A cross-cultural study of the dynamic multimodal metadiscourse used by American and Chinese NEV corporates on X

Social media has revolutionized corporates’ approach to self-promotion, yet the multimodal construction of corporate discourse on social media has hardly been fully explored from either linguistic or intercultural perspectives. To explore how corporates use routine social media posts as dynamic sites of international branding, this study conducts an intercultural pragmatic investigation on how New Energy Vehicle (NEV) giants Tesla (U.S.) and BYD Auto (China, hereafter BYD) employ multimodal metadiscourse to navigate their corporate communication on X. The study extends Hyland’s interactional metadiscourse framework into the multimodal realm, integrating multi-semiotic modes such as text, pictures, emojis, hashtags, @mentions. In addition, by constructing a more inclusive multimodal metadiscourse framework, the study innovatively conducts frame-by-frame dissection of videos presented by the companies on X. Through examining the dynamic visual-textual interplay in 600 posts (300 per company), this study uncovers the profound influence of cultural values on the corporates’ patterns of deploying multimodal metadiscourse strategies. Among various differences observed, BYD’s preference for visualized pictures and videos reflects China’s high-context culture, whereas Tesla’s frequent use of emojis and other-mention pronouns aligns with the individualistic, low-context and low power distance cultural orientations in the U.S. The unignorable pragmatic functions of dynamic multimodal metadiscourse markers are scrutinized and highlighted, and the theoretical and pragmatic implications are discussed.