Film Discourse Interpretation

Janina Wildfeuer

Bremen Institute for Transmedial Textuality Research

Faculty of Linguistics and Literary ScienceBremen University

2

What is it about?

How do we understand films?

How do we construct meanings out of the interplay of the various modalities in filmic text?

3

„Understanding film…“

• analysis of the semantic content

• analysis of the dynamic unfolding text/discourse

• analysis of information processingguided

4

Filmic Meaning Construction

"Understanding is mediated by transformative acts, both "bottom-up" – mandatory, automatic psychological processes - and "top-down" – conceptual, strategic ones. The sensory data of the film at hand furnish the materials out of which inferential processes of perception and cognition build meanings. Meaning are not found but made. […]

Comprehension and interpretation thus involve the construction of meaning out of textual cues. In this respect, meaning-making is a psychological and social activity fundamentally akin to other cognitive processes.”

(Bordwell 1989: 3)

5

Inferential View on Text/Discourse

How do we understand what is going on in sentences and texts?

– We just work out ‘what is going on’...(traditional pragmatics)

– We ask for clear textual cues that provide explicit guidance about how interpretation is to proceed.

6

Discourse Mechanisms for Language

7

Linguistic Examples of Discourse Relations

Paul arrived. Max greeted him.

– If we add b into a discourse interpretation then we might deduce that b adds to a narrative

– If Narration (a, b) then a happens before b

temporal sequence:Narration

event a event b

8

Linguistic Examples of Discourse Relations

Max fell. Paul pushed him.

- If we are adding b into a discourse interpretation and b causes a then we might deduce that b is an explanation of a

causal relation:Explanationevent a event b

9

What kind of structure is text structure?

• discursive, not syntactic

• defeasible/ abductive (Peirce) / non-monotonic

Formal and functional models of discourse semantics Kamp, Asher & Lascarides, Martin, Polanyi, Webber

10

Theory of Film Comprehension

THEORIE DES FILMVERSTEHENSLOGIC OF FILM DISCOURSE

INTERPRETATION

1. level of identification and arrangement of the meaning-making entities

2. level of coherence and structure

1. logic

2. logic

constructing logical forms of discourse

relating the logical forms via discourse relations

Wildfeuer 2013

11

2 Steps of Film Discourse Interpretation

1. ask for the multimodal construction of narrative events in the film: intersemiosis of the various resources

2. ask for the combination of these events into a coherent structure via inferring discourse relations

12

Film Discourse Interpretation

1. step:

Interpreting Narrative Events of the Filmic Discourse

level of identification and arrangement of the meaning-making entities

13

1. Step: Interpreting Narrative Events

14

1. Step: Interpreting Narrative Events

15

Film Discourse Interpretation

2. step:

Inferring Discourse Relations between the Events

level of coherence and structure

16

Logic of Film Discourse Interpretation(Wildfeuer 2013)

17

Discourse Relations in Film

temporal sequence

18

Discourse Relations in Film

causality

19

2 Steps of Film Discourse Interpretation

1. ask for the multimodal construction of narrative events in the film: intersemiosis of the various resources

2. ask for the combination of these events into a coherent structure via inferring discourse relations

1

2

20

What for…?

• work out how filmic material constructs meaning

• work out clear textual cues within the artefact

= semantic basis

further interpretations

21

What for…?

• work out how filmic material constructs meaning

• work out clear textual cues within the artefact

= semantic basis

interpretations

22

Example: El Vendedor de Humo(Maestro, 2012)

available online: http://vimeo.com/42329392

23

El Vendedor de Humo

24

El Vendedor de Humo

25

El Vendedor de Humo

𝒆𝝅𝟏=𝒇𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒐𝒘𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒆𝝅𝟐

=𝒃𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒆𝒍𝒔𝒆

26

El Vendedor de Humo

27

Causality in Film

28

What for…?

• analysis of the propositional/semantic content

• analysis of topics in the text

• evaluation of topics

• questions of genre, style, aesthetics etc.?

analysis

interpretation

29

What for…?

Website German Film Academy, „Classic Movies in School“ | http://www.deutsche-filmakademie.de/no_cache/herzlich-willkommen/aktuelles/meldung.html?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=279&cHash=0594f5ed6d2c84f69fc632cbcb682811 |

„Watching classical movies – understanding film“

30

Thank you very much for your attention!

wildfeuer@uni-bremen.de || www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/bitt || http://extra.neous.de