieving a balance between cultural distinctiveness and global discourse, and underscores the pursuit of a dynamic equilibrium between preserving cultural uniqueness and facilitating the exchange of meaning.