An Inconvenient Truth: Multimodal Emotions in Identity Construction

The main aim of this paper is offering an insight into a developing branch of research which has seen the linguistic field of discourse analysis expanding into the field of socio-semiotic studies to deal with multimodal meaning making. Secondly, the paper aims at showing how the analytical tools of this kind of research can offer fruitful insights into the investigation of emotions as expressed in mediated communication. The theoretical-methodological framework used to analyse the data and discuss the results draws on the developments of systemic functional linguistics in a social semiotic perspective, including its applications to the analysis of visual grammar and multimodality in general, as well as on seminal studies in the field of Critical Discourse Analysis and Appraisal Theory. The case-study discussed in the paper (the trailer of the film An Inconvenient Truth, 2006) analyses how different genres achieve a different emotional impact by blending similar voices, images and sounds while conveying rather different and even contradictory effects. The promotional function of the trailer is achieved by multimodally constructing for the film emotionally loaded identities, emphasising its most spectacular aspects and selling it as a disaster movie; therefore, the emotions evoked in the trailer are partly in contrast with the socially committed message and the urgent call-for-action against global warming promoted by the film.