Patterns of Intersemiotic Cohesion in the Moving Image Text

Abstract

This paper investigates intersemiotic cohesion in the moving image text popularly known as film discourse. The investigation aimed at identifying the interaction pattern of visual verbal strands in an unfolding text of selected video films. The corpus of the study consists of six movie pictures and corresponding excerpts of conversation(s) from selected film scripts. Baumgarten (2008) theory of visual verbal cohesion and Ngamsa (2012) methodological consideration were adopted for the annotation and matching of deictic devices as both explicit-- invitro and implicit--invivo . The findings of the paper therefore show that interaction of visual and verbal semiotic strands is always achieved at the point of convergence and at the instance of reference items, pronouns, adjectives and other extra linguistic features—signs and existents. The study finally recommends that film directors, screenplay writers and text linguists should explore the use of intersemiotic cohesive devices for explication of the moving image text.

Key words: Intersemiotic, Cohesion, Moving Image Text and Film Discourse.