A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of The Film The Artist

In1960s, Halliday puts forward the method to analyze the nature of language. Henames this method Systemic Functional Grammar. This system is adopted to analyzediscourse analysis, critical discourse, and other field. In those days, scholars pay theirattention mostly on the study of languages. Another means of communication, images,are neglected. At the end of the twentieth century, two scholars, Kress G. and vanLeeuwen T., pay their attention on the study of images. They formulate Visual Grammarto study images in multimodal discourse. They hold images have the social functions justas what languages have. Halliday studies languages in his Systemic Functional Grammar.In his Systemic Functional Grammar, Halliday states that language has the ideationalfunction, interpersonal function and textual function. In the light of the functions oflanguage in Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, Kress and van Leeuwen stateimages have representational meaning, interactive meaning, and compositional meaningin their Visual Grammar. At the beginning, scholars abroad and at home pay theirattention on the studies of stationary images. Later, they find it is also necessary to studydynamic discourses, for example, films, MTVs, etc from the perspective of VisualGrammar.Film discourse is a complex dynamic multimodal discourse. Beside images, it alsocontains many kinds of modes, i.e. sound, music, postures, actions. The subject of thisthesis is the silent French film The Artist. Since the emergency of the film The Artist, adozen students and scholars pay their attention to the studies of this film. They do studieson the plot, poster, background music, techniques, mirror image, key words, thereminiscence, the aesthetic aspects of this film, etc. The author of this thesis studies thisfilm from different perspective. Visual Grammar and Systemic Functional Grammar areadopted to analyze images and card titles respectively. This thesis studies this film fromtwo aspects, frames and corresponding card titles in ten shots which are collectedaccording to the times the two protagonists, George and Peppy, meet. These ten shots canbe divided into three parts, namely George’s rise, George’s fall, and George’s rise again.Part One is George’s rise, it contains the First Shot, the Second Shot, and the Third Shot.Part Two is George’s fall, it contains six shots, from the Fourth Shot to the Ninth Shot. Part Three is George’s rise again. It contains one shot, the Tenth Shot. Among these tenshots, three shots have no card titles. They are the First Shot, the Seventh Shot, and theTenth Shot. Three frames of each shot are collected in time order. The author of thisthesis analyzes visual salience, visual image, and kinesic action of these frames. Therepresentational meaning, interactive meaning, and compositional meaning of the framesare analyzed. Besides, the clauses of the card titles appear in the film are analyzed interms of transitivity system, mood system, and cohesion system. Later, the relationbetween frames and card titles are also analyzed.The author of this thesis finds that all the thirty frames are narrative processes ofoffer act. Producers adopt close personal distance mostly. Besides, equality is the mostcommon perspective. Information in these frames is embodied by given-new pattern andcentered-polarized pattern. There are no straight lines that separate the two protagonists.The items and the stretches of the two protagonists’ body parts separate the protagonistsfrom the circumstance around them. As to the card titles, material processes are the mostcommonly used processes in this film. Mental processes and relational processes are alsocommon. Declarative clauses are the most common clauses. They offer the statements of aspecific event and the opinions of the protagonists. Reference is the most frequently usedcohesive ties. Collocation and ellipsis are also common in this film. As to the relationbetween frames and card titles, it is complementary.As The Artist is a silent film, the discourse is especially unique. Through themultimodal discourse analysis of this film, the author of this thesis finds it is feasible toanalyze the images and card titles from Visual Grammar perspective and SystemicFunctional Grammar respectively, hoping to enlarge the scope of multimodal discourseanalysis and promote people’s understanding of this silent film with more profoundcomprehension of the functions of different modes in this film.