A Study On The Analysis Of Semiotic Meanings In Discourse Of Visual Modality Surroundings

The traditional discourse analysis is generally seen language as the basic object of study,which pays attention to the expressible model of language itself, the semantic structure andthe relations between utterance meaning and the psychological activities of characters. Withthe rapid development of computer and the wide application of the multimedia space,linguists have paid more and more attention to the other semiotic resource, especially thevisual sensory models, such as image, sound and color. The non-verbal elements have beenintegrated into the linguistic field, and become a hot topic with the multimodal discourseanalysis thriving in1990s.Linguists propose that the original theoretical basis of multimodal discourse analysis isHalliday’s (1985,1994) Functional Grammar. The result proves that other semiotic resourcesalso possess significance in addition to language. With the further research, visual modality asthe most common model in multimodality becomes the focus of research. The book ofReading Images written by Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996,2006) provides that VisualGrammar has established the overall theoretical framework for visual modality inmultimodality. Visual Grammar as a set of complete and specific theory has been put forwardfor visual modality, which is originated from the three metafunctions of functional grammar,namely, ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. Compared the threemetafunctions with other semiotic resources except language, the three meanings of visualgrammar can be constructed, respectively, representational meaning, interactive meaning andcompositional meaning, all of which has formed the three semiotic meanings that can beapplied the analysis of dynamic image. Under the condition of visual senses, the theoryproves that other social semiotics systems besides language also have unique significancesand functions. In order to confirm the effectiveness of visual grammar, the thesis has avoidedthe conventional reviews, and selects the dynamic filmic scenes as well as a typical data toanalyze, which has seen linguistics as the breakthrough point, the analysis of visual modalityas the central argument, functional grammar as the original theory, visual grammar as the coretheoretical framework, and the film Titanic as corpus. The research has made the analysis ofvisual modality to the filmic discourse, which adopts both qualitative and quantitative methodand gives priority to the former as well as coordinates with corpus analysis under the directionof visual grammar.The thesis provides that visual grammar theory is limited to the discourse analysis invisual modality surroundings and can not be used in the study of other modalities, whichdistinguishes the utilization of visual grammar from other theories. The characteristic of the thesis is that the dynamic scenes of the filmic discourse have a strong applicability. To acertain extent, the thesis has extended the research area of discourse analysis under the visualmodality surroundings, distinguishes the difference between visual modality and othermodalities, and provided a new angle of appreciating to improve the viewer’s appreciationlevel on the film.