Multirnodal Discourse Analysis Systemic-Functional Perspectives Open Linguistics Series Series Editor Robin Fawcett, Cardiff University The series is 'open' in two related ways. First, it is not confined to works associated with any one school of linguistics. For almost two decades the series has played a significant role in establishing and maintaining the present climate of 'openness' in linguistics, and we intend to maintain this tradition. However, we particularly welcome works which explore the nature and use of language through modelling its potential for use in social contexts, or through a cognitive model of language - or indeed a combination of the two. The series is also 'open' in the sense that it welcomes works that open out 'core' linguistics in various ways: to give a central place to the description of natural texts and the use of corpora; to encompass discourse 'above the sentence'; to relate language to other semiotic systems; to apply linguistics in fields such as education, language pathology and law; and to explore the areas that lie between linguistics and its neighbouring disciplines such as semiotics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and cultural and literary studies. Continuum also publishes a series that offers a forum for primarily functional descriptions of languages or parts of languages — Functional Descriptions of Language. Relations between linguistics and computing are covered in the Communication in Artificial Intelligence series, two series, Advances in Applied Linguistics and Communication in Public Life, publish books in applied linguistics and the series Modern Pragmatics in Theory and Practice publishes both social and cognitive perspectives on the making of meaning in language use. We also publish a range of introductory textbooks on topics in linguistics, semiotics and deaf studies. Recent titles in this series Classroom Discourse Analysis: A Functional Perspective, Frances Christie Construing Experience through Meaning: A Language-based Approach to Cognition, M. A. K. Halliday and Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport through Talk across Cultures, Helen Spencer-Oatey (ed.) Educating Eve: The 'Language Instinct' Debate, Geoffrey Sampson Empirical Linguistics, Geoffrey Sampson Genre and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School, Frances Christie and J. R. Martin (eds) The Intonation Systems of English, Paul Tench Language Policy in Britain and France: The Processes of Policy, Dennis Ager Language Relations across Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence, Michael Fortescue Learning through Language in Early Childhood, Clare Painter Pedagogy and the Shaping of Consciousness: Linguistic and Social Processes, Frances Christie (ed.) Register Analysis: Theory and Practice, Mohsen Ghadessy (ed.) Relations and Functions within and around Language, Peter H. Fries, Michael Cummings, David Lockwood and William Spruiell (eds) Researching Language in Schools and Communities: Functional Linguistic Perspectives, Len Unsworth (ed.) Summary Justice: Judges Address Juries, Paul Robertshaw Syntactic Analysis and Description: A Constructional Approach, David G. Lockwood Thematic Developments in English Texts, Mohsen Ghadessy (ed.) Ways of Saying: Ways of Meaning. Selected Papers of Ruqaiya Hasan. Carmen Cloran, David Butt and Geoffrey Williams (eds) Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: An Introduction to Modern English Lexicology, Howard Jackson and Etienne Zé Amvela Working with Discourse: Meaning beyond the Clause, J. R. Martin and David Rose Multimodal Discourse Analysis Systemic-Functional Perspectives Edited by Kay L. O'Halloran continuum LONDON NEW YORK Continuum The Tower Building 15 East 26th Street 11 York Road New York London SE1 7NX NY 10010 © Kay L. O'Halloran 2004 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 0-8264-7256-7 Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall Contents Introduction 1 Kay L. O'Hallomn Part I Three-dimensional material objects in space 1 Opera Ludentes: the Sydney Opera House at work and play 11 Michael O'Toole 2 Making history in From Colony to Nation: a multimodal analysis of a museum exhibition in Singapore 28 Alfred Pang Kah Meng 3 A semiotic study of Singapore's Orchard Road and Marriott Hotel 55 Safeyaton Alias Part II Electronic media and film 4 Phase and transition, type and instance: patterns in media texts as seen through a multimodal concordancer 83 Anthony P. Baldry 5 Visual semiosis in film 109 Kay L. O'Halloran 6 Multisemiotic mediation in hypertext 131 Arthur Kok Kum Chiew Part III Print media 7 The construal of Ideational meaning in print advertisements 163 Cheong Tin Yuen vi CONTENTS 8 Multimodality in a biology textbook 196 Libo Guo 9 Developing an integrative multi-semiotic model 220 Victor Lim Fei Index 247 This book is dedicated to my mother, Janet O'Halloran This page intentionally left blank Introduction Kay L. O'Halloran Multi-modal Discourse Analysis is a collection of research papers in the field of multimodality. These papers are concerned with developing the theory and practice of the analysis of discourse and sites which make use of multiple semiotic resources; for example, language, visual images, space and archi- tecture. New social semiotic frameworks are presented for the analysis of a range of discourse genres in print media, dynamic and static electronic media and three-dimensional objects in space. The theoretical approach informing these research efforts is Michael Halliday's (1994) systemic- functional theory of language which is extended to other semiotic resources. These frameworks, many of which are inspired by Michael O'Toole's (1994) approach in The Language of Displayed Art, are also used to investigate mean- ing arising from the integrated use of semiotic resources. The research presented here represents the early stages in a shift of focus in linguistic enquiry where language use is no longer theorized as an isolated phenomenon (see, for example, Baldry, 2000; Kress, 2003; Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2001; ledema, 2003; Ventola et al., forthcoming). The analysis and interpretation of language use is contextualized in conjunction with other semiotic resources which are simultaneously used for the con- struction of meaning. For example, in addition to linguistic choices and their typographical instantiation on the printed page,1 multimodal analysis takes into account the functions and meaning of the visual images, together with the meaning arising from the integrated use of the two semiotic resources. To date, the majority of research endeavours in linguistics have tended to concentrate solely on language while ignoring, or at least downplaying, the contributions of other meaning-making resources. This has resulted in rather an impoverished view of functions and meaning of discourse. Language studies are thus undergoing a major shift to account fully for meaning-making practices as evidenced by recent research in multimodality (for example, Baldry, 2000; Callaghan and McDonald, 2002; ledema, 2001; Jewitt, 2002; Martin, forthcoming; Kress, 2000, 2003; Kress et al., 2001: Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2001; Lemke, 1998, 2002, 2003; O'Halloran, 1999a, 2000, 2003a, 2003b; Royce, 2002; Thibault, 2000; Unsworth, 2001; Ventola et al., forthcoming; Zammit and Callow, 1998). Multimodal Discourse Analysis contains an invited paper by Michael