Multimodal Argumentation Analysis:A Study On English Science Fiction Film Posters

Since the 1990 s,studies on multimodal discourse analysis have been in full swing both at home and abroad,the most distinguished one among which is the theory of Visual Grammar(abbreviated as VG hereafter)proposed by Kress and Van Leeuwen,which discusses the law of multimodal images and how they express meanings from the perspective of representational meaning,interactive meaning,and compositional meaning,providing a theoretical basis and analytical method for multimodal discourse analysis.Almost at the same time,Multimodal Argumentation(MA,for short)sprang up.Researchers posed that images and other visual components can also be used in argumentation.Accordingly,they began to use “argumentative modes” or“multimodal argumentation” to describe the nonverbal symbols in argumentation,and deemed that MA serves as an effective supplement for the shortcoming of previous social semiotics,that is,absence of reasoning patterns.As the calling card of a film,film poster is one of the most importantapproaches of film publicity,which is multimodal and argumentative in nature.However,most of the previous analyses were conducted from the perspectives of function,aesthetics,and design of film posters,with few scholars studying them from the viewpoint of MA.This thesis selects 30 English science fiction(sci-fi,for short)film posters as the research subjects,combining theoretical research method with case study method,and taking VG and MA as the theoretical basis to inquire into the meaning construction of film posters.At the same time,due to the deficiency of VG in fully reflecting the law of meaning construction of multimodal film posters objectively and dynamically,the reasoning pattern and appeals of MA are introduced into multimodal analysis to elucidate the process of meaning construction and the appeals used in film posters.Through the case studies of English sci-fi film posters,this thesis found that the meaning of film posters can be better expressed via MA.Meanwhile,MA to some degree complements the shortcoming of VG,expressly in the interactive meaning,by combining sensibility and rationality.This study offers a broader point of view to the research of multimodal discourse analysis,brings more dimensions for film posters research,as well as providing some references for film poster designers in poster designing to better impress the audience and achieve their purpose of commercial publicity.Nevertheless,this study still has some shortcomings.For instance,the study fails to provide comprehensive MA analyses of different types of film posters,and the effectiveness of argumentation in posters based on audience analysis requires to be further proved by empirical researches in the future.