电影《艺术家》的多模态语言研究

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Research Background
Human’s way of communication changed dramatically with the advent of internet atthe end of last century. Computers were widely spread and used. People use internet tosend images, videos, music, etc. That is, “we live in a multimodal society, which makesmeaning through the co-employment of semiotic resources”(Lim, 2004:52). But thecontemporary theories and methods could not explain this phenomenon as there were noeffective methods or frameworks. In the past, the study of language almost exclusivelyexisted in the linguist field. Dramas, novels, documents and other genres of writings werestudied by researchers. Meanwhile, nonverbal resources, such as images, colors, gestureswere ignored. Therefore, the advent of internet calls for the study of multimodaldiscourses which it conveys
In 1994, O’Toole’s language of Displayed Art studied paintings, sculpture andarchitecture. In 1996, Kress and van Leeuwen invented Visual Grammar(VG for short) tostudy discourse of a variety of sources in Reading Images: The Grammar of VisualDesign. Kress and van Leeuwen’s VG makes up the shortcomings of the previoustheories and methods for it considers sources, e.g. images, colors, can represent meaningsjust like the function of language. Researchers use this efficient method to analyze movieposters, textbooks, MTVs, dictionaries, etc. Now it is a new aspect to analyze multimodaldiscourses and is booming around the world.
While, researchers find that they can hardly explain dynamic discourses, such asMTVs and films. In 2004, Kay L. O’Halloran, a researcher at the National University ofSingapore, proposed her filmic discourse analysis framework in Visual Semiosis in Filmaiming at explaining filmic discourses. In her framework, visual imagery, speech, music,sound effects and the interweaving of the visual imagery and soundtrack are elaboratelystudied.
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1.2 Significance of the Research
Theoretically, this study is supposed to enlarge the scope of studies on multimodaldiscourse analysis. The former multimodal discourse analysis studies focus onadvertisements, MTVs, text books, posters, etc, while silent films are rarely studied. Itintends to discover how characters use different modes to communicate with others in thesilent film.
Practically, this study intends to promote people’s understandings of this film. Twokinds of modes in this film are analyzed, they are images and card titles. The author ofthis thesis hopes to promote interviewers’ comprehension of the two modes of this film.Besides, interviewers’ profound understanding of the theme of this film is expected.

1.3 Objectives of the Research
The film The Artist is a silent film contains frames, card titles, postures, etc. In thisthesis, frames and card titles are analyzed. The author of this thesis intends to find theway representational meaning, interactive meaning, and compositional meaning of images are represented in this film. Besides, the author of this thesis also intends to findhow are ideational function, interpersonal function, and textual function realized. What’smore, the relations between images and card titles are explored. In a word, this researchaims to discover the applicability and utility of Kress and van Leeuwen’s VisualGrammar, Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, and O’Halloran’s MultimodalFilmic Discourse Analysis Framework to analyze the silent film: The Artist.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review

Literature review includes five parts: overview of MDA, achievements of MDAabroad and at home, studies on films, current studies on the film The Artist and summaryrespectively.

2.1 Overview of Multimodal Discourse Analysis
MDA came into existence in 1990s as Kress and van Leeuwen put forward VisualGrammar. MDA is a branch of DA developed by American linguist Zellig Harris.
2.1.1 Review of Discourse Analysis
Discourse Analysis(DA for short) came into being with the publication of ZelligHarris’(1952) paper “Discourse Analysis” in the magazine Language. Since then, many aresearcher has made their effort to the study of discourse. Many scholars, Z. Harris,D.Hymes, M.K.Halliday, J.L.Austin, J.Searle, H.P.Grice, G.Brown&G.Yule, Zhang Delu,Zhu Yongsheng, etc., have shown deep interest in this study. Z.Harris’ contribution isoutstanding. D.Hymes(1964) analyzes the manner of speech people used in verbalcommunication. J.L.Austin(1962) and J.Searle(1969) concern speech acts.H.P.Grice(1975) analyzes speech acts and speaking implications. M.A.K.Halliday’s AnIntroduction to Functional Grammar(1985,1994) signifies a great step forward of thestudy of language. All these researchers have made great contribution to discourseanalysis. They focus their attention on conversational principles, discourse cohesion andcoherence, the relation between semantic structure and social ideology, the relation between discourse and context, etc. It is clear that scholars regard discourse analysis as astudy of language in use. Yet scholars haven’t reached an agreement on the definition ofit. But one thing is clear, discourse analysis concerns both written and spoken language.
2.1.2 From Discourse Analysis to Multimodal Discourse Analysis
Discourse analysis is a step further of the former studies on language since itanalyzes language above sentence-level. With the assistance of other disciplines, such assystemic functional linguistic, sociology, psychology, discourse analysis has proved to bean effective tool to analyze language. M.A.K. Halliday regards language as a socialsemiotic and thinks language can simultaneously fulfill three functions, namely, theideational function, interpersonal function and textual function.
When internet appeared in 1990s, people started to use images, sounds, videos, etc,to communicate with each other. The previous study on language is not sufficient toexplain this phenomenon. In 1995, Kress and van Leeuwen put forward a newmethod-Visual Grammar to analyze this phenomenon. They consider language, color,image, and sound as modes. When people use two modes or more than two modes tocommunicate, then modality is realized. In 2000, Handbook Visual Analysis written byvan Leeuwen and Jewitt was published, the term “multimodality” was used for the firsttime. Multimodality is the way people adopt more than two modes to have successfulcommunication. Just as Iedema(2003:39) said, “the term multimodality, as used here, is atechnical one aiming to highlight that the meaning we work at all times exploits varioussemiotics”. Multimodality is to analyze the relation between language and work, betweenbody movement and talk-occur (Martinec,2000), among image, language andsound(Iedema,2000; Thaibault,2000). Multimodal discourse analysis is the way toanalyze a discourse composed of different modes.
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2.2 Achievements of Multimodal Discourse Analysis
Although MDA emerges at the end of the twentieth century, it has achievedremarkable success both abroad and at home. The following part will illustrate theachievements done by scholars in this field.
2.2.1 Studies of Multimodal Discourse Analysis Abroad
Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar(SFG for short) regards language as socialsemiosis and considers it can automatically fulfill three metafunctions: the ideationalfunction, the interpersonal function and the textual function. Inspired by Halliday’sthought, Kress and van Leeuwen consider images, one kind of social semiotic mode, canbe analyzed according to Halliday’s analysis of language as a social sign. Kress and vanLeeuwen(1996) come up with their work Reading Images: the Grammar of VisualDesign with different kinds of examples: photos, children’s drawings, newspaper,advertisements, textbook illustrations, buildings and three dimensional sculptures. Theydefine the functions of images as representational, interactive and compositionalmeaning.
In fact, O’Toole(1994) is the first one to apply Halliday’s Systemic-FunctionalGrammar to art analysis. He studies the intra-semiotic and inter-semiotic grammaticalrelations in the book The Language of Displayed Art(1994) which states visual imageshave representational, modal and compositional functions. Lim(2004) advances anIntegrative Multi-Semiotic Model(IMM) as a “meta-model” to analyze the use of both language and images which are contained in the page of frame.
Thereafter, many researchers have made their contributions to this field.Lemke(1998) studies graphs and charts on written scientific discourse; O’Toole (1994),Pand(2004) and Stenglin(2004) studies architecture and space; Iedema(2001) pays hisattention on verbal and images in textbooks. It is evident that the earlier MDA mainlyfocuses on static discourses (e.g. Lemke,1998; Iedema,2001).
While many researchers turn their attention to dynamic discourses and have madegreat contribution to this field. Van Leeuwen(1999) extends his study of MDA to the fieldof music and sound. He states that music and sound, like language and images, can alsofulfill three metafunctions: representational meaning, interactive meaning andcompositional meaning. In order to study MDA, Kay L O’Halloran(2000) sets up theLaboratory for Research in Semiotics and the Semiotics Research Group at the NationalUniversity of Singapore. O’Halloran(2004) studies two selected mise-en-scene(shot)from the film Chinatown aiming at investigating a method for interpreting and capturingthe temporal and spatial dynamics of visual semiosis. She proposes a filmic discourseanalysis framework in her study. Baldry and Thibault(2006) do research on multimodaltranscription and text analysis of different kinds including webpage, film, advertisements,London tube maps and so on. Baldry(2004) even sets up Multimodal CorpusAuthoring(MCA) system to analyze the dynamic semiosis in digital format by usingcomputers technology.
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Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework and Methodology .................................................15
3.1 Theoretical Framework......................................15
3.1.1 Visual Grammar...........................................15
3.1.1.1 Representational Meaning .............................................16
3.1.1.2 Interactive Meaning............................................19
3.1.1.3 Compositional Meaning ............................................21
3.1.2 Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar............................................21
3.1.3 O’Halloran’s Multimodal Filmic Discourse Analysis Framework...........23
3.2 Proposed Framework of Multimodal Filmic Discourse Analysis .......................24
3.3 Research Methodology............................................26
3.3.1 Research Questions .......................................26
3.3.2 Research Material........................................26
3.3.3 Research Method and Procedure .............................................27
3.4 Summary...........................................28

Chapter 4 Analyzing The Artist from theMultimodal Perspective

This chapter analyzes three parts containing ten shots according to the times the twoprotagonists meet. Three frames of each shot are selected and analyzed in detail.

4.1 Background Information of The Three Parts
Part One George’s Rise
In George’s glorious day, he enjoys great popularity and is welcomed everywhere.He is smiling all the time. One shot in this film can prove his popularity. The name of hisname George Valentin is bigger than the film A Russian Affair in which he performs, so itis evident that he is really very popular at that time. In George’s glorious days, he meetsPeppy three times.
The First Shot
In 1927, while the famous silent film star George Valentin is posing for picturesoutside the premiere for his latest movie A Russian Affair, a young woman fan, PeppyMiller, bumps into him accidentally. In fact, the woman dreams to be an actress. Georgeresponds this accident with humor and shows off with Peppy for the cameras. There areno clauses in the screen, only images are analyzed.
The Second Shot
This time they are shooting a film named A German Affair. In that film, Peppy is anextra dancer while George is the leading role. Peppy dances very well and George tries toimitate her without knowing that she is the young woman fan he met before. Later, theyrecognize each other with astonishment. The boss also recognizes Peppy. He blames Peppy for the delay of his film as the newspaper’s first page is all about Peppy’s kiss onGeorge’s cheek. While Peppy is about to go away, George calls to Peppy and says“ Where are you going, Miss? We have a picture to shoot.” Peppy has no clauses, but shestays and, as is expected, George and Peppy shoot a picture together. While they aredancing, they fall in love.
The Third Shot
Peppy goes to George’s dressing room. There is no one in the room. So Peppy putsher arm in George’s suit as if George is hugging her. Unexpectedly, George comes to hisdressing room and is surprised to see this scene. Peppy becomes very nervous as she isdiscovered by George. George treats Peppy politely and passionately gives guidance toPeppy as he draws a beauty spot on Peppy’s face which eventually becomes hertrademark. He says “ If you want to be an actress, you need to have something the othersdon’t.” and draws a beauty spot on Peppy’s face. Here, Peppy says nothing.
Part Two George’s Fall
Between 1929 and 1932, George’s career falls to the deepest valley. He produces asilent film, but few people want to watch it. What’s more, the stock crashes in 1929. Heis driven out by his wife from their house and lives in a small apartment. To make aliving, all his properties are auctioned. Meanwhile, Peppy gradually becomes the mostpopular actress and is welcomed by many magazines as she plays talkies. The disparitybetween George and Peppy becomes wider. During this period, they meet six times.
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Chapter 5 Conclusion

This chapter contains three parts, namely the findings of this research, thelimitations of this research, and suggestions for further research.

5.1 Findings of the Research
As the author of this thesis analyzes The Artist from three aspects, namely theimages, the card titles, and their relations.
The author of this thesis adopts Visual Grammar to analyze images in this film. Theanalysis of images by Visual Grammar contains three parts, that is, the representationalmeaning, the interactive meaning, and the compositional meaning. The findings of theimages are illustrated as follows:
As to the representational meaning of the thirty frames, all of them are narrativeprocesses. There are no frames of conceptual processes. The thirty analyzed frames are ofreaction, transactional action, and non-transactional processes. In fact, there are totally 11frames of non-transactional processes, 7 frames of transactional processes and 12 framesof reaction processes. This phenomenon shows the protagonists in this silent film mostlylook at each other, or their sight is looking at something out of the frames, or they arelooking at the other one. In effect, this film is about a silent film star's(George’s) careerand love story. Narrative processes are adopted to show the development of events.
As to the interactive meaning, contact, social distance, and attitude are concluded.In respect of contact, all the thirty frames are of offer act. That is, the frames areadopted to offer some background information to viewers as the two protagonists neverdirectly look at the screen;
In respect of social distance, close personal distance, far personal distance, far socialdistance, impersonal distance, and close social distance are included. In the 30 analyzedframes, 13 frames are of close personal distance, 6 frames of far personal distance, 1frame of close social distance, 8 frames of far social distance, and 2 frames of impersonaldistance. This shows the two protagonists' relationship are harmonious in most times;
In respect of attitude, the 30 frames are all shot in frontal perspective. They call forinvolvement from interviewers. As to vertical angles of the thirty frames, there are 24frames of eye level, 3 frames of high level, and 3 frames of the representedparticipant’s(Peppy’s power) level. The frames of eye level angle show the equal powerin two aspects, that is, equal power between the interactive participants and therepresented participants, equal power between the two represented participants, Georgeand Peppy. The 3 frames of high level angle show interactive’s power. Peppy has herpower in three frames in this film.
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参考文献（略）