A study on experiential meaning in “snow white and the seven dwarfs” from multimodal perspective

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY VÕ THỊ ĐĂNG NGỌC A STUDY ON EXPERIENTIAL MEANING IN “SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS” FROM MULTIMODAL PERSPECTIVE Field : The English Language Code : 8.22.02.01 Supervisor: Võ Duy Đức Ph.D BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN VÕ THỊ ĐĂNG NGỌC NGUYÊN CỨU NGHĨA KINH NGHIỆM TRONG TRUYỆN TRANH “NÀNG BẠCH TUYẾT VÀ BẢY CHÚ LÙN” TỪ CÁCH NHÌN ĐA PHƯƠNG THỨC Chun ngành: Ngơn Ngữ Anh Mã số: 8.22.02.01 Người hướng dẫn: TS Võ Duy Đức i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In this study, I would like to express my gratitude toward my supervisor Dr Võ Duy Đức with his enthusiasm, his encouragement as well as his patience for helping me finish the master thesis He spent a lot of time reading and correcting the mistakes in my thesis carefully although he was very busy He always encouraged me to seek many articles, read many books, and studied many academic researches to conduct well the study I would also like to express my sincere thanks to the board of directors of Ngo May High School, especially my headmaster - Châu Văn Phú for helping and facilitating the distribution of teaching timetable during the time I took the course Moreover, I would like also to thank my close colleagues for teaching my classes I am extending my special thanks to all lecturers in the English master course They have taught me a lot of useful knowledge during the two years I took part in this master course Lastly, I would like to express my gratitude to my family for encouraging me mentally and physically so that I could successfully complete this course ii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I merely confirm that the thesis titled ―A study on experiential meaning in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” from multimodal perspective” is written only by me and describes entirely the result of my own work I choose many references which have been quoted and all sources of information have been clearly cited The thesis has not been submitted for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or institution Qui Nhon, 2020 VO THI DANG NGOC iii ABSTRACT An experimental investigation was conducted to explore the experiential meaning of the verbal structures and the visual images through multimodal perspective in the comic story Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Two main frameworks of theory which are applied for the analysis of this study are Systemic Functional Grammar and Visual Grammar Systemic Functional Grammar formulated by Halliday (2004) is used for analyzing the experiential meaning of the verbal texts in the collected data resources, while Visual Grammar originated by Kress& Leeuwen (2006) is supported to identify the experiential meaning of the visual language in the comic story Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs The findings indicate that while texts in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs comic show the actions and the events with a large numbers of Material processes, the images mainly focus on the physical actions of the represented participants with the Actional processes Moreover, Relational processes in the verbal texts used to characterize or identify the participants account for a proportion of equivalent rate with Reactional processes in the visual image applied for identifying the represented participants The results of the numerical simulation indicate that circumstances both the verbal texts and the visual images in the comic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs rotate around the time and place in which the activities or events take place with a large number of Location in texts and Setting in images Implications of the results and future research directions were drawn out iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF FIGURES vii ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS ix CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE 1.2 AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY 1.2.1 Aim of the study 1.2.2 Objectives 1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY 1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1.1 Systemic Functional Grammar 2.1.2 The Grammar of Visual Design 20 2.1.3 Summary 31 2.2 PREVIOUS STUDIES 32 CHAPTER METHODOLOGY 37 3.1 RESEARCH METHODS 37 3.2 DATA COLLECTION 37 3.3 DATA ANALYSIS 38 3.4 RESEARCH PROCEDURES 39 CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 41 v 4.1 FINDINGS 41 4.1.1 Findings of experiential meaning in the verbal text 41 4.1.2 Findings of experiential meaning in the images 53 4.2 DISCUSSION 68 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS 73 5.1 Conclusions 73 5.2 Implications 76 5.3 Limitations of the study 77 5.4 Suggestions for further research 77 REFERENCES 79 APPENDICES vi LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Verbs serving as Process in mental processes Table 2.2 Summary of the process types 14 Table 4.1 Distribution of circumstances in the verbal text in 52 Table 4.2 Distribution of process types in the images in 53 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 The grammar of experience: types of process in English Figure 2.2 Narrative Processes in visual communication 22 Figure 2.3 Unidirectional transactional process 23 Figure 2.4 Bidirectional transactional process 23 Figure 2.5 Reactional process 24 Figure 2.6 Verbal process 24 Figure 2.7 Mental process 25 Figure 2.8 Conversion process 25 Figure 2.9 Circumstance of Setting 26 Figure 2.10 Means 27 Figure 2.11 Accompaniment 27 Figure 2.12 Conceptual Processes 28 Figure 2.13 Classificational process -overt taxonomy 29 Figure 2.14 Classificational process -Covert taxonomy 29 Figure 2.15 Analytical process 30 Figure 2.16 Symbolic Attribute process 31 Figure 2.17 Symbolic Attribute process 31 Figure 4.1 Frequency of occurrence in the verbal text in Snow white 42 Figure 4.2 Frequency of subtypes of Narrative processes 54 Figure 4.3 Non-transactional process [I-140] 55 Figure 4.4 Non-transactional process [I-37] 55 Figure 4.5 Non-transactional process [I- 66] 56 Figure 4.6 Non-transactional process [I-138] 56 Figure 4.7 Unidirectional transactional process [I-20] 56 Figure 4.8 Unidirectional transactional process [I-209] 57 Figure 4.9 Unidirectional transactional process [I-148] 57 Figure 4.10 Unidirectional transactional process [I-310] 57 viii Figure 4.11 Bidirectional transactional process [I-29] 58 Figure 4.12 Bidirectional transactional process [I-309] 58 Figure 4.13 Non-transactional actional process [I-47] 59 Figure 4.14 Transactional reactional process [I-166] 60 Figure 4.15 Verbal process [ I-15] 60 Figure 4.16 Verbal process [I-19] 61 Figure 4.17 Verbal process [I-151] 61 Figure 4.18 Mental process [I-101] 62 Figure 4.19 Mental process [I-221] 62 Figure 4.20 Frequency of subtypes of Conceptual processes 63 Figure 4.21 Conceptual analytical [I-34] 64 Figure 4.22 Conceptual analytical [I-81] 64 Figure 4.23 Conceptual symbolic [I-195] 65 Figure 4.24 Frequency of Circumstances in image in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs comic 66 Figure 4.25 Circumstance of Setting [I-31] 67 Figure 4.26 Circumstance of Setting [I-71] 67 Figure 4.27 Circumstance of Means [I-120] 67 Figure 4.28 Circumstance of Means [I-88] 67 Figure 4.29 Accompaniment [I-117] 68 67 Figure 4.25 Circumstance of Setting [I-31] Figure 4.26 Circumstance of Setting [I-71] Figure 4.27 shows Circumstance of Setting in the house where there are beds, a door, animals, and Snow white; Figure 4.28 shows two Dwarfs and the floor, which are described by Circumstance of Means In Figure 4.28, Means is the lamb as a tool used for helping Snow White see something clearer when she came in the house Figure 4.29 in next page shows the tool or pickaxe as Means which the Dwarf is holding in his hands Figure 4.27 Circumstance of Means [I-88] Figure 4.28 Circumstance of Means [I-120] Moreover, Figure 4.29 shows three kinds of Circumstances The first kind is Circumstance of Setting which illustrates the picture of the house including the door and the floor The second is Circumstance of Means which is a tool the characters are holding such as the lamb and the pickaxe The last 68 circumstance is the Accompaniment There has no vector among the Dwarfs Especially, Dopey is hiding under Sleepy; Dopey forms two distinct characters It is called Accompaniment Figure 4.29 Accompaniment [I-117] 4.1.2.3 Summary In conclusion, Narrative and Conceptual processes were found in the analysis of experiential meaning conveyed in the visual data They account for approximately 97% and just more than % respectively Narrative structures are the processes formed by the vectors from which the participants participate in doing There are four main processes: Actional processes, Reactional processes, Verbal processes and Mental processes Besides, Conceptual processes are the representational structures which represents the participants in term of class, or meaning Analytical processes and Symbolic processes were found to operate in the data No classificational processes were found in the visual data There were cases of Circumstance of Setting, Means, and Accompaniment in the data A large proportion of Circumstance of Setting and Circumstance of Means go with all the types of Narrative processes, whereas Accompaniments are less frequently used 4.2 DISCUSSION We have studied the experiential meaning in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs comic by examining 327 main clauses in the verbal text and 313 69 images in the visual language The results show the number of significant findings Verbally, the analysis based on Systemic Functional Grammar by Halliday (2004) show that all of the six types of processes are used in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs comic: Material, Relational, Mental, Existential, Verbal and Behavior Material processes make up a large number of the text with approximately 50%, followed by Relational processes, accounting for less than 40% Mental processes take a smaller number of just more than 10%, Verbal and Existential processes take up a much small number of frenquency in the data, accounting for just from 2% to 3% There was no case of Behavior processes found in the verbal texts The findings revealed that Material processes are mainly used for the actions and events in the text The characters in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs comic are the participants who or which play an important role in the Material processes, function as an Actor or a Goal Like Actor, the other participant is Agent and like Goal, Range also is used in the texts The participants found in the texts include Snow White, the queen, the Prince, the animals, the entity in our natural world such as the forest, the path, the house that play an important role as Actor, Goal, Agent, and Range in the data One of the possibilities for the language use in the story is that the author wants to convey the participant‘s information to children reading comic story Human beings always love their own life, have fun together, and live in their natural harmony like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Young children may be encouraged to learn and follow the participants, then, positively change their own thoughts and obey their parents more Besides, the other participant appearing in the comic is the bad character who is always jealous and selfish like a witch, the queen, etc The children may draw their 70 own experiences; they should not make negative things for everyone around and expand their life skills or language via reading verbal comic Moreover, the findings suggest that Circumstantials are the additional elements that go with all of the verbal processes They are used to supply more information for the processes The circumstantails of Location account for 93% Circumstance of Manner, and Circumstance of Cause are less frequently used, with 4% and 3% respectively However, Extent, contingency, accompaniment, role, matter and angle are not used in the text This suggests that the writer only focuses on the description the plot of the story by indicating Location of space and Location of time Location of space is about not only the existence and the habitat of the participants as a castle, a river, a stream, a forest, a road, etc it is also where the actions and events take place such as Snow White runs in the forest or the queen pretends to be an old woman coming to the Seven Dwarfs‘ house to kill Snow White, for example On the contrary, the author expresses Location of time of the data via some adverbs such as once upon a time, until now, and then to analyze the data in the story Maybe, the writer wants to reflect the social reality in comic through the existence of time Visually, the investigation into the experiential meaning of the images in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs comic via Visual Grammar originated by Kress & Leeuwen (2006) shows that both Narrative and Conceptual processes operate in the visual texts The present findings also suggest that a significant number of Narrative processes are used whereas a much smaller number of Conceptual structures are used in the images (approxiamtely 97% versus more than 3%) In Narrative processes, four processes including Actional, Reactional, Verbal and Mental processes are present in the visual data The percentages of Actional and Reactional of Narrative processes 71 account for 32% and 31.1% respectively The main participants of Actional processes are Actor and Goal In Actional processes, a large number of the primary characters in the data such as Snow White, the queen, the prince, the Dwarfs function as an Actor or a Goal Actors and Goals may be emanated with the participant's vector Perhaps, those vectors are perceived by different people Behind each image, it contains many different meanings, depending on how each person views that image Maybe each image is very well-educational about the life and may help children express their creativity and show your imagination about the society in the past, present and future around them In Reactional processes, Reacter and phenomenon are used with the Reactional processes A large number of the Reacter show the direction of glance at something without phenomenon The Sayer (approximately 30%) is the main participant of verbal processes Mental processes account for just less than 4.0 % Each picture has a Sayer and an Utterance existence or more However, the results of finding also suggest that the images have the Utterance inside without Sayer Because the author may perhaps not want the Sayer to put Utterance inside the images, the writer wants readers to feel for themselves about the indirect participant's volume, participant's tone or emotions It is possible for everyone to feel the participant 's utterances through the character's emotional expression in the image Unlike Narrative processes, only two processes including Analytical and Symbolic in Conceptual processes were found in the images No Classificational processes are in the Conceptual processes Our finding revealed that Analytical processes and Symbolic processes account for just less than 3.0 % and 1.0% respectively Thus, it can be seen that Conceptual process is at low volume in the experiential meaning in Snow White and the 72 Seven Dwarfs comic Comics are often a text that describes and expresses ideas visually because comics are mostly for children Therefore, they have very few Analytical or Symbolic processes They are often educational for children; they increase their cognition, expand their imagination, and promote their creativity, and help them explore the world around them In addition, in order to shed more light on the experiential meaning in the images, the study was also on Circumstances It was found that Setting, Means and Accompaniment are used in the images Circumstance of Setting make up a large proportion whereas Accompaniment takes the smallest one with 46.1% and 0.5% respectively Circumstance of Means are less frequently used than Setting of Circumstances by 10% To summarize, this chapter presents the analysis of the multimodal text in the term of the experiential meaning in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs comic The theoretical frameworks of Halliday (2004) and Kress & Leeuwen (2006) were employed for the study Along with the results of the study is the discussion of the findings The next chapter is the concluding chapter in which the study is summarized and the implication of the study as well as suggestions for further studies is presented 73 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS This chapter is the final sector that summarizes the main findings of the study discussed and ddescribed in detail in the previous chapter Then, it presents some limitations, implications as well as some suggestions on further research of the study Lastly, conclusion of the entire study is presented at the end 5.1 Conclusions With the purpose of exploring the experiential meaning communicated in the multimodal texts in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs comic, the study applied Systemic Functional Grammar formulated by Halliday (2004) and the Grammar of Visual Design originated by Kress and Leeuwen‘s Visual Grammar (2006) for the analysis of the data With regard to respond to the first question, ―How are the experiential meaning communicated verbally and visually in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” comic, the analysis of the experiential meaning in the multimodal text was focused on the 327 main clauses and 313 images in the collected data Verbally, the main findings illustrate that Material and Relational processes are mainly used by the writer to express the activities and the participants conducting the action and show the inner and the outer experience of the world of the characters This means that main important clauses in the multimodal text are usually focused on the physical action of the characters taking part in the action or events Furthermore, Circumstances of Location showing time and place are more frequently used than the other types in the data Thus, it can be seen that the writer tends to focus on depicting the plot of story about the time when the action or event happens or where they happen Visually, the investigation into the 313 images shows that Narrative 74 processes are mainly used for illustrating the primary physical action which the participants take part in Also the findings indicate that non- transactional, transactional action, and unidirectional transactional action operate in both Actional and Reaction processes in narrative structures Moreover, verbal processes represent the participants‘ speeches and thoughts in the conversation carried out from the images of the data The bubble of the speeches of the characters appears inside or outside the images In addition, Analytical and Symbolic processes are two main processes of Conceptual processes identified and found in the data While Analytical processes usually express the part or the whole of the process that the character show in the visual issues, Symbolic process display meaning and identity from the character‘s mood or atmosphere discovered in the images Moreover, Circumstances of Location in the images are focused on Settings of Time and Place Circumstances of Means were also found in the data In respond to the second research question, “What is the occurrence frequency of process types used in these verbal and visual communications?”, it was found that the five types of processes are used in the data including Material, Relational, Mental, Existential, and Verbal Material processes make up the largest proportion with 47% The finding suggests that a large number of actions are carried out by the participants or characters in the story It can be seen that Actor, Goal, Agent, Range, Recipient and Client are the main participants or characters Relational processes account for more than 37% Relational processes are used less than Material process by 10% This suggests that Relation processes are used for characterizing and identifying the characters or the entities in terms of the emotions, moods and characteristics Mental processes take a smaller number with approximately 11% It can be seen that all of the four sub-types in Mental processes, namely 75 Cognition, Perception, Desideration and Emotion were found in the data Main characters are Senser and Phenomenon Both Existential and Verbal processes are the least frequently used in the verbal text in the collected data, accounting for just more than 3% and 1%, respectively This suggests that the existent and verbal actions of the participants or entities in the data are less common in the verbal text in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs comic Behavior processes were not found in the analysis of the verbal text Moreover, to supply more information about the time, place and the ways that the events or activities happen, Circumstance of time and place are used with the highest rate of over 90% Interestingly, the circumstance of Manner and Cause take up the smallest percentages of 4% and 3% respectively For the investigation into the frequency of occurrence of processes in the 313 images in the comic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, we used the visual structures for the analysis of the images It can be seen that the frequency of occurrence of Narrative processes take the highest rate in the visual language and the frequency of occurrence of Conceptual structures is the smallest rate in the images accounting for approximately 97% and more than 3% respectively This suggests that the results of this investigation show that Actional, Reactional, and Verbal of Narrative processes are the dominant processes in the data with 32%, more than 30% and approximately 30% respectively Mental processes Mental processes achieve the smallest rate of the four processes with approximately 4% In addition, Analytical and Symbolic processes are used in the collected work, accounting for 2.7% and 0.6% respectively; however, there were no cases of Classificational processes found in the data This suggests that Analytical and Symbolic processes only describe the participants‘ appearance 76 or characteristics The visual analysis also presents the other participants which use the means of the vectors They are called Circumstances Setting and Means account for the highest rates with more than 46 % and 36% respectively Accompaniment receive the smallest percentages with 0.5% in the frequency of occurrence in the comic story Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Important conclusions drawn from this work are the strong resemblance in the refrequency of occurrence in the analysis of the experiential meaning between the verbal text and the visual images in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs comic In two values, actions and events were found with a large number of rates of the frequency of occurence in Material processes in the verbal text and Actional processes in the visual images Besides, Circumstances in both verbal texts and visual images are used for adding more information about time and place in which the participants take part in the activities 5.2 Implications This result of the study completely contributes to the research on the experiential meaning of the verbal text and the visual images in the comic story Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs via SFG formulated by Halliday (2004) and Visual Grammar developed by Kress & Leeuwen (2006) The areas of this study might have important contributions to a better understanding of the content of the plot of the comic story through the simple structures in verbal texts and illustrations of the words through images It is obvious that in the world more and more comic stories are used the simple text and images With the verbal texts, we only look at the processes of the clauses in the comic This is to help us understand the content through the verbal text When we look at the vectors, they help us to guess 77 the meaning of the words basing on the images For example, the meaning of the words ―ran down‖ in the sentence of the comic ―So, they ran down the stairs‖, ‗ran down‘ is the process of the sentence, we recognize the meaning of that process, we can understand the meaning of the action running down somewhere, whereas the meaning of the words ‗forest‘ is realized by looking at the images which there are many trees, the stones, the animals, many birds showing forest in the comic The findings of the study play a significant role for those who use the verbal texts and images in reading the comic story It helps everyone own a good understanding of verbal text and visual semiotics This may be a useful tool for reading skills of the comic story since readers can predict the situations and knowledge related to the verbal text and the visual language Thus, this study proves that images and texts plays an important role in point of the ways of reading comics through the experiential meaning 5.3 Limitations of the study Due to the limitations of time and space, the study cannot entirely avoid the shortcomings The study only concentrates on the experiential meaning of the verbal text and the visual images Firstly, the research only investigated the experiential meaning of the verbal text through the main clauses in the comic story applied the framework theory of Halliday (2004) for the work Secondly, the analysis of the visual images was just focused on the main processes Lastly, this study does not focus on the relationship between the verbal text and the visual language when we study the experientail meaning in the comic story Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Therefore, it does not certainly cover the other meanings in the comic 5.4 Suggestions for further research It is recommended that further research be undertaken in the following 78 areas Further reseach should therefore concentrates on the investigation of the experiential meaning of the verbal text in the subordinate clauses from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs comic An investigation into the relationship of the experiential meaning between the verbal text and the visual images need conducting Moreover, an examination of the ideational meaning in the comic should be carried out 79 REFERENCES Halliday, M.A.K (2004) An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed.) 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