Bulos, Julia

Funes, Victoria
Ortiz, Sahid

Genre Studies for Language Teaching & Learning

Assignment #3

Multimodal Patterns in Romantic Comedy Movie Posters: A Visual Analysis on

Compositional Meanings

I. Introduction

We are currently living in a multimodal era. The old tendency of considering verbal or written
texts as the only possibility to convey meaning has become outdated. Consequently, a new theory
emphasising diverse approaches was forced to emerge: the social semiotic theory of multimodality.
Multimodality focuses on analysing texts from a multimodal approach: examining texts by considering
not only the written words but also the accompanying visuals and auditory elements, such as images,
videos, and sound, among others. These elements aim to understand how these different modes work
together to convey meaning and create a holistic understanding of the message. In the world of cinema,
movie posters offer audiences a both visual and textual glimpse into the film's genre and content. This
proposal attempts to explore the compositional elements that identify romantic comedy movie posters,
and its main aim is to conduct a comprehensive analysis to identify potential patterns and structural
elements that contribute to genre-specific communication.

This project is framed inside the realm of multimodality, proposed by Kress and Van Leeuwen
(2006), which provides a system for the analysis of visual elements. Since this framework has emerged
from within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the concepts of Ideational, Interpersonal, and
Textual Meanings have been renamed to Representational, Interactive, and Compositional respectively.
In this project, the analysis will be focused on how Compositional meanings are represented in movie
posters, more specifically, in romantic comedy movie posters. The composition of an image refers to the
way the representational and interactive meanings are integrated into a meaningful whole. This meaning
offers three interrelated systems: Informational Value, Salience, and Frame. Information value refers to
how elements are placed within the image. Salience is how certain elements stand out by using factors
such as foreground or background placement, colour, etc. Lastly, framing devices play a critical role in
connecting or disconnecting elements in the image.
 Bulos, Julia
Funes, Victoria
Ortiz, Sahid

II. Literature Review

There are several articles dealing with the analysis of movie posters from a multimodal
approach. Chen and Gao (2014) discussed how semiotic tools function in realising the representational
meaning of seven movie posters, but not considering the genre of the movies. Iftikhar, Shahnaz, and
Masroor (2019) deal with the analysis of three movie posters, reducing their scope of research to only
animated films and focusing on the three meanings: Representational, Interactive, and Compositional.
Ultimately, Nguyen (2020) aimed to analyse romantic comedy movie posters based on their similarities
and differences in using semiotic elements to identify the patterns and to examine the effectiveness of
their framework. However, the author did not attempt to modelize this genre as a semiotic system.
Thus, this paper will attempt to expand on Nguyen’s results, and provide a clear model as regards
Compositional Meanings within romantic comedy movie posters by analysing a more extensive amount
of posters.

III. Research questions

● Is there any structure regarding Compositional Meanings that identify romantic comedy movie
posters?

● What are the most salient compositional elements?

● Which structures are the most frequent ones?

IV. Objectives

○ To identify patterns regarding Compositional Meanings in romantic comedy movie posters.

○ To create a specific model for romantic comedy movie posters as regards their Compositional
Meanings, which may be helpful for different disciplines.

○ To analyse the significant role that informational value, salience and layout have in this specific
genre of movie posters.

V. Methodology

For the development of this project, twelve official romantic comedy movie posters were
extracted from IMDb, Amazon, and Netflix. These sources were selected with the purpose of assuring
the movie genre, clearly specified in each platform, to make sure the posters selected as samples are
indeed the official ones, and to determine the rating classification for each of the movies corresponding
to the posters. This research will adopt a qualitative descriptive analysis with some quantitative tools
 Bulos, Julia
Funes, Victoria
Ortiz, Sahid

that will contribute to the study. The quantitative method will be used to discover certain patterns in
each of the three aspects of compositional meanings present in these posters. As for the qualitative
method, it will help to analyse the samples and interpret the results to develop the model for this genre.

VI. Contribution to knowledge

This research project aims to make significant contributions to the realm of visual semiotics by
developing a comprehensive model identifying patterns characteristic in romantic comedy movie
posters. By recognising these patterns, the study intends to pave the way for a deeper understanding of
the visual realms that govern the construction of these posters. Furthermore, the insights gained from
this analysis can significantly enrich EFL education by facilitating the development of genre-specific
teaching materials and pedagogical strategies, as this model could be applied to EFL course books, and
will ultimately integrate multimodal analysis.

VII. Samples
 Bulos, Julia
Funes, Victoria
Ortiz, Sahid
 Bulos, Julia
Funes, Victoria
Ortiz, Sahid
 Bulos, Julia
Funes, Victoria
Ortiz, Sahid

VIII. References

-Chen, Y., & Gao, X. (2014). Interpretation of movie posters from the perspective of multimodal
discourse analysis. GSTF Journal on Education (JEd), 1(1).

-Iftikhar, S., Shahnaz, A., & Masroor, F. (2019). Multimodal Discourse Analysis of the Poster Covers of
Academy Award-Winning Animated Feature Movies. Putaj Humanities & Social Sciences, 26(2), 59-
95.

-Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary
communication. Arnold.

-Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: The grammar of visual design. Routledge

-Nguyen, T. T. L. (2021). A multimodal discourse analysis of romantic comedy movie posters. VNU
Journal of Foreign Studies, 37(3).
 Bulos, Julia
Funes, Victoria
Ortiz, Sahid

-Yu, B. (2019, November). Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Posters. In 3rd International Conference
on Art Studies: Science, Experience, Education (ICASSEE 2019) (pp. 407-411). Atlantis Press.

-Romantic Comedies. (2019, March 9). Netflix. Retrieved November 2, 2023, from
https://www.netflix.com/search?q=romantic%20comedy&suggestionId=Collection%3A5475

-Top 50 Comedy, Romance Movies and TV Shows. (n.d.). IMDb. Retrieved November 2, 2023, from
https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?genres=comedy,romance