Multimodal Analysis Of Discourse

Multimodal discourse is a set of practices which entails going beyond language associal semiotic and making use of two or multiple semiotic resources for meaningmaking, for instance, language, visual images, music, space, gesture and so on. In thehistorical context of global visual culture, everyday lives become more pervasivelymediated by multimodal discourse and are increasingly shaped by representationswhich are produced all over the world. Consequently, multimodal research is of greatsignificance in theory and practice.Drawing upon Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (1996) Visual Grammar (VG) based onSystemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL), the present study is to contribute to thisrelatively new field by using a model of Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) asthe analytical tool in an attempt to provide a better understanding of the film Titanic,which got11Academy Awards and14Academy Award Nominees at the same time inthe history of Oscar. Four-dimensional film discourses involved in language, images,music, text, sound and other modals, which can help study the coordination ofdifferent modals in multimodal discourse. And at the same time, multimodal discourseanalysis also provides a new point for film studies.Firstly, the thesis makes a recount on the definition and development of the filmdiscourse and the multimodal discourse analysis, pointing out the goal and thesignificance of the research; secondly, based on the theoretical framework of thefunctional grammar and the visual grammar, the thesis uses a framework for themultimodal discourse analysis on the film Titanic. Then under the guidance of theframework, the film discourse is analyzed from the three meanings in visual grammar,namely, the representation meaning, interactive meaning and the compositionalmeaning; finally, visual modalities and audio modalities are analyzed syntheticallywith the aim to explore how these various modalities contributes to the overallmeaning conveyed by the film Titanic.Through the case study of the film discourse Titanic, it is found that the theory ofmultimodal discourse analysis, especially, the visual grammar possesses a strongapplicability on analyzing the film discourse. Not only does the research expand thefields of multimodal discourse analysis, but also provides audience a new perspectiveof appreciating the film by reflecting the role of modalities other than language indisclosing the theme of the film and ultimately elevates their appreciation level on thefilm.