Appraisal In Film Discourse: A Multimodal Analysis Of Attitudinal Meaning

Evaluation plays an essential role in the establishment and maintenance of interpersonal relationship, and the Appraisal System, which deals with the language of evaluation, is a crucial part of interpersonal semantics, expressing speaker's viewpoint, attitude and stance. The research so far confines evaluative resource to verbal language, without acknowledging the importance of non-linguistic modalities like facial expression, gesture and vocal features. But since the thrive of multimodal discourse analysis in the last decade, researchers have begun to pay attention to visual and audio evaluative resources. Departing from the assumption that the construction of attitudinal meaning is multimodal, this thesis examines how different semiotic resources construct meaning in film discourse. Using the situation comedy Friends as data, the roles and interaction of multimodal resources in Attitude construction and the patterns of Attitude are analyzed.Adopting a systemic functional view of semiosis, which states that meaning comes from choices from semiotic systems, we formulate the framework of how non-linguistic resources make meaning. Based on the systemic functional theory of linguistic cohesion, we formulate inter-semiotic relations in film. We also put forward the framework to analyze the patterns of Attitude in film, which is a significant dimension if we adopt a discursive perspective. These three aspects of meaning construction, inter-semiotic relations and patterns of Attitude are micro-analyzed with two excerpts from Friends as data.First, through the one-by-one analysis of the excerpt one, it shows clearly that the construction of Attitude is multimodal and that non-linguistic resources play important roles. However, it is not enough to just look into the separate resources, since it is their complex interaction that "multiplies" the attitudinal meaning. So inter-semiotic relations are investigated next. The overall distribution of different semiotic resources, their relation in the co-articulation of meaning and the relations among different resources that precede/succeed each other are discussed. It is argued that the inter-semiotic relations not only "multiply" the attitudinal meaning, but also contribute to the cohesion of the film discourse. Third, from a discursive perspective, the patterns of Attitude are analyzed. The analysis includes the interaction among Attitudes and their logogenetic development in the unfolding of the discourse. It is argued that the Attitude interaction and development is a crucial component of film discourse and it plays an important role in enriching the film plot.Through the investigation of the multimodal construction of Attitude in film, the author provides a method of modeling the non-linguistic construction of Attitude, thus extending the current Appraisal theory. Meanwhile, it also offers a linguistic perspective of studying film discourse. It is hoped that the study will shed light on the understanding of both the multimodal nature of meaning construction and the interpersonal/evaluative dimension of film discourse.