A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of The Filmic Discourse Pleasant Goat And Big Big Wolf

Since its debut in June,2005, the Chinese cartoon series Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf (PGBBW) and its related films have won enormous popularity among children as well as the aged people at home and abroad. A number of scholars in fields like economy, communication, journalism, business, and especially, film industry have begun to take interest in this cartoon series.According to the theory of multimodal discourse analysis (MDA) based on systemic functional linguistics, the non-verbal resources considered by traditional grammar like images, sounds, colors and actions, are now playing an important role in the meaning construction in modern communication. According to this view, the cartoon film PGBBW belongs to a multimodal discourse. Like languages, only when the meanings of images, sounds, colors and other social semiotic resourses are constructed can they be understood by the receivers. Therefore, this study focuses on the following questions:1. How is the meaning of the multimodal discourse PGBBW is constructed and how are its meta-functions realized?2. How do different modalities work together to construct the integrative meaning of the filmic discourse PGBBW?3. What characteristics of the filmic discourse PGBBW can be discovered through the analysis?The visual, auditory and synthetic analysis of the filmic discourse PGBBW prove that the meta-functions of the filmic discourse are fully realized, its meanings are successfully constructed and different modalities are harmoniously cooperated in the film, which make this cartoon film a perfect art. Meanwhile, this study also expands the application field of multimodal discourse analysis.