1st Edition

Film Discourse Interpretation Towards a New Paradigm for Multimodal Film Analysis

By Janina Wildfeuer Copyright 2014
    284 Pages
    by Routledge

    284 Pages
    by Routledge

    This book contributes to the analysis of film from a multimodal and textual perspective by extending formal semantics into the realm of multimodal discourse analysis. It accounts for both the inferential as well as intersemiotic meaning making processes in filmic discourse and therefore addresses one of the main questions that have been asked within film theory and multimodal analysis: How do we understand film and multimodal texts? The book offers an analytical answer to this question by providing a systematic tool for the description of this comprehension process. It aims to advance knowledge of the various resources in filmic texts, the ways the resources work together in constructing meaning and the ways people understand this meaning construction. This new approach to film interpretation is thus able to remodel and improve the classical paradigm of film text analysis.

    1. Introduction  2. The Logic of Film Discourse Interpretation  3. Analysis  4. Multimodal Narrative Construction in Filmic Texts  5. Conclusions and Outlook.  Appendix: Transcriptions

    Biography

    Janina Wildfeuer is a Lecturer and Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Science at the University of Bremen, Germany.

    "This book is a substantial contribution to multimodal studies, and also makes a contribution to film studies and extends formal semantics into the realm of multimodality. It draws upon and integrates different theoretical traditions to develop what Forceville has described as a ‘non-trivial explanation’ of how meaning is made and interpreted, one which brings the active interpretative process of the film audience into the equation. The text-based approach offers a powerful, theoretically integrated way of accounting for intersemiotic processes in multimodal discourse." -- Bradley Smith, University of Melbourne, Australia

    "A very useful new approach to film interpretation that could remodel and improve the classical paradigm of film text analysis." -- Florian Mundhenke, University of Leipzig, Germany