Linguosemiotic Analysis of Multimodal Discourse: New Approaches and Research Perspectives

Abstract

Abstract. The article focuses on the main approaches to the analysis of multimodal discourse. The relevance of the study is due to the importance of visual communication in the modern information society given the world-modeling properties of multimodal discourse in the creation of identities, values, in signification and constructing the reality outside the discourse. The purpose of the article is to interpret the most promising models of analysis of visual semiotics in view of the need for the integrative methodology of its research. Research methods employed by the paper include analysis, systematization, introspection, classification. The results of the study explicate the method of visual grammar, developed within the framework of sociosemiotic theory of critical discourse analysis, the concept of levels of signification and mythologizing in institutional discourse, as well as the theory of metafunctions by M. Halliday. The analysis of visual semiotics integrates three research aspects: representational (level of ideas and concepts), which is manifested by dynamic narrative and static conceptual meanings; interactive (the level of relations between the characters of the visual message, its addressee and the addresser), based on the visual codes of expression of contact, distance, attitude and modality; compositional, which focuses on the principles of information value, salience and frame and relies on visual areas, size, tone, color contrast, perspective of images, the way of combining or separating the visual elements. In the perspective of further research, special attention should be paid to the development of methods that would take into account the correlation and isomorphism of pragmatics of the verbal and visual modes - considering that the visual component may flout the cooperative maxims and trigger the discursive implicatures that must either be filled in or eliminated by verbal mode. Visual code can also be associated with the felicity conditions of the speech acts presented by the verbal anchor.