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 : 8.01 Supervisor: Võ Duy Đức. e 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 Chuyên ngành: Ngôn Ngữ Anh Mã số: 8.01 Người hướng dẫn: TS. Võ Duy Đức e 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. e 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 e 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. e iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. iii LIST OF TABLES.
vi LIST OF FIGURES. vii ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS .2 AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY .1 Aim of the study .4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY .5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY .6 ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS .1 Systemic Functional Grammar .2 The Grammar of Visual Design. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION .1 Findings of experiential meaning in the verbal text .2 Findings of experiential meaning in the images.3 Limitations of the study. Suggestions for further research.
79 APPENDICES e vi LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Verbs serving as Process in mental processes .2 Summary of the process types .1 Distribution of circumstances in the verbal text in .2 Distribution of process types in the images in. 53 e vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2. The grammar of experience: types of process in English. Narrative Processes in visual communication.
Unidirectional transactional process. Bidirectional transactional process. Circumstance of Setting. Classificational process -overt taxonomy.
Classificational process -Covert taxonomy. Symbolic Attribute process. Symbolic Attribute process. Frequency of occurrence in the verbal text in Snow white.
Frequency of subtypes of Narrative processes. Non-transactional process [I-140]. Non-transactional process [I-37]. Non-transactional process [I- 66].
Non-transactional process [I-138]. Unidirectional transactional process [I-20]. Unidirectional transactional process [I-209]. Unidirectional transactional process [I-148].
Unidirectional transactional process [I-310]. Bidirectional transactional process [I-29]. Bidirectional transactional process [I-309]. Non-transactional actional process [I-47].
Transactional reactional process [I-166]. Frequency of subtypes of Conceptual processes. Frequency of Circumstances in image in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs comic. Circumstance of Setting [I-31].
Circumstance of Setting [I-71]. Circumstance of Means [I-120]. Circumstance of Means [I-88]. 68 e ix ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS 1.
Abbreviation SFG: Systemic Functional Grammar 2. Conventions I (1-313): All the images in the data for this present research are clearly numbered from 1 to 313 and included in Appendix A. For example, [I- 207] means the image [I-207] as indicated in Appendix A. [ I-207] - Boldface is used to mark the first use of technical terms.
- Italics is used for examples, emphasis, and technical terms. - Underlined words are used to mark the use of what is being illustrated. One day my prince will come and rescuse me! b. Obey me, or I will kill you and your family! => The words ―come, rescue, and kill‖ above are underlined to depict the use of the verbal text in Material processes.1 RATIONALE In the recent decades, comics have been one of the major interesting research subjects which we can use to tell our children about the wonderfully imaginative story through the images and texts; they play an important role in our lives and they show a source of messages in creating the imaginary world for the children and sharing the dominant values of a society.
Throughout reading comics and understanding the meanings of different comics, we actually experience the different cultures and characters around the world. Especially, each comic is usually structured with a happy ending for a good figure and the bad character being punished. Moreover, a comic is a great source of additional material for the children or the people who do not know how to read and write via images. It may help to enhance their creative imagination which is regarded as an essential preparation for our future success.
Thus, comics constitute a significant instrument of entertainment. Colorful images, meaningful contents and the variety of characters make reading generally more congenial and create a profound impression on young generations as well; therefore, they can feel relaxed. Each image of a comic contains many kinds of various meanings when we see and observe it from multimodal perspectives. Jewitt (2007) argued that a multimodal perspective on texts attends to linguistic resources (speech and writing) as a part of a multimodal ensemble in which resources are organized, designed and orchestrated to realize curriculum knowledge and pedagogic relations.
All of these perspectives are important and grow our understanding of the comics. The goal of our perspectives is to demonstrate the varied way one can read, interpret and view a comic. We want to collect the valuable e 2 perspective on many different facets of comic. If we look at the picture and discover the images containing many different meanings, our impressive ability about the pictures is completely different.
Images alone may not show clearly the intended meaning , so texts are a useful means for us to understand the full meaning of the writer‘s message. Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006) present that the common view of the function of images as ‗illustration‘ and ‗explanation‘ would be that the accompanying verbal text explains what is not made clear visually. Thus, each story has a different storyline and different images that the author wants to express a national culture or that nation‘s customs, directing people to life‘s values through our own perception of the world around us, especially children. One of wonderfully comic stories by simple words and vivid image is Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by which children may approach the sense of experience from a multi-modal perspective with ease.
Maybe, they perceive the plot in the experiential sense from a multimodal point of view via identifying the verbal components and visual languages in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs comic. It could be a fact that the verbal text and visual texts can be interpreted in various ways by different people. In the course of my research into comics, I have found that there has not been much experiential meaning study in the comic book Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Therefore, I decided to do the research on the topic ―A study on experiential meaning in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” from multimodal perspective”.2 AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY 1.1 Aim of the study The aim of the study was to investigate the experiential meaning in the verbal texts and the visual images in the comic story ―Snow White and the e 3 Seven Dwarfs‖ from multimodal perspective based on ―Systemic Functional Grammar‖ originated by M.2 Objectives To achieve the stated aim, the objectives of the present study are as follows: - To identify and describe the experiential meaning conveyed in the verbal texts.
- To identify and describe the experiential meaning embodied in the images.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS In order to fulfill the objectives above, the thesis focuses on two research questions as follows: 1. How are the experiential meaning communicated verbally and visually in ―Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs‖ comic? 2. What is the occurrence frequency of process types used in these verbal and visual communications? 1.4 SCOPE OF THE STUDY This study particularly focuses on the only data ―Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” comic served for the work. Moreover, the study is just on the experiential meaning, leaving the other two meanings, the interpersonal and textual, untouched.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY In this paper, the great triumph in applying the two major theories enables us to understand experiential meaning in both texts and images via multimodal perspective from the comic story Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
The study provides the parents of the young with useful knowledge e 4 to help their children build the life basic skills from the imaginary world to the real one around reading and understanding visually clear meanings in images. In addition, the findings of the study about the experiential meaning in text would be a valuable contribution for seeking out meaning of a comic story which is not made clear in images. Hopefully, the study is found to be useful for those who need to do research on experiential meaning as well as those who are interested in studying comics from multimodal perspectives.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE THESIS The thesis consists of five chapters. - Chapter one, Introduction, presents rationale of the study, aim and objectives of the study, research questions, scope of the study, significance of the study, and organization of the thesis.
- Chapter two, Literature review, comprises the review of literature of the established theories, the empirical studies and previous studies related to the research area.