A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of The Animated Film The Lion King

With the rapid development of multimedia technology in recent decades,Multimodal Discourse Analysis(MDA)has received wide attention in linguistic studies.The term“multimodal discourse”means discourses producing integrative meaning by interaction of two or more semiotic resources,including language,music,sound,gaze,gesture.As for filmic discourse,since it embraces various semiotic resources,MDA offers a practical way for analysis.Previous studies on films mainly concentrated on films' genres,means of artistic expression or patterns of manifestation,and few were linked with linguistics.In terms of MDA on animated films,though MDA was applied in the limited studies,they usually ignore the auditory aspect.Therefore,based on Visual Grammar(VG),this thesis aims to conduct MDA on the classic animated film The Lion King,to extend MDA's application and examine the feasibility of application of visual grammar to multimodal discourse analysis.The study focuses on two questions:first is how The Lion King conveys visual meaning;second is how various semiotic resources construct meaning to serve for certain theme in The Lion King.The key pictures of key scenes were collected as analytical data,and pictures are all plot-sequenced.Analysis of these pictures is divided into two parts.The first part analyzes the presentations of this film's visual meaning.In this part,25 pictures(Pictures 1-25)were chosen for analysis,which included the illustration of the scenes of these pictures and interpretation of the themes of the scenes from the perspectives of representational meaning(narrative process and conceptual process),interactive meaning(contact,social distance,perspective and modality)and compositional meaning(information value and salience).The second part involves a comprehensive analysis of visual and auditory modalities.First,two main modalities were identified:visual modality and auditory modality,and their relations and ways of integration were demonstrated with 3 pictures(Pictures 26-28).Then another three continuous pictures(Pictures 29-31)were captured in the climax of this animated film,namely,Simba's revenge.By identifying the semiotic resources in Pictures 29-31 in both visual and auditory aspects,the whole meaning construction for serving certain theme was dynamically analyzed from the perspectives of representational,interactive and compositional meanings.The study has found that besides language,other various semiotic resources(such as sound,gaze,facial expressions,gestures)are also essential for the meaning construction of themes in this film(such as Simba's bravery and Scar's evilness).Meanwhile,visual grammar is appropriate for film analysis including animated films.The study also provides a broader vision for an animated film's appreciation through combining various modalities and examining their thematic meaning construction.