Multimodal propositions and metaphors in the movie submarine: An application of peirce’s doctrine of dicisigns

Abstract

This chapter integrates Charles Peirce’s doctrine of Dicisigns in the cognitive semiotics of film. It makes use of Peirce’s concept of proposition to develop a framework for the analysis of multimodal meaning construction. As such, this theoretical addition to the cognitive semiotic theory of film illustrates how information is conveyed and, also, how arguments and metaphors are developed multimodally in the cinematic medium. The theory is further on developed and illustrated by an analysis of the movie Submarine (Ayoade in Submarine, 157, 2010). Particularly, the chapter discusses how propositional structures are formed through cinematic techniques and how the two metaphors “light/darkness is life/death” and “submarine biology is submarine psychology” participate in the unfolding of the movie’s narrative.