Emotions in Filmtrailers: A Social Semiotic Analysis of Wordings, Intonation and Music

Abstract

The study investigates how the separate and combined resources of wordings, intonation and music are used to construct emotions and shape the interpersonal worlds of characters in six filmtrailers promoting psychological narrative feature films. The study responds to the concerns of educators that much more needs to be known about the interpersonal potential of sound resources in different texts and contexts to meet the demands of contemporary multiliteracies curricula in Australia. The social semiotic study of multimodality is informed by a systemic functional theory of semiosis, which provides for the analysis of meanings made by distinct semiotics in social contexts. A range of analytical methods is used to describe interpersonal semantics within and across narrative phases. An appraisal framework describing evaluative attitudes in English is used as a means of coding the expression of emotions, judgements and appreciations consistently across the wordings, intonation and music of filmtrailer texts. Different types of prosodic realisations are analysed to describe interpersonal motifs created by wordings, intonation and music. The intermodal and intramodal coupling of attitudinal realisations is analysed to describe how wordings, intonation and music contribute in concert to emotional meaning in orchestrations of genre features. The study identified extensive resources used to highlight the emotions, contrasting attitudes and transformed attitudes typical of the genre, to interest global audiences in the feature films. It was found that music and intonation are vital contributors to the expressions of displeasure, disquiet and misery shaping the kinds of emotional situations that are relevant and familiar to audiences. The study extends current approaches to the analysis of multimodality by drawing on complementary theories and descriptions of sound and emotion. It describes the intonation and music resources used to instantiate attitudinal sub/category meanings and their intensification. It explores prosodic realisations relevant to intonation, and exemplifies multimodal construals of emotional tone.