A study of cartoon trailers in english from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis

THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG
UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

PHAN THỊ KIM HOA

A STUDY OF CARTOON TRAILERS IN ENGLISH
FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF
MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
Major: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS
Code: 822.02.01

MASTER THESIS IN
LINGUISTICS AND CULTURAL STUDIES OF FOREIGN
COUNTRIES

Da Nang, 2020


THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG
UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

PHAN THỊ KIM HOA

A STUDY OF CARTOON TRAILERS IN ENGLISH
FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF
MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Major: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS
Code: 822. 02. 01

MASTER THESIS IN

LINGUISTICS AND CULTURAL STUDIES OF FOREIGN
COUNTRIES

SUPERVISOR: TRẦN VĂN PHƯỚC, Assoc. Prof

Da Nang, 2020



ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Upon the completion of this thesis, I would like to express my heart-felt
gratitude to my supervisor, Associate Professor Tran Van Phuoc for spending much
time going through my thesis. I highly appreciate the invaluable advice and feedbacks
as well as patient instructions which greatly helped to improve the thesis over the past
few months.
I would also like to thank my family for providing me constant encouragement
and support in this academic journey.


iii

ABSTRACT
In this thesis, the researcher proposed a model for the multimodal discourse
analysis of cartoon trailers in terms of verbal and visual resources. In particular, the
researcher analyzed the elements constructing the meaning of image and classified
the process type of all the utterances, then reached to the final conclusion. Three
cartoon trailers were analyzed for a case study with the aim to explore how the
semantic features and visual images within a trailer interacted with each other in the

process of meaning creation.
To carry out the study, theoretical background about MDA was briefly reviewed
in terms of visual grammar, transitivity process and narrative structure. Then the
images were analyzed in term of participants, process and circumstance. Relating to
verbal modes, all the utterances were transcribed and classified into process types.
Finally, due to the purpose of each shot, it was identified according to narrative
structure. From the analysis above, a conclusion might be drawn that the final
meaning of each shot was a combination of all modalities such as images, sound,
music, and spoken language.
The research is of great significance in theory and practice aspects. Firstly, it
goes beyond the traditional field of verbal analysis; hence, opens a new dimension
for the multimodal discourse analysis of cartoon trailers. Secondly, through
demonstrating how the spoken language and visual modalities are realized, it testifies
the strong applicability and practicality of Grammar of Visual Design in analyzing
cartoon trailers. Lastly, the proposed model may benefit the image producers and help
them make good use of choice-making of visual elements to accomplish the best
visual design.
Key words: multimodal discourse analysis; Grammar of Visual Design;
cartoon trailers


iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Statement of Authorship……………………………………………………...i
Acknowledgements .......................................................................................... ii
Abstract .......................................................................................................... iiii
Table Of Contents .......................................................................................... iv
List Of Tables ................................................................................................. vii
Abbreviations ................................................................................................. vii
Chapter One. INTRODUCTION ....................................................................1

1.1. RATIONALE .........................................................................................1
1.2. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES ..................................................................2
1.2.1. Aims .................................................................................................2
1.2.2. Objectives ........................................................................................3
1.3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS ..................................................................3
1.4. SCOPE OF THE STUDY .....................................................................3
1.5. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY .....................................................3
Chapter Two. LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL
BACKGROUND ...............................................................................................5
2.1. LITERATURE REVIEW .....................................................................5
2.2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND .....................................................7
2.2.1. Definition of terms ..........................................................................7
2.2.2. Labov (1967)’s model of narrative structure ...............................8
2.2.3. Halliday (1985)’s Transitivity System ........................................10
2.2.4. The Grammar of Visual Design of Kress and van Leeuwen
(1996) ................................................................................................................16
2.2.5. Multimodal Discourse Analysis...................................................19
2.3. SUMMARY ..........................................................................................21
Chapter Three. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ......................................22
3.1. RESEARCH DESIGN ........................................................................22
3.2. DATA COLLECTION METHODS ..................................................22
3.2.1 Sources ............................................................................................22
3.2.2. Sampling ........................................................................................23


v
3.2.3. Data Collection Procedure ...........................................................24
3.3 DATA ANALYSIS METHODS ..........................................................25
3.4. ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK BASED ON MDA ADOPTED ...26
3.5. SUMMARY ..........................................................................................26

Chapter Four. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS .......................................28
4.1. ANALYSIS OF TRAILER “FINDING NEMO” .............................28
4.1.1. Introduction of “Finding nemo” trailer .....................................28
4.1.2. Analysis of trailer “Finding Nemo” ............................................29
4.1.3. Discussion ......................................................................................45
4.2. ANALYSIS OF TRAILER “Up” .......................................................46
4.2.1. Introduction of “Up” trailer ........................................................46
4.2.2. Analysis of trailer “Up” ...............................................................48
4.2.3. Discussion ......................................................................................67
4.3. ANALYSIS OF TRAILER “Small foot” ..........................................68
4.3.1. Introduction of “Small foot” trailer ...........................................68
4.3.2. Analysis of trailer “Small foot” ...................................................69
4.3.3 Discussion .......................................................................................85
4.4. SUMMARY ..........................................................................................86
Chapter Five. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ...........................89
5.1. CONCLUSIONS ..................................................................................89
5.2. IMPLICATIONS .................................................................................92
5.3. LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY .....................................................95
5.4. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCHES ........................95
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................97
QUYẾT ĐỊNH GIAO ĐỀ TÀI (bản sao)


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LIST OF TABLES
Number

Name of Table

Page

2.1

Table of Attributive clauses

13

2.2

Table of Identifying clauses

13

3.1

Total resources in three trailers

23

3.2

Analytical framework based on MDA adopted

25

4.1

The summary of verbal resources analyzing in trailer 1

30

4.2

The summary of visual resources analyzing in trailer 1

31

4.3

The summary of process types in trailer 1

44

4.4

The summary of verbal resources analyzing in trailer 2

49

4.5

The summary of visual resources analyzing in trailer 2

49

4.6

The summary of process types in trailer 2

66

4.7

The summary of verbal resources analyzing in trailer 3

70

4.8

The summary of visual resources analyzing in trailer 3

71

4.9

The summary of process types in trailer 3

85

4.10

The result of narrative structure identification of three

86

trailers
4.11

The result of utterances classification in three trailers

87

4.12

The summary of verbal and visual resources into

88

processes
5.1

The summary of elements and their structure in three

89

trailers
5.2

The summary of process types in detail of three trailers

91


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ABBREVIATIONS
SFL

Systemic Functional Linguistics

MDA

Multimodal Discourse Analysis


Chapter One
INTRODUCTION
This first chapter is elaborated from five aspects, namely the rationale of the
study, the aims and objectives, the scope and the significance of the whole study.
Primarily, in this chapter, the research questions are set out to work as the guidelines
for the whole research.

1.1. RATIONALE
It goes without saying that cartoons are one of the essential parts of every
childhood. They are, certainly, the most popular form of entertainment for children,
but also much more than that.
Practically, the growth of main stream animation has changed the landscape of
entertainment. There are hundreds upon hundreds of cartoons being released each
year, so there is always a question that how to create a buzz for a film before it
launches. That is the reason why they need a lot of advertising campaigns using all
means of mass media. And trailers, therefore, are considered the most important
marketing and publicity tool in the film industry as well as a key feature to the movie
going experience. The following image is an example of cartoon trailer.

Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs (1937) trailer
The

first,

and

by

far

most

memorable full-length animated feature
from the Disney Studios, "Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs" made history
when it was first released in December,
1937 and since then has become an
incomparable screen classic.


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It is difficult to assess precisely what effects cartoons and cartoon trailers might
hold. Still, the images in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) trailer tug the
viewer’s attention even when the film is seen once and in isolation.
Theoretically, the purpose of the movie trailers in general and cartoon trailers in
particular is to tease the audiences into wanting to see the film by creating suspense
and not revealing the main plot. Therefore, in two and a half minutes, a trailer has to
convey enough information about the movie to convince the audiences. It stands to
reason that they will become curious as to know what would happen in the end. It
will then push them to go to the cinema once the film is released to watch the full
movie. As a matter of fact, one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words and a good
trailer is itself a mini-story designed to sell the much bigger story of a movie.

Over the year, trailers have been seen as worthy of study. I hold opinion that
analyzing popular trailers will help us understand the linguistic features of verbal and
visual resources used in each trailer.
For the above reasons, I chose to do research on the topic “A study of cartoon
trailers in English from the perspective of multimodal discourse analysis.” Through
the working of modalities in cartoon trailers, the study is an attempt to contribute to
film appreciation by raising awareness on how the animated movie works internally
and serves to enhance our experience and enjoyment of films. It may also help us
better understand the film we watch and how they are related to society and cultural
in general.

1.2. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
1.2.1. Aims
The primary aim of the study is to understand the linguistic features of verbal
and visual resources of cartoon trailers as well as find out how they work together to
convey the meaning of the story to the viewer.


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1.2.2. Objectives
The aim is formulated as a set of objectives, as follows:
- to analyze the elements in a cartoon trailer.
- to find out how their meaning are construed to attract viewers.
- to suggest some implications on advertising as well as on teaching and
learning English of Vietnamese learners.

1.3. RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1. How are the elements of cartoon trailers structured?
2. How are meanings expressed through visual and verbal resources in cartoon

trailers?

1.4. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
As the study of multimodal discourse is interdisciplinary that involves a variety
of linguistics, semiotics, media studies, etc., it requires researchers to make a deep
study on how the meanings are made in a multimodal way. Modalities in cartoon
trailers involve the use of dynamic co-occurring moving images, written and verbal
linguistic text and music. However, due to the limitation of time and knowledge, the
researcher did not target at all aspects of cartoon trailers such as grammatical features,
phonetics features, pragmatic features and music analysis as well. In this thesis, the
researcher proposed a model for the multimodal discourse analysis of cartoon trailers
in terms of verbal and visual resources. In particular, the researcher analyzed the
elements constructing the meaning of image and classified the process type of all the
utterances, then reached to the final conclusion. Three cartoon trailers were analyzed
for a case study with the aim to explore how the semantic features and visual images
within a trailer interacted with each other in the process of meaning creation.

1.5. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
Through this thesis, the researcher attempts to dedicate more to the development


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of the multimodal discourse analysis by taking cartoon trailers as database. Applying
an integrated multimodal approach to analyze a trailer enhances our understanding of
how a trailer works through the different modalities to realize meanings in the final
product and how the overall meaning can provoke response in the audience viewing
the film. It is hoped that the findings of the research can not only contribute to enrich
the theory of multimodal discourse analysis but also benefit the trailer film producers
and help them make good use of choice-making of modalities as well as the

arrangement of visual elements to accomplish perfect visual design. Finally, this
study would help teachers, learners and advertisers to have a better understanding of
cartoon trailers.


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Chapter Two
LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
In this chapter, I present a brief review of some previous researches on
multimodal discourse analysis and the discourse analysis of cartoon trailer, then
explicate the theoretical foundations of this research as well as some definition of
terms. This chapter is arranged as follows: 2.1 Literature Review, 2.2 Theoretical
Background.

2.1. LITERATURE REVIEW
Scholars and researchers both in Vietnam and abroad have done researches on
multimodal discourse from different aspects.
O’ Halloran (2005) paid attention to a more nuanced definition of the term
multimodality and distinguishes the term from multi-semiotic. According to O’
Halloran, the term ‘mode’ was used to refer to the channel (auditory, visual or tactile,
for example) through which semiotic activity takes place, the term ‘multi-semiotic’
was used for texts constructed from more than one semiotic resource and
‘multimodality’ was used for discourse involving more than one mode of semiotic.
Later, O’Halloran (2008) pointed out the corresponding system of expression of
words and images based on the analytical framework of System Functional
Linguistics.
Ye (2006) made an attempt to interpret multimodality of hypertext on the basic
of people’s website. He made an analysis of a social semiotic account of multimodal
texts, the visual space, states of affairs and the social relation of the viewers as well

as the images.
Regarding the topic of trailers in language studies and those of discourse
analysis, there are some practical studies related to the analysis of trailers have been
carried out in Vietnam. Nguyen Thi Hong Ha (2011) made an investigation into
structure of movie trailers and linguistic features of advertising language of American


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and Vietnamese movie trailers in terms of their grammatical features such as tense,
mood and voice, lexical features such as the use of word layers, the use of first and
second person addressing terms. This study investigated 50 movie trailers, 25
American and 25 Vietnamese, mainly on the Internet. However, she did not mention
the role of image in those trailers in her study.
Next, Zhao (2016) made a multimodal discourse analysis of movie posters. In
his study, he adopted Visual Grammar by Kress and van Leeuwen to give a detail
explanation to the two poster “Maid in Manhattan” in English and “Lust and Caution”
in Chinese. Two movie posters were analyzed from the three meta-functions, namely
the representational meaning, the interactive meaning and the compositional
meaning. The result of his study was a good illustration of adopting Visual Grammar
in analyzing images, which was a useful knowledge in this research.
Another study conducted by Pham Thi Thanh Nga (2016) showed the discourse
features in American cartoon trailer in terms of the layout of narration of trailers and
some other lexical choices, syntactic features as well as cohesive devices. The
researcher used 83 American cartoon trailers from the Internet in the period of 20102015 for the corpus. The limitation of this study is that it has not mentioned the role
of sound and images in those trailers.
Then, Dai (2017) discussed the relationship between language, image, motion,
posture, sound and other modalities. He made a multimodal discourse analysis of the
movie Argo clip (3 minutes 30 seconds) from the perspective of context of culture,
context of situation and image meaning. Results showed that the clip constructed

multimodal discourse through specific context (namely context of culture and context
of situation), language, image, and consequently, advocated western mainstream
ideology successfully. The paper applied multimodal discourse analysis to feature
and horror movie, which expanded the research field of multimodal discourse
analysis, testified the feasibility and operability of applying multimodal discourse
analysis to feature and horror movie. At the same time, the paper integrated discourse,


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movie and television media which also developed interface research field of
linguistics, movie and television media. Hence, it provided a new research
perspective for discourse analysis of movie and television media.
In conclusion, these researchers have not mentioned other issues of trailers such
as music, sound, images, etc.; but only discourse structure and linguistic features of
movie trailers and cartoon trailers. That is the reason why I chose to do a research on
“A study of cartoon trailers in English from the perspective of multimodal discourse
analysis’”.

2.2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.2.1. DEFINITION OF TERMS
Concept of “Multimodality”
The term ‘Multimodality’ first appeared in Handbook of Visual Analysis by van
Leeuwen and Jewitt in 2000. This term is introduced to highlight the significance of
taking all semiotic resources into consideration, such as language, color, image and
sound. As complex social and cultural discourse practices are gaining popularity in
the semiotic landscape, language is losing its position as the dominant meaning
making method.
Concept of “Cartoon”
Cartoon in Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 8th is defined as a film/movie

made by photographing a series of gradually changing drawings or models, so that
they look as if they are moving. In this thesis, cartoon is viewed as a film or movie
for cinema, television or computer screen. It is made by playing a series of gradually
changing drawings or models in a quick succession, so that they look as if they are
moving.
Concept of “Trailer”
Katz (1980, p.1145) regards a trailer as “… a short publicity film, shown as
part of a regular program at a theater, advertising the merits of a forthcoming motion


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picture…the trailer consists of highlight scenes appropriately cut to create an
impression of excitement…”. He claims that trailers or previews of coming attractions
are both praised and reviled by film scholars and moviegoers. Kernan (2004) also
confirms that trailers are not only a form of advertising but also a unique form of
narrative film exhibition, wherein promotional discourse and narrative pleasure are
conjoined. She argues that in trailers, images are selected and combined in ways that
privilege attracting the spectator’s attention over sustaining narrative coherence.
Following the concepts mentioned above, I consider that a trailer is a short publicity
film, shown as part of a regular program at a theater, advertising the merits of a
forthcoming motion picture to attract the audiences’ attention. A trailer usually
consists of two main parts which are images and narration. Trailers often circulate
online on websites for the film and the studio, in trailer archives, on YouTube, and
on media-centered “magazine” websites.

2.2.2. Labov (1967)’s model of narrative structure
Labov (1967) introduces a model of narrative analysis that differs from some of
the earlier approaches. In his model, Labov focuses on oral narrative instead of
written text whereas other linguists in the earlier time believed in a structural

approach. This means that language had to be approached as a fixed, clearly defined
set of symbols, which furthermore had to be studied in isolation.
Labov (1967)’s model of narrative analysis is based on his belief that “one
cannot understand the development of a language change apart from the social life
of the community in which it occurs”. He feels that observing and recording sound
changes is not enough to understand the process of change. Hence, researcher has to
view that change within the context of the community in which it is being made, as it
is being made. Labov introduces and explains what he sees as the six main parts of a
narrative structure. He discusses each part as a tool which we can use to analyze
narrative patterns, to help recognize recurring themes and ideas. The six main parts
of Labov’s model include abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation,


9

resolution, and coda. However, it is not necessary to have all six parts presented in
every narrative, for example, some narratives will not have an abstract, while others
may not have a coda. Additionally, these components no need to be appeared in a
specific order, and each may be presented in a variety of ways.
- The term “abstract” is used to refer to the introductory part of the narrative.
Literally, an “abstract,” is a brief summary of the events; or it may be simply a line
or two that will spark the reader’s interest. The abstract attracts the listener’s interest,
and to get the listener to want to hear the rest of the story.
- The next part is “orientation.”. In this stage, audiences are given information
about the setting of the story. For example, the people or the characters in the story
will be introduced and described as well as the setting (the place the action occurs)
and the time. For the story to be valid and understandable, it is essential that audiences
should be informed of the time and place in which the narrative unfolds.
- Following orientation is the stage called “complicating action.” This stage
describes the actual events of the narrative, the occurrences that move it ahead.

Complicating actions may also be physical actions, statements spoken aloud, or
thought acts.
- Next, “evaluation” refers to the point, or reason that the narrative is being told,
and it can be done in several ways. In other way, “Evaluations” may be specifically
and clearly stated, or they may be implied. “Internal” evaluations are those revealed
while the story is taking place, while “external” evaluations take place outside the
immediate action of the story.
- Following this is a part that Labov calls the “result” or “resolution”. Basically,
“Result” is the conclusion which indicates that the story has come to a close or a final
action has occurred.
- Finally, there may be a “coda.” in the story. Labov means that “Coda” is a
point in which the narrator points out the relevance of the story by connecting it with
every-day life, or with other events or actions that fall outside the story frame. The


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coda does not always have to be present in every narrative.
In general, Labov’s model has strongly influenced language studies since its
first introduction, and it continues to be influential in additional settings. Nowadays,
with the widespread growth of the internet, we now have a new and informal sort of
communication. However, Labov’s model is still a useful tool in the analysis of
internet writing which is often less formal than academic or other types of writing,
but more structured than spoken language. Thus, Labov’s model remains effective
today as language itself continues to grow and change. It is quite probable that
Labov’s model will grow to accommodate that change, and to continue to be a useful
tool in the future.

2.2.3. Halliday (1985)’s Transitivity System
One of the Systemic Functional Linguistics’ aspects is the analysis of clauses in

term of process types. Process type analysis was first described in Halliday (1976),
with an attempt to develop the kind of grammar that could support teachers in
teaching language. A fuller description was given in Introduction to Functional
Grammar (Halliday 1985, henceforth IFG) and its two later editions: Halliday (1994)
and Halliday and Matthiessen (2004).
According to Halliday (1985), there are 3 main functions of language which can
be used to explain the structure of language. They are ideational, interpersonal and
textual. First, the ideational function is the mean to express our experience of the real
word of our inner world. One aspect of this function at the level of clause is the
transitivity system. It is a selection among the six processes that can be represented
in a sentence:
-

A material process

-

A mental process

-

A relational process

-

A verbal process

-

A behavioral process

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-

An existential process

Related to the choice of process is the choice of participant (person or thing involved)
or the choice of circumstance (time, place, manner...)
Second, the interpersonal function is the mean whereby we achieve communication
by taking on speech roles. These roles adopted and imposed on the receiver by the
speaker. This function is reflected in the system of “mood”. In addition, we may use
language to express our attitude toward what we are saying. This function is reflected
in the system of modality which included in the interpersonal function. Last, textual
function is the function of creating texts or connected pieces of discourse that cohere
internally or which are situationally relevant as opposed to a random set of sentences.
In conclusion, these three meta-functions can be summarized as follows:
-

The ideational function is to organize the speaker’s or writer’s experience
of the real or imaginary world.

-

The interpersonal function is to indicate, establish or maintain social
relationship. It consists of forms of address, speech function, modality and
so on.

-

The textual function is to create written or spoken texts which coheres
within themselves and fit the particular situation.

In this thesis, the researcher only focused on exploring the ideational meaning
in visual and verbal modes constructed from the cartoon trailers.
According to the theory, there are three components of what Halliday calls a
“transitivity process”: the process itself, the participants in the process and
circumstances. Then, Halliday (1985) divides into six processes, namely: material,
mental, relational, behavioral, verbal and existential.
Participants
It is considered as a doer of the action or the people, ideas, things that
participated in the processes. The participants carry out the processes under


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circumstances and they are realized by the nominal groups. There are 14 types of
participants in realizing the ideational meaning including Actor and Goal in material
process, Behaver in behavioral process; Senser and Phenomenon in mental process,
Sayer and Target in verbal process; Token, Value, Carrier, Attribute, Identifier and
Identified in relational process and Existent in existential process.
Processes
A. Material process:
Material process is a “doing” or “happening” process in which it expresses the
notion that some entity does something. There are two participants namely actor and
goal in this process. For example:
The man

opened

the door

Actor

process

goal

B. Mental process:
- Perception: seeing, smelling…
- Affection: liking, fearing…
- Cognition: thinking, knowing….
Mental process is a process of sensing in which there are two participants,
namely: senser and phenomenon - the conscious being like feeling, thinking, and
which is ‘sensed’ like feel, thought. For example:
She

knows

the answer

Senser

Process: cognition

phenomenon

C. Relational process:
There are three types of relational process in the clause:

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- Intensive ‘X is A’ (relationship of resemblance between two entities)
- Circumstantial ‘X is at A’ (location, time or manner of the entity)
- Possessive ‘X has A’ (one entity owns another)
Each of these comes in two modes: attributive and identifying.
-Attributive means A is an attribute of X ( A: attribute / X: carrier)
-Identifying means A is the identity of X (A: identified / X: identifier)
For example:
Table 2.1. Table of attributive clauses
Attribute of
Intensive

they

look / are

beautiful

The trip

is

on Sunday

He

has

two bicycles

Carrier

Process

Attribute

-quality
Circumstantial
-circumstance
Possessive
-possession

Table 2.2. Table of Identifying clauses
Identification by
Intensive
-token-value

Mr Pike

is

a teacher.


14

Circumstantial

Today

is

He

owns

Identified

process

Sunday.

-circumstance
Possessive

an expensive car.

-possession
identifier

D. Behavioral process
Behavioral process is considered to stand between material and mental
processes. As a rule of thumb, a behavioral process verb is:
- Intransitive (only one participant in the sentence)
- Indicates an activity in which both the physical and mental aspects are
inseparable and indispensable to it.
In this process, there is only one participant (behaver -the agent who behaves.

For example:
She

neither laughs nor smiles at that funny video

Behaver

process

E. Verbal process
Verbal process is the action of “saying”. The participants include sayer
(participant who speaks), receiver (the one to whom the verbalization is addressed),
verbiage (a name for the verbalization itself).
However, other type of verbal process is the one in which the sayer is in sense
acting verbally on another direct participant, with verbs such as: insult, praise,
slander, abuse, and flatter. This other participant will be referred as the target.


15

For example:
I

told

him

a story

sayer

Process:

receiver

verbiage

verbal

I

always praise

him

to my friend

sayer

Process:

Target

recipient

verbal
F. Existential process
Existential process indicates that something exists or happens. These clauses
have the verb be, or some other verbs which express existence, such as exist, arise.
The Existent is a thing which exists in the process. It may be a phenomenon of any

kind, and is often, in fact, an event.
For example:
There

is

a party

Process

Existent : event

Circumstance
Circumstances are the conditions in which processes are occurring and mainly
answer questions such as where, when, why, how, how many and as what. The types
of circumstance are time, place, manner, cause, accompaniment, matter and role.
This thesis adopted Transitivity System Theory of Halliday (1985) to classify
verbal resources into processes.


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2.2.4. The Grammar of Visual Design of Kress and van Leeuwen
(1996)
Multimodal discourse analysis thriving in the 90s of the last century helps to
solve the problem to most degree, for which Systemic Functional Grammar founded
by Halliday (1973) is well suited to provide theoretical tools. Derived from SystemicFunctional Grammar, Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) propose a systemic and
comprehensive framework for visual analysis in “Reading Images”. Then,
polynomial discourse analysis began to develop from the work of Kress and van
Leeuwen (1996) called "Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design". With this

work, Kress and van Leeuwen build the foundation for visual learning signals, which
provides the theoretical framework and methods to analyze image signals. It is clear
that the polynomial discourse analysis of Kress and van Leeuwen is built on the
framework of the theoretical framework of Systematic Linguistics of M.A.K.
Halliday.
In the theory of systematic functional linguistics by M.A.K Halliday (1998), it
considers functional language and language as a system. Language is considered a
development system with human culture and society; therefore, it plays a central role
in the evolution and implementation of social functions. It can be said that language
is a system of choices, not rules. In his theory, Halliday believes that language is a
potential force of meaning. He assumes the function and uses the owl as a base unit
to explain language functions. The system of choices is based on the premise that
each grammatical structure involved in a choice, which is derived from a set of
descriptive abilities, so the language is considered as a source of meaning. Halliday's
grammar systems have played a significant role in interpreting different meanings.
According to Halliday, the functional organization of language determines form as
well as grammar rules and language is a communication tool to perform three
functions namely as ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function.
These three different types of meanings coexist and interact with each other in any