The Multimodal Construction Of Attitude Meaning In The Movie Spirited Away

Appraisal Theory is one of the most important new developments in systemic-functional linguistics.It mainly investigates interpersonal function and meaning,including a speaker's attitudes,status and motivations,as well as the evaluations of things.In the past two decades,due to the rise of multimodal discourse analysis,more and more scholars began to pay attention to visual and auditory evaluation resources.A film,as one typical multimodal discourse,has multiple modes working together to fully mobilize viewers' visual and auditory organs and reflect the theme of a film vividly.Based on the Attitude System of Appraisal Theory proposed by Martin and White,the Multimodal Analysis Framework proposed by Feng Dezheng,Qi Yujie and Guan Le,this study uses the qualitative analysis software Nvivo12 to encode the film Spirited Away,and analyzes the multimodal construction of the attitudinal meanings of characters,scenery and props in the film.The study found that in the process of multimodal construction of the characters' attitudinal meanings,the trigger conditions are mainly visual and auditory resources;attitude expressions are mainly presented by actions,language,facial expressions,voice features and appearance features.In the process of multimodal construction of the attitudinal meanings of scenery and props,the trigger conditions are mainly presented by vision,and a few by hearing,touch and taste,while the attitude expressions are mainly presented by the characters' language,facial expressions and actions,and some attitude expressions are presented by the characters' voice features and postures.Through the analysis of the attitudinal meanings of the characters in the film,it is found that all the characters have positive and negative evaluations,and the attitudinal meanings of the characters in the film change from negative to positive It shows the growth process of Chihiro and Fang Bao bao as well as the attitude change process of white dragon and faceless man.In analyzing the attitudinal meanings of the scenes and props in the film,it is found that the magic of the scenes and props,and then reflect the specific meaning and function of these scenes and props.In the analysis of the attitudinal meanings of the characters and non-characters,more implicit evaluations can be found than explicit evaluations.This study not only explores the multimodal analysis of film discourse,but also expands the application scope of Appraisal Theory,especially provides a new perspective for the study of attitudinal meanings of film discourse.