A Comparative Study Of Interactive Meaning Construction In Chinese And American Film Trailers From Multimodal Perspective

With the advancement of science and technology,a single language mode is no longer the only subject people can use to construct meaning,they begin to express meanings with symbolic resources such as images,sounds,and others.Therefore,Multimodal Discourse Analysis emerged.As a film “advertisement”,a film trailer plays an important role in the box office of the film.Based on the theories of three metafunctions of Halliday’s Functional Grammar as well as Kress and van Leeuwen’ s Visual Grammar,this thesis aims to make a comparative analysis to explore how interactive meaning is constructed in verbal and visual modes between Chinese and American film trailers,and then try to figure out similarities and differences between them.Major research findings are as follows.Firstly,it is found that Chinese and American film trailers can construct interactive meanings through different choices of contact,social distance,perspective,mood and modality system.Secondly,similarities between the two are that both countries are more inclined to use “offer” acts,eye-level angles and declarative mood structures.Therefore,it can be inferred that both countries pay attention to providing enough film-related information to the audience,maintaining an equal power relationship with their audience.It helps the audience easily accept and quickly get relevant information of the film.Thirdly,the differences between the two are that “demand” acts,close and medium shots,oblique angles and modal operators with high value are more preferred to be used in China,while America frequently tends to adopt close-up shots,frontal angles and modal operators with low value.And this paper attempts to explain possible reasons for the differences between Chinese and American film trailers in two modes from the cultural perspective.The theoretical significance of the thesis lies in that it can verify the feasibility and maneuverability of Visual Grammar in the analysis of film trailer discourse,and enrich the linguistic study on film trailers.Practically,it finds out the similarities and differences between Chinese and American film trailers,and brings enlightenment and implications to film trailers makers to produce better film trailer works.