Multimodal Discourse Analysis On The Visual And Aural Meanings Of Film Mulan

Multimodal discourse analysis, which is widely applied and based on the theory of systematic functional grammar, is a new method for the discourse analysis. That is to say, it analyzes the meaning of modes as a integral meaning source, which makes the viewers interact in each other, at the same time,draws attention to the wide range of meaning source, such as, image, colors, music and others. There is no doubt that the analysis of meaning on the various modes becomes more persuasive.The film is a special style with both images/shots and music, and has the characteristics of multimodality. This thesis utilizes the visual grammar and aural grammar which was created by Kress & van Leeuwen as the theoretical framework to study the popular film Mulan. It will do research into visual meaning and aural meaning to analyze the Mulan’s Zhong and Xiao(the love to country and family) respectively.The research illustrates that using the theory of multimodal discourse analysis to analysize Film “Mulan” with the significance of application and practicality. Through the perspective of the appreciation of film(special effects, character design, clothing, etc.), the traditional Chinese folk story “Mulan” won the love of the Chinese and foreign people. From a new perspective to appreciate the film, a various meanings of aural and visual modes of “Mulan” not only can improve the dominated influence of the theory, but also can help viewers understand more deeply film’s theme(Zhong and Xiao)of literature and aesthetics.