film discourse interpretation janina wildfeuer bremen institute for transmedial textuality research...
TRANSCRIPT
Film Discourse Interpretation
Janina Wildfeuer
Bremen Institute for Transmedial Textuality Research
Faculty of Linguistics and Literary ScienceBremen University
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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?
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„Understanding film…“
• analysis of the semantic content
• analysis of the dynamic unfolding text/discourse
• analysis of information processingguided
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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)
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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.
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Discourse Mechanisms for Language
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Film Discourse Interpretation
1. step:
Interpreting Narrative Events of the Filmic Discourse
level of identification and arrangement of the meaning-making entities
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1. Step: Interpreting Narrative Events
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1. Step: Interpreting Narrative Events
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Film Discourse Interpretation
2. step:
Inferring Discourse Relations between the Events
level of coherence and structure
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Logic of Film Discourse Interpretation(Wildfeuer 2013)
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Discourse Relations in Film
temporal sequence
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Discourse Relations in Film
causality
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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
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2
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What for…?
• work out how filmic material constructs meaning
• work out clear textual cues within the artefact
= semantic basis
further interpretations
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What for…?
• work out how filmic material constructs meaning
• work out clear textual cues within the artefact
= semantic basis
interpretations
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Example: El Vendedor de Humo(Maestro, 2012)
available online: http://vimeo.com/42329392
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El Vendedor de Humo
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El Vendedor de Humo
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El Vendedor de Humo
𝒆𝝅𝟏=𝒇𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒐𝒘𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒆𝝅𝟐
=𝒃𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒈𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒆𝒍𝒔𝒆
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El Vendedor de Humo
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Causality in Film
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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
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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“
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Thank you very much for your attention!
[email protected] || www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/bitt || http://extra.neous.de