A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Movie Posters

With the remarkable development of multimedia and computer technology, the dominant role of language in mass media and communication is challenged by other semiotic resources such as visual image, sound and action. Accordingly, the traditional discourse analysis which is restricted to language itself is far from comprehensive and exhaustive, and it is compelled to take other semiotic resources into consideration. To give a comprehensive account of the integrative meaning generated by the interaction of different modalities in a discourse, new grammars must be formulated. Multimodal discourse analysis thriving in the 90s of the last century solves the problem to most degree, for which Systemic-Functional Grammar founded by Halliday (1973) is well suited to provide theoretical tools. Derived from Systemic-Functional Grammar, Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) proposed the first systemic and comprehensive framework for visual analysis in Reading Images. According to this framework, known as Visual Grammar, images are interpreted in terms of their representational meaning, interactive meaning and compositional meaning.As a type of print advertisement, movie posters are designed to publicize the movies and boost the bill-office receipts. The discourse of movie posters encompasses a variety of semiotic resources such as image, color and language, so that to read a movie poster is to decode a complex integration of a variety of modalities. Visual Grammar makes it possible to conduct multimodal discourse analysis on movie posters and provides the researchers a powerful toolkit to account for meanings arising from images and texts on movie posters. With reference to Systemic-Functional Linguistics, this thesis takes Visual Grammar as the theoretical foundation and makes an attempt to propose a model for the multimodal discourse analysis of movie posters. Under the guidance of the proposed model, two movie posters are analyzed for a case study, aiming to explore how the realization of the three meta-functions contributes to the overall meaning conveyed by movie posters. The approach adopted for this research is not a quantitative corpus-based study but a qualitative and interpretative based on incisive exploration of a small set of movie posters.The research is of great significance in theory and practice. First of all, going beyond the traditional field of verbal analysis to do a multimodal analysis, this research opens a new dimension for the discourse analysis of movie posters. Secondly, through demonstrating how the three meta-functions of image are realized, it validates the strong applicability and practicality of Visual Grammar in analyzing movie posters. Thirdly, the proposed model may benefit the image producers and help them make good use of choice-making of modalities and the arrangement of visual elements to accomplish the best visual design. Fourthly, this research provides a more comprehensive perspective of appreciating movie posters through analyzing the integrated effects of different modalities and ultimately exerts a positive influence on enhancing people's overall comprehension and identification on the multimodal discourse of movie posters.This thesis includes six sections with the arrangement as the following:Section one briefly introduces the background of the research, the significance of the research and organization of the thesis. Section two reviews the Systemic-Functional multimodal discourse analysis and the discourse analysis of movie posters. Section three explicates the theoretical foundations of this thesis and proposes a practical model for the multimodal discourse analysis of movie posters. Section four presents the objectives of this research, the research method and the data collection and selection. Section five conducts a practical multimodal discourse analysis of two movie posters for a case study to testify the applicability of the proposed model. Section six concludes by summarizing major findings and the theoretical and practical contributions of this research, and also by pointing out the limitations and offering the suggestions for further investigations.