Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of The Meaning-making Of Typography In Disney Animated Movie Posters

With the rapid development of science and technology,the visual communication has become more diverse than it used to be,and the discourse analysis with language as the research object has gradually paid attention to a multimodal discourse analysis.In recent years,few multimodal studies focused on typography,especially in movie posters.As the world's largest animation industry company,the commercial promotion of Disney animated movies has been successful accompanying with its excellent poster design.Disney's animated movie posters can not only successfully achieve commercial propaganda purposes,but also express the theme and cultural connotation of the movie.Therefore,this study conducts a multimodal discourse analysis of typography in Disney animated movie posters.This study selects Disney animated movie posters with popularity in the past 20 years and aims to explore the main features of typography and its meaning-making from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis.A combination of qualitative and quantitative methods is adopted: St?ckl's typographic grammar(2005)and Van Leeuwen's(2005)two semiotic principles towards typography are employed as the theoretical frameworks,and visual content analysis is adopted as the research method,and the frequency and distribution of typographic features of each movie poster are examined.This study has the following findings:(1)Typography can reveal the importance of the information it carries,and each kind of information has its own design conventions.(2)Typography has connotative or metaphorical meanings associated with the subject or protagonist of the movie.(3)The meaning-making relation of typography with other semiotic modes is co-adjutant,context-dependent and complementary.(4)There are three major functions of typography in Disney animated movie posters: reinforcing the meaning constructed and facilitating the information transfer,emphasizing the theme and characters of the movie,making the different information presented in a harmonious way.The study broadens the research scope of multimodal discourse studies and verifies the feasibility of typographic grammar for the design of movie posters.It also provides a new angle for the audience to appreciate the Disney animated movie posters and some insights for future design of movie posters.