A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Romantic Meaning Construction in Elemental (2023) Movie
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33005/ijl.v3i1.81Keywords:
Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Elemental, Romantic Meaning, Semiotic ModesAbstract
Background: Modern animated movies no longer serve solely as entertainment, but as complex multimodal texts that construct emotional meaning. The movie Elemental (2023) presents a unique romantic story between two opposing elements, fire and water, which represent love, difference, and acceptance. However, most previous studies still use a monomodal approach that focuses only on dialogue, thus failing to reveal the depth of romantic meaning constructed through a combination of various semiotic modes. Objective: This study aims to explain how romantic meaning is constructed through the interaction of verbal, visual, audio, and gestural modes in the movie Elemental (2023) and to enrich the study of Multimodal Discourse Analysis (MDA) in animated movies. Methods: This study uses a qualitative descriptive design with a Multimodal Discourse Analysis approach based on Kress and van Leeuwen's social semiotics framework and Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics. The data consists of selected scenes that represent the development of the romantic relationship between the characters Ember and Wade. Results: The results show that romantic meaning in Elemental movie is constructed gradually through the collaboration of four semiotic modes. The visual and audio modes play a dominant role in expressing emotions, while the verbal and gestural modes reinforce the characters' interpersonal closeness and inner conflicts. Conclusion: This study concludes that romantic meaning in animated movies is constructed holistically through complementary multimodal interactions. These findings contribute to the development of MDA studies in animated movies and open up opportunities for further research related to audience reception analysis and cross-cultural comparisons.
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