CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION
1.1 Research Background
With the rapid development of science and technology, especially the development of multimedia and the internet, the way people accept information is no longer from a single text. Other modes also play a crucial role in the process of information transmission, such as image, color, sound, etc. Therefore, traditional discourse analysis, which studies text, is gradually transferred to multimodal discourse analysis, which studies image, sound, language, color, etc. “Multimodality refers to the combination of different semiotic modes, for example, language and music in a communicative artifact or event.” (Van Leeuwen, 2005, p.281). Hence, multimodal discourse analysis means the analysis of this kind of discourse.
Flourishing in the 1990s, multimodal discourse analysis has gradually turned into a hot topic now. Many scholars have overcome some restrictions of the study of discourse analysis and put it into a new height. Multimodal discourse constructs meaning through the combination of different semiotic modes in communication. In recent years, many domestic scholars devote themselves to doing researches in multimodal discourse analysis. However, most of them focus on static discourse in this field, such as advertisement, sculpture, textbooks, posters, newspapers, and covers of magazines, and they seldom study dynamic discourse, especially documentary, in this field. Therefore, it is very necessary to analyze the meaning construction of filmic discourse with multimodal discourse analysis method.
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1.2 Research Purpose and Significance
The main purpose of this research is to explore the meaning construction of the documentary Chinese New Year: the Biggest Celebration on Earth from multimodal discourse analysis perspective. It also aims to explore the relationship of different modes and how the visual mode and verbal mode are combined to make meaning based on theories presented in chapter three.
The significance of this research are as the follows. The theoretical significance of this research is that it helps to broaden the research scope of multimodal discourse analysis, since previous studies mainly focus on static discourse with multimodal discourse analysis; it testifies the feasibility of analyzing filmic discourse in multimodal discourse analysis field; and it also broadens the research scope of film discourse study, since most studies on film discourse are from filmology, media, rhetoric and aesthetic perspectives, rather than linguistic perspective. The practical significance of this study is that it provides a new angle for the audience to appreciate this documentary; it contributes to spread Chinese traditional culture; and it is of great significance for the future making of films concerned with Chinese culture.
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CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Previous Studies on Filmic Discourse
The term “film” derives from the truth that film has always been the medium for recording and displaying motion pictures. Based on the definition of Wikipedia, “film”, also named as movie or motion picture, is a set of still images which form the illusion of moving images when displayed on a screen. Film is regarded as a significant art form, which has several purposes, for example, entertainment, educating or indoctrinating people, instructing or maintaining a historical record, proving some aspect of reality, etc. Bordwell and Thompson (2001) explained the system of film theory in detail, which is an academic subject aiming at exploring the nature of films and provides readers with conceptual frameworks for comprehending the relationships among film, reality, society, other arts and audiences. Film theory mainly considers films as a distinct kind of art.
Filmic discourse appears with the birth of film and film theory. “Mardan, a French film theorist of the filmic discourse, argues that filmic discourse is a film showing, or a simple reproduction of reality, and is gradually transformed into a language, that is, a means of narrating stories and conveying ideas.” (Lu Feng, 2009, p.43). Filmic discourse involves various kinds of modes, for example, language, image, gesture, color, sound, and so on, and it needs audiences to use a certain kind of sensory organs to comprehend its meaning. Scholars have studied filmic discourse from various perspectives, such as aesthetic, psychological, anthropological, semiotic and functional.
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2.2 Previous Studies on Multimodal Discourse Analysis
In this section, the author will first briefly introduce some definitions related with multimodal discourse analysis, then elaborate previous studies on multimodal discourse analysis.
2.2.1 Definitions Related with Multimodal Discourse Analysis
1) Multimodality
Unlike multimodality, monomodality expresses meaning by means of one semiotic resource, for example, the written language. However, with the development of science and technology, especially the multimedia, an integrated way which consists of sound, image, video, and other semiotic resources is applied to give more vivid and specific information. Therefore, it is an inevitable research trend that the object of traditional discourse analysis is gradually transferred from language to multimodal discourse.
Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996) suggested that multimodality refers to expressing meanings through many modes, forms and other ways, which include media, such as speech, gestures, junk models, drawings, languages, symbols and texts. Lemke (2002) claimed that language, gesture, music and etc., what we call sign systems or semiotic resource systems, cooperating with each other can be defined as multimodality. Van Leeuwen (2005) proposed that multimodality means the cooperation of different semiotic modes, such as language, image and sound in art productions and communication process. Baldry and Thibault (2006) proposed that multimodality is about many co-deployed and co-contextualized different semiotic resource systems that contribute to make specific meanings. Machin (2007) suggested that “multimodality describes the grammar of visual communication that is used by image designers. It is an analysis of the rules and principles that allows viewers to understand the meaning potential of relative placement of elements, framing, salience, proximity, color saturations, styles of typeface, etc.” ( p.20).
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CHAPTER III THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ..................... 13
3.1 Language as a Semiotic Resource ................ 13
3.2 Functional Grammar ....................... 13
CHAPTER IV MULTIMODAL ANALYSIS OF THIS DOCUMENTARY ............... 22
4.1 Analysis of Meaning Construction of the Episode I “Migration” ................... 22
4.1.1 Analysis of Visual Mode ............... 23
4.1.2 Analysis of Verbal Mode ............... 28
CHAPTER V CONCLUSION ...................... 52
5.1 Major Findings ................... 52
5.2 Implications of This Study ............. 55
CHAPTER IV MULTIMODAL ANALYSIS OF THIS DOCUMENTARY
4.1 Analysis of Meaning Construction of the Episode I “Migration”
The first episode, “Migration”, tells a story that people around China go back to their hometown for celebrating the Chinese traditional festival—the Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival, by different transportation means, such as train, plane, and motorbike. This episode not only shows us the value of “home” in Chinese traditional culture, but also shows us a good kind of professional ethics of the transportation authority. The “home” is the starting point of our life, the station of life, the harbor of our soul and our spiritual home, and can give us a sense of belonging. Wherever they are and whatever transportation means they take, they must go home for spring festival. In order to systemically analyze the meaning construction of this episode, the author selects six images from it, and tries to analyze the visual mode, verbal mode and relations of them. And the images are shown as follows.
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CHAPTER V CONCLUSION
5.1 Major Findings
In order to explore how the meaning of this documentary is constructed, the author adopts qualitative and quantitative research methods, and analyzes each episode from three aspects: the visual mode based on Kress and Van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar; the verbal mode based on Halliday’s Functional Grammar; and the relation between these two modes. In addition, the author also summarizes the ways of meaning construction of this documentary as a whole. The major findings of this study are summarized as follows.
1) From the perspective of visual mode, the meanings of each episode are constructed from three ways: representational, interactive and compositional. But there is a little difference in each way.
2) From the perspective of verbal mode, there are some differences in the way of meaning construction of the three episodes.
In the first episode, the transitivity of the language is mainly realized in material process, relation process and mental process, which are used to reveal the hardworking of transportation authorities and the intimate relationship between family members. In terms of voice, active voice is used more frequently than passive voice.
In terms of mood, all of sentences are declarative and they describe what happens during migration. As for the aspect of modality, this episode is mainly used to narrate something about the migration and there are no sentences expressing judgment or prediction.
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