New development of visual grammar : a framework for visual narrative analysis based on picture books

Abstract

由Clare Painter,Jim Martin,Len Unsworth三位著名系统功能语言学者历时十年完成的力作《解读视觉叙事:儿童图画书的图像分析》是自Kress&van Leeuwen(1996)的奠基之作以来对视觉图像分析理论最显著的发展。在Kress&van Leeuwen(1996)单个图像分析框架基础上,该书提出了系统分析由多个图像组成的视觉叙事的元功能框架。该书细致的系统建构对我们进一步理解视觉语法,更加系统地分析图画书、漫画、电视广告、电影等复杂多模态叙事语篇具有重要意义。本文将简要介绍该书中的视觉叙事分析框架并结合相关理论与漫画实例分析阐释其在多模态语篇分析中的应用。 Reading Visual Narratives: Image Analysis of Children’s Picture Books,co-authored by Clare Painter,Jim Martin,and Len Unsworth,represents the most significant advance in image analysis since the foundational work of Kress & van Leeuwen(1996).Based on Kress & van Leeuwen’s(1996) framework for analyzing individual pictures,this book provides a metafunctional framework for analyzing visual narratives composed of a series of pictures.The detailed system networks can help us to further understand visual semiosis,and are significant for the more systematic analysis of complex multimodal discourses such as picture books,comics,TV commercials,and films.This paper provides a succinct introduction to the analytical frameworks in this book,and elucidates how they can be used in multimodal analysis by providing comics analysis examples.