A Functional Approach To Visual Representational Structures In Narrative Films

With the advent of information technology, means of public communication has experienced dramatic changes, in which visual media has become a very important means of public communication and the dominant role of verbal communication has become one among many. Starting from Hallidayan Systemic-Functional linguistics perspective, this paper adopts the framework of Systemic-Functional Grammar in analyzing and understanding the narrative cinematic language. It reviews the traditional semiological theories in film studies, including controversies among semioticians concerning the semiotic nature of filmic texts. Since the introduction of Halliday's functional linguistic theory, functionalist methodology has been applied to studies in quite a number of interdisciplinary fields, notably in the study of visual language by such scholars as O'Toole, Kress and van Leeuwen. Based on their framework and models of analysis, this thesis studies the visual narrative discourse in the opening scene of Forrest Gump. Through collecting, segmenting, and transcoding the data, the paper compares and summarizes the major elements and procedures in the representational structure of visual narrative language. Due to the multi-dimensionality of visual information transfer, the paper follows the line of "participant ( image ( shot ( scene ( (cinematic) discourse", which follows the ranking "word ( group ( clause ( sentence ( text" in the analysis, and focuses on the spatial, temporal, and discursive categories of cinematographic language. Based on Hallilday's theoretical model of discourse analysis, this paper has explicitized the narrative structure of narrative cinematic language in the hope of shedding light on the discursive features of visual/cinematic language and further linguistic studies of filmic representational art.