A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of American Animated Feature film ( The Wizard of Oz) and Japanese Anime ( Spirited Away)

Document Type : Academic research papers

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English, Foreign Languages and Translation, Egypt, Cairo

Abstract

Abstract
The present paper attempts to examine the contribution of MD (Multimodal Discourse Analysis) to Walt Disney’s The Wizard of Oz (1939) and Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001). The content investigates Kress and van Leeuwen’s multimodality model (2006). As illustrated in Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (2006), to discuss the visual design grammar which decodes the different patterns of representation, patterns of interaction, how experience can be visually decoded, and all that contributes to the meaning of visual texts as well as moving images. Within this rationale, the present study explores the paradigm of Multimodal Discourse Analysis to interrogate how moving pictures draw on modes of communication such as camera attitude, posture, contact, distance, colors, facial expressions and gestures in combination with words to make meaning. Thereby, Multimodality is deployed to show how fictional characters communicate and interact with each other not just through writing but also through speaking, gesture, gaze, and visual forms.
Multimodality is originally rooted in Hallidayan Social Semiotics (Halliday, 1978), and is elaborated by Kress and Van Leeuwen within the visual realm. Multimodality is a concept introduced and developed in the last two decades to account for the different resources used in communication to express meaning. The term is used both to describe a phenomenon of human communication and to identify a diversified and growing field of research.

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Buhūth
Volume 1, Issue 8
Issue Eight, Part Three - Languages and Literature
August 2021
Pages 59-81

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