Towards a Framework of Critical Multimodal Analysis: Emotion in a Film Trailer

This paper presents a pilot study in the analysis of emotion integrating approaches from traditionally separate theoretical backgrounds: socio-semiotic studies and cognitive studies. The general aim is to identify a flexible and comprehensive framework for critical multimodal analysis of visual, verbal (oral, written and a blend of the two), kinetic, sound, music and graphic aspects. The case-study, exemplifying this kind of integrated approach in its initial stages, identifies the voices of emotion as expressed in the trailer of the film An Inconvenient Truth (2006) and discusses their intertextual and interdiscoursal characteristics. Aspects of the on-going research projects are discussed.