| Animations convey meaning through a multidimensional combination of language,sound and image,with a stronger viewership and wider range of the audience.The multimodal discourse analysis of children’s animation materials used to analyze the static materials and ignore its dynamic nature to a certain extent.This study makes a dynamic analysis on the animation What’s the Big Idea in light of Reading Visual Narratives(Painter,Martin & Unsworth,2013)in Multimodal Discourse Analysis to analyze its visual narratives from the aspects of representational meaning,social relations,and visual space.It starts from the inner structure of images with a focus on the visual elements,trying to answer the following two questions: What are the features of visual narratives in the animation? How are options of visual narratives cooperated in the process of meaning construction?The analytical results indicate that firstly,the narrative features of the target animation are reflected in the simplicity in representations of characters,actions,and circumstances;familiarity in the character-audience distance;and the orderliness in the placement of visual elements.Secondly,systems work cooperatively to construct meaning.To be more specific,in construing representations,Participant System plays a leading role while Inter-event System and Circumstance System play a complementary role.In enacting social relations,Ambience System contributes most while Focalization System and Pathos System assist in meaning construction.As for composing visual space,Framing System plays a leading role while Focus System plays a secondary role.Based on the analysis,a detailed discussion concerning visual narratives is presented in this study.It illustrates the meaning construction process from the perspectives of construing representations,enacting social relations,and composing visual space.In this way,it overcomes some defects of MDA on static materials.It is expected to provide some inspiration for future studies on dynamic videos and to broaden research perspectives on meaning construction. |
