Multimodal Analysis

Introduction

With the remarkable development of multimedia and computer technology, the dominant role of language in mass media and communication is challenged by other semiotic resources such as visual image, sound and action. The art carrier gave us a chance to preview the future, and the outcome is hope naturally. Therefore, the 2012 also continues director's concern for the environment, as well as the desire for the future of mankind.

According to Visual Grammar, images are interpreted in terms of their representational meaning, interactive meaning and compositional meaning. Visual Grammar makes it possible to conduct multimodal discourse analysis on movies and provides the researchers a powerful toolkit to account for meanings arising from images and texts on movies. Under the guidance of the proposed model, the movie 2012 are analyzed for a case study, aiming to explore how the realization of the three meta-functions contributes to the overall meaning conveyed by movies The approach adopted for this research is not a quantitative corpus-based study but a qualitative and interpretative based on incisive exploration of a small set of movie images.

In the specific context, the communication is restricted by language field, tenor, and contextual factors. In other words, the processes of communication adapt with the genre, and expand relatively in fixed communication mode. On the formal level, different modal characteristics interrelated with each other, and realize discourse meaning together. On this level, each mode has its own form of the system, such as the visual system, the auditory system, tactile system. (Zhang Delu, 2009:28) According to the comprehensive theoretical framework of multi-modal discourse analysis, the movie 2012 will be analyzed from the cultural context, situational context and media levels.

The framework is divided into four levels: the cultural level, contextual level, content level and the expression level. The key factor of multi-modal communication is the cultural dimension, which determines the socially tradition, communication form and technology. Situational context can not be explained without cultural level. The cultural dimension contains ideology and communicative process that can concretely realize this ideology.