A critical multimodal discourse analysis of German language motivation in Deutsche Welle's website media and its relation to soft power

The body of work analyses the design choices of a German language education webpage. Design considerations around webpage design and projection of soft power are analysed by applying three analytical frameworks in order to better understand their influence on user experience and L2 motivation. The first two analyses are technical and consider the design of the webpage; webpage composition is analysed through Garrett’s (2011) web-design guide on user-centred design principles, and the multimodal analysis of the aesthetics and functionality of interactivity (the affordance of a text being acted upon) is applied from Adami’s (2015) Social semiotic framework. The third analysis is literary and studies the narrative elements of production through Ringo and Kashyap’s (2021) fiction analysis framework. The three analyses provide a comprehensive, multimodal understanding of the webpage design in order to determine the critical success factors that support L2 motivation and the projection of national soft power. The analysis found that the technical frameworks provided effective tools for webpage analysis due to their comprehensive articulation of webpage composition. The added value of combining Garrett’s (2011) and Adami’s (2015) respective work on webpage design and interactivity has provided a means of assessing the overall viability of a webpage as a learning aid. Garrett’s (2011) principles brought into question the design choices made and their effect on the user. Adami’s (2015) framework affirmed the importance of the appropriate interface for the type of webpage. Lastly, selected aspects from Ringo and Kashyap’s (2021) elements of literature composition enabled a user perspective of the effective motivational aspects of the production. Standards for webpage design enable a prescribed impact on the user experience and inform on the aims of the designer, where the implementation of various factors can support or be detrimental to effective L2 motivation. The analysis on website media has demonstrated the challenges that education organisations face when designing multimodal education media and how one such organisation goes about making use of success factors within webpage and narrative design that best harness soft power and contribute toward nation attractiveness for effective L2 motivation.