A Multimodal Analysis Of Film Discourse

Utterance or discourse is a unit of meaning (Halliday 1978). The meaning is not simply realized by language, but can be embodied by other language symbol systems, or a multiple of semiotic systems. Since the fast development of information technology, the multimodal discourse analysis was emerged in the West, the various modalities such as images, gestures, sounds, colors, facial expressions and so on were viewed as the semiotic modes. Recently, more and more scholars began multimodal research, western researchers have made a plenty of theoretical results, and domestic scholars focus their multi-modal discourse analysis on advertising, film posters, web pages and other static fields. The previous studies of multimodal discourse analysis demonstrate it should be further researched on other dynamic discourse fields, such as filmic discourse. Thus, this thesis attempts to choose film discourse The Chronicles of Narnia:The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as the material to study the theme and discourse meaning in the light of multimodal discourse analysis.Up to now, hundreds of scholars have thrown themselves into multimodal discourse analysis. The most fundamental and influential achievement is Reading Images, proposed by Kress and Leeuwen, which is the first comprehensive and systematic explanation of the visual grammar. In the field of the visual grammar, Kress and Leeuwen consider image has three meanings:representational meaning, interactive meaning and compositional meaning. On that basis of the three meanings framework, the thesis is intended to explore the flimic discourse The Chronicles of Narnia:The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe meaning potential with randomly sampled images.The thesis is comprised of 6 chapters. Firstly, the background, the purpose and significance, research methodology and organization is to be introduced. Secondly, based on the chosen film and multimodal discourse analysis, the thesis makes a literature review at home and abroad. Thirdly, on the basis of functional grammar, the thesis gives an introduction to theoretical framework-visual grammar. Fourthly, the thesis conducts a detailed case study of The Chronicles of Narnia:The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with the proposed framework of representation, interaction and composition. Then, a synthesis of multimodalities in the chosen film is to be made from integration of different image, gesture, sound, color modalities. Lastly, the thesis points out the findings and contributions while finds out the limitations and suggestions of present study.By the case study of filmic discourse The Chronicles of Narnia:The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the author finds that the visual grammar of film discourse analysis has strong applicability and operability, which realizes the extension of multimodal discourse analysis theory. What is more, this thesis provides a new perspective for audiences to understand film from the linguistic point of view, and this new angle helps to enhance audiences’ abilities to film appreciation.