Hallidayan systemic-functional semiotics and the analysis of the moving audiovisual image

Abstract

AbstractAlthough linguistically inflected semiotic approaches to film were pursued in the 1960s and 1970s, they have since been almost universally rejected within film studies and film theory even though film is precisely the kind of intentionally produced communicative artifact for which one would have expected semiotics to have much to offer. Traditionally, forms of semiotics modeled on linguistics have offered some of the most finely articulated accounts available but, so far, this has not been shown convincingly for film. This paper argues that the semiotics of the 1960s and 1970s was just too undeveloped to deal with entities as complex as film. In contrast, the multidimensional account of verbal semiotic systems articulated within Hallidayan systemic-functional semiotics over the past forty years is now dissolving many of the original problems and provides renewed impetus for the semiotic analysis of film, reinstating much expanded notions of