Multimodal Discourse Analysis On The Movie The Devil Wears Prada

With the rapid development of science and technology and the widespread use of the Internet,the method of delivering information is no longer limited to the text mode only,and non-text symbols like images,colors,and sounds,etc.also begin to take a part in transmitting information.The traditional discourse analysis only takes texts as the research object and neglects the non-text symbols,but the multimodal discourse analysis considering both text and non-text symbols complements and enriches the research method in this field.On the basis of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar,domestic and foreign research scholars keep on exploring and get plenty of research achievements.Among them,Kress and Van Leeuwen’s achievements are the most significant.The movie The Devil Wears Prada belongs to the multimodal discourse,which uses images,sounds and other semiotic resources to construct meanings.On the basis of Kress and Van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar and Van Leeuwen’s Audio Grammar,the author makes a multimodal discourse analysis on the movie The Devil Wears Prada in order to analyze the meaning construction of multimodal discourse analysis in the movie.From the perspective of Visual Grammar,the author selects 21 representative shots as examples to analyze the meaning construction of multimodal discourse analysis from the aspects of the representational meaning,the interactive meaning and the compositional meaning.From the perspective of Audio Grammar,the author takes a dialogue between Miranda and Andy for example to analyze the social distance between Miranda and Andy by adopting the audio analysis software Sonic Visualiser.From the perspective of the integration of Visual Grammar and Audio Grammar,the author chooses four pieces of background music as examples to analyze how the meaning is constructed via software Sonic Visualiser.The research shows: Firstly,the representational meaning can contribute to the development of the movie’s plots;the interactive meaning can reflect characters and their relationships between one another in the movie;the compositional meaning can be constructed through the rational layout of the scenes and the characters in the shots.Secondly,movie producers can show main characters’ social distances and emotions according to the pitch and the frequency of sound.Thirdly,visual modality and audio modality construct the integrated meaning of the movie to make the audience understand the theme of the movie and the development of the movie’s plot thus giving the audience a better audio-visual enjoyment.