The Multimodal Analysis Of The Compositional Meaning Of The Music Video "You And Me"

The unceasing progress of science and technology, and the extensive application of multimedia have greatly changed people's way of communication. Combined with video, audio, three-dimensional animation, the multimodal communication gradually changes the situation that people exchange information only based on language. It provides more choices for people. To meet this trend, multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) is formulated in 1990s.The data of this thesis is a piece of music video which is truncated from the Opening Ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games and is studied by applying quantitative research method.To analyze language, images, and sounds of the data, this study employs Kress and van Leeuwen's "Visual Grammar", van Leeuwen's "Aural Grammar" as well as the shot collecting and shot editing devices in filmology. Meanwhile, it seeks to demonstrate how different modalities construct the compositional meaning of the music video and what their relations are in the process of making meaning.Based on systematic analysis of the data, the thesis finds that the visual and the aural modalities are in the strengthened relation. The aural modality is the main communicative way with the visual modality is used to support, highlight and expand the meaning of it. In addition, different sub-modalities of the visual modality, such as, images, colors, and words are in the united relations. They supplement each other to constitute the meaning of the frame, and coordinate to deliver the video maker's intention. The different sub-modalities of the aural modality, such as, music, voice and commentary are in the strengthened relations. The voice is the main form of communication with the music and noise are employed to strengthen it. Besides, the applauses, cheers and the voice are in the primary-secondary relation.By researching, the thesis achieves three goals. First it examines the feasibility and practicality of the above theories in music video analysis. Second, the interdisciplinary perspective and dynamic data analysis method that it adopts provide new angles for multimodal discourse analysis. Third it gives relatively more attention to the relations of different modalities in the process of study which overcomes the shortcomings of previous research in this field, thereby, complements and develops the multimodal discourse analysis to some extent.