The Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Yu Ji In Farewell My Concubine:the Beijing Opera

In recent years,multimodal discourse analysis has gradually become a hot topic for linguists to discuss.Its emergence and rapid development cannot be separated from the development of modern science and technology.“With the development of discourse analysis theory,more and more people have realized that the meaning of a text is not completely embodied by the language itself,but also by a variety of non-language modalities,such as gestures,facial expressions,things in the contexts,things simultaneously known by the speaker and the hearer”(Zhang Delu,2015).The focus of discourse analysis has also shifted from the analysis of linguistic features within the discourse to the analysis of the external development of the discourse.Kress and Van Leeuwen(1996)proposed the Visual Grammar based on the systematic functional grammar in their book Reading Image,which for the first time introduced the method of multimodal discourse analysis from the aspects of representative meaning,interactive meaning and the compositional meaning.Leeuwen’s Aural Grammar studies the function of sound in communication from the perspective of aural modality.And Zhang Delu proposed the theory of relation between different modalities.Based on the theories mentioned above,this study chooses the scenes related to Yu Ji in Farewell My Concubine: the Beijing Opera as the research object,at the same time,the analysis on Yu Ji’s libretto is also made.This study mainly applies qualitative research method to study the various modalities used in Farewell My Concubine: the Beijing Opera,so as to explore how these different modalities reflect Yu Ji’s image,and what kind of image has been reflected by these modalities.As for the visual modality,it is mainly analyzed from the perspective of representative meaning(narrative process,conceptual process),interactive meaning(contact,social distance,perspective,modality)and compositional meaning(information value,prominence,framework);As for the aural modality,the reinforcement of the sound to the context in constructing Yu Ji’s character image is analyzed;As for the relationship between different modalities,thereinforcement and the non-reinforcement relationahips between or among different modalities are analyzed;And as for the language modality,Yu Ji’s lyrics are analyzed from the perspective of transitivity system of experiential function in functional grammar.The research achieves the expected purpose,that is,through the visual,aural and linguistic analysis of the filmic discourse Farewell My Concubine: the Beijing Opera.we get to know that Yu Ji has a strong sense of home and country,and she is wise,firm and optimistic.At the same time,this study proves the feasibility of using multimodal analysis method to study traditional Beijing Opera,so as to broaden the research field of multimodal discourse analysis.What’s more,this research provides a new way for studying the Beijing Opera,and provides the viewers with a completely new way to understand the Beijing Opera,so as to love it.