Table Of ContentMultirnodal Discourse Analysis
Systemic-Functional Perspectives
Open Linguistics Series
Series Editor
Robin Fawcett, Cardiff University
The series is 'open' in two related ways. First, it is not confined to works associated with
any one school of linguistics. For almost two decades the series has played a significant
role in establishing and maintaining the present climate of 'openness' in linguistics, and
we intend to maintain this tradition. However, we particularly welcome works which
explore the nature and use of language through modelling its potential for use in social
contexts, or through a cognitive model of language - or indeed a combination of the two.
The series is also 'open' in the sense that it welcomes works that open out 'core'
linguistics in various ways: to give a central place to the description of natural texts and the
use of corpora; to encompass discourse 'above the sentence'; to relate language to other
semiotic systems; to apply linguistics in fields such as education, language pathology and
law; and to explore the areas that lie between linguistics and its neighbouring disciplines
such as semiotics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and cultural and literary studies.
Continuum also publishes a series that offers a forum for primarily functional
descriptions of languages or parts of languages — Functional Descriptions of Language.
Relations between linguistics and computing are covered in the Communication in Artificial
Intelligence series, two series, Advances in Applied Linguistics and Communication in Public Life,
publish books in applied linguistics and the series Modern Pragmatics in Theory and Practice
publishes both social and cognitive perspectives on the making of meaning in language
use. We also publish a range of introductory textbooks on topics in linguistics, semiotics
and deaf studies.
Recent titles in this series
Classroom Discourse Analysis: A Functional Perspective, Frances Christie
Construing Experience through Meaning: A Language-based Approach to Cognition,
M. A. K. Halliday and Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen
Culturally Speaking: Managing Rapport through Talk across Cultures, Helen Spencer-Oatey (ed.)
Educating Eve: The 'Language Instinct' Debate, Geoffrey Sampson
Empirical Linguistics, Geoffrey Sampson
Genre and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School, Frances Christie and
J. R. Martin (eds)
The Intonation Systems of English, Paul Tench
Language Policy in Britain and France: The Processes of Policy, Dennis Ager
Language Relations across Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Evidence,
Michael Fortescue
Learning through Language in Early Childhood, Clare Painter
Pedagogy and the Shaping of Consciousness: Linguistic and Social Processes, Frances Christie (ed.)
Register Analysis: Theory and Practice, Mohsen Ghadessy (ed.)
Relations and Functions within and around Language, Peter H. Fries, Michael Cummings,
David Lockwood and William Spruiell (eds)
Researching Language in Schools and Communities: Functional Linguistic Perspectives,
Len Unsworth (ed.)
Summary Justice: Judges Address Juries, Paul Robertshaw
Syntactic Analysis and Description: A Constructional Approach, David G. Lockwood
Thematic Developments in English Texts, Mohsen Ghadessy (ed.)
Ways of Saying: Ways of Meaning. Selected Papers of Ruqaiya Hasan. Carmen Cloran, David
Butt and Geoffrey Williams (eds)
Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: An Introduction to Modern English Lexicology, Howard Jackson
and Etienne Zé Amvela
Working with Discourse: Meaning beyond the Clause, J. R. Martin and David Rose
Multimodal Discourse Analysis
Systemic-Functional Perspectives
Edited by Kay L. O'Halloran
continuum
LONDON NEW YORK
Continuum
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11 York Road New York
London SE1 7NX NY 10010
© Kay L. O'Halloran 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission
in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 0-8264-7256-7
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
Contents
Introduction 1
Kay L. O'Hallomn
Part I
Three-dimensional material objects in space
1 Opera Ludentes: the Sydney Opera House at work and play 11
Michael O'Toole
2 Making history in From Colony to Nation: a multimodal analysis
of a museum exhibition in Singapore 28
Alfred Pang Kah Meng
3 A semiotic study of Singapore's Orchard Road and Marriott
Hotel 55
Safeyaton Alias
Part II
Electronic media and film
4 Phase and transition, type and instance: patterns in media texts
as seen through a multimodal concordancer 83
Anthony P. Baldry
5 Visual semiosis in film 109
Kay L. O'Halloran
6 Multisemiotic mediation in hypertext 131
Arthur Kok Kum Chiew
Part III
Print media
7 The construal of Ideational meaning in print advertisements 163
Cheong Tin Yuen
vi CONTENTS
8 Multimodality in a biology textbook 196
Libo Guo
9 Developing an integrative multi-semiotic model 220
Victor Lim Fei
Index 247
This book is dedicated to my mother, Janet O'Halloran
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Introduction
Kay L. O'Halloran
Multi-modal Discourse Analysis is a collection of research papers in the field of
multimodality. These papers are concerned with developing the theory and
practice of the analysis of discourse and sites which make use of multiple
semiotic resources; for example, language, visual images, space and archi-
tecture. New social semiotic frameworks are presented for the analysis of a
range of discourse genres in print media, dynamic and static electronic
media and three-dimensional objects in space. The theoretical approach
informing these research efforts is Michael Halliday's (1994) systemic-
functional theory of language which is extended to other semiotic resources.
These frameworks, many of which are inspired by Michael O'Toole's (1994)
approach in The Language of Displayed Art, are also used to investigate mean-
ing arising from the integrated use of semiotic resources.
The research presented here represents the early stages in a shift of focus
in linguistic enquiry where language use is no longer theorized as an isolated
phenomenon (see, for example, Baldry, 2000; Kress, 2003; Kress and van
Leeuwen, 1996, 2001; ledema, 2003; Ventola et al., forthcoming). The
analysis and interpretation of language use is contextualized in conjunction
with other semiotic resources which are simultaneously used for the con-
struction of meaning. For example, in addition to linguistic choices and their
typographical instantiation on the printed page,1 multimodal analysis takes
into account the functions and meaning of the visual images, together with
the meaning arising from the integrated use of the two semiotic resources.
To date, the majority of research endeavours in linguistics have tended to
concentrate solely on language while ignoring, or at least downplaying, the
contributions of other meaning-making resources. This has resulted in
rather an impoverished view of functions and meaning of discourse.
Language studies are thus undergoing a major shift to account fully for
meaning-making practices as evidenced by recent research in multimodality
(for example, Baldry, 2000; Callaghan and McDonald, 2002; ledema, 2001;
Jewitt, 2002; Martin, forthcoming; Kress, 2000, 2003; Kress et al., 2001:
Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996, 2001; Lemke, 1998, 2002, 2003; O'Halloran,
1999a, 2000, 2003a, 2003b; Royce, 2002; Thibault, 2000; Unsworth, 2001;
Ventola et al., forthcoming; Zammit and Callow, 1998).
Multimodal Discourse Analysis contains an invited paper by Michael
