Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of The Film La La Land

With the continuous update and advancement of modern science and technology,the new media era has come into existence,which means that people can not only convey information through language modalities,but also express meaning through various non-language modalities such as images,sounds and videos.The continuous development of multimodal technology makes it possible to analyze discourse from multimodal perspective.Film is made up of images,voices,and texts,which combines multiple modalities.As a form of artistic expression,film hereafter is the significant research material of multimodal discourse analysis.This thesis chooses the film La La Land as the research subject to make a multimodal discourse analysis from the perspective of linguistics,breaking the limitation of the traditional analysis of film discourse from an artistic perspective.La La Land comprehensively uses multiple modalities and visual effects.It not only brings audio-visual feast to film fans,but also provides the researchers of multimodal discourse analysis with plentiful research materials.To make analysis of multimodal discourse can not only explore the question how to construct and express the meaning of film through multimodalities,but also let people understand how to appreciate film from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis.In the meanwhile,the research broadens the research scope of film analysis.And this study is instructive for the researchers who conduct multimodal discourse analysis of films in the future.Kress&Van Leeuwen's visual grammar theoretical framework provides the theoretical basis for this thesis.Visual grammar mainly discusses how the three metafunctions of language,namely,ideational,interpersonal and textual function are realized in multimodal discourse.In the theoretical framework of visual grammar,ideational function is realized by narrative representation and conceptual representation which represent representative meaning.Interpersonal function is realized by social distance,contact,attitude and modality.Textual function is realized by information value,framing,and salience which represent compositional meaning.Van Leeuwen's audio grammar is mainly composed of three aspects: perspective and social distance,melody,and sound quality.Perspective and social distance is a key system in the semiotics of sound and can be divided into different degrees in terms of different loudness of sound made by the speaker.Different melodies represent different emotions.It is mainly made up of pitch movement,pitch range,and pitch level.Sound quality can confirm the relation between interlocutors.This study is a qualitative analysis.Some pictures are selected from the film La La Land for case analysis.Its representative,interactive,and compositional meaning are respectively expanded.This study mainly focuses on the following questions:1)How are the representative meaning,interactive meaning,and compositional meaning in visual grammar realized in the film La La Land?2)How is audio grammar realized in the film La La Land?3)What are the relationships among multiple modalities in the film La La Land? How do they interact with each other to complete the meaning construction of the film?Through analyzing the film La La Land,this study draws the following conclusion.From the perspective of representative meaning,some visual images in the film La La Land belong to narrative representation,and some belong to concept representation.These images all build the essence of the scene layout in the film La La Land and reveal the relationships between represented participants in the film.From the perspective of interactive meaning,contact,social distance,attitude,and modality reveal the relationship between the director,things in images,and viewers in the film.Through analyzing the images in the film La La Land from the perspective of information value,salience,and framing in compositional meaning,we find that the representative and interactive elements in each image of the film La La Land are integrated with each other to reflect the meaning and the theme of the film.From the angle of perspective and social distance in audio grammar,the sound segments and dialogues in the film La La Land can indicate the different social distances and social status of the characters based on the different loudness of the characters' voices.From the perspective of melody in audio grammar,different melodies reflect different emotions and feelings of characters in the film La La Land.From the perspective of the sound quality in audio grammar,the softer voices of the characters in the film mean the interlocutors are more relaxed or intimate;the sharper voices mean the relationship between the interlocutors is more antagonistic.The relationship between different modalities in the La La Land is mainly complementary one.The complementary relationship includes strengthening and non-strengthening relationship.These two kinds of relationships in different modalities make the meaning construction and the theme of the film complete.This study is an innovative attempt to analyze film discourse from the perspective of visual grammar and audio grammar.And to evaluate and analyze film discourse from the perspective of linguistics helps popularize the appreciation and comprehension of multimodal analysis of film.In the meanwhile,the general public's ability of appreciating the film will be improved and thus to provide a more comprehensive perspective for film study.