Film Discourse: the semiotic and nature

Authors

  • Bukhara State Pedagogical Institute
Кинематографический дискурс: семиотика и природа

Abstract

In this article, the critical, cultural, and creative features of American and Uzbek cinematic discourse, as well as the intercultural analysis, are discussed. The focus of the research is on introducing the meta-discursive category of communicative role exchange, which is described as "...a system of strategies, tactics, and techniques that manage the dialogic communication process using verbal or non-verbal speech, with the potential to point to a transitional point or relevant turning point, accepting, maintaining, or transferring the right to voice entry to one of the participants in the interaction." The structurally regulating meta-discursive feature of this system is manifested in its inclusion. There are specific tactics and methods for changing the nature and roles in relation to other discursive categories.

Keywords:

cinematic discourse values culture issues of

Introduction

To begin with, Film discourse is an intricate cultural phenomenon that involves a hybrid form of verbal and non-verbal communication, along with the civilization values that humanity has amassed between the late 19th and the early 20th century.

In Kazakova’s case, through secondary data review, she does not capture the film discourse as thorough as it should be. For example, A. I. Kazakova tends to interpret film discourse much too broadly, defining it as "... film text, as well as the film itself, the interpretation of the film by moviegoers and the meaning what the filmmakers, directors and scriptwriters put into it” (Kazakova, 2014). She does not provide a thesaurus definition, but rather uses a vague explanation that is devoid of linguistic depth: the semiotic characteristics of the author’s knowledges are missing or “hidden” in the depths of a rather superficial and less linguistic definition. Zaretskaya interprets the cinema discourse in a different manner. She interprets it as a singular phenomenon of semiotic linguistics. This phenomenon forms ‘a coherent text’, consisting of the film’s verbal and non-verbal components, which can comprise of audiovisual features and other linguistic and non-linguistic factors that are important for the film’s meaning within semiology. These factors may be, for example, creolized languages that have totality, modularity, and informative and communicative functions, and that are produced collaboratively by a specific type of author to be consumed by the message’s audience (the cinema viewer). As Zaretskaya points out, the diverse cultural and historical background knowledge of the addressee, the situation, time and place related to the film, and various multimedia elements: drawings, gestures, and even facial expressions help pupils create and perceive the film (Zaretskaya, 2010). The cinema discourse of I.N. Lavrinenko is very well known, and there is considerable literature related to it. The researcher contributes new insights to this phenomenon by defining it and describing the cinema discourse as “... a multicode cognitive-communicative formation, a single whole out of many semiotic units, known in association with purposive connectedness, wholeness, incompleteness and targeting.” The communication on cinema is done through spoken language, body movements, and through exchanges of verbal communication. The material used actually preserves the communication and is meant to be reproduced on a screen for the audience to see and hear.

Analysis. Now consider the entry into the research territory of the meta-discursive concept of communicative roles exchange as a system of strategies, tactics and techniques, which “... supervises the process of dialogic interaction through verbal and/or non-verbal mechanisms of taking, sustaining or granting to one interactant the right to speak, move to or note a relevant shift.” The systematically regulatory metadiscursive character of this system is self-evident. Its constitutive aspect is reflective of its being not merely alongside other discursive categories, but also of the existence of particular tactics and strategies for role – taking and giving.” Sanna Shamil kyzy Nazmutdinova as “a semiotically complicated, dynamic process of interaction between film author, recipient and inter language and inter culture space by means of cinema language which possesses properties of syntax, verbal – visual collage, intertextuality, multiplicity of the addressee, contextual meaning, iconic depiction, synthesis” and as well as “… a type of verbal – iconic behaviour, contextually bound in culture, time, space and possessing the major functions of language –informative, communicative, regulative, artistic and aesthetic.” In the above definition, the concepts of addresser and addressee (agent and client of discourse) are introduced; in addition, it is valuable in addition to the semiotic nature of the phenomenon, its pragmatic-cognitive and behavioral aspects are highlighted in the definition. In the words of G. G. Slyshkin and M. A. Efremova, film discourse is (film text) “a coherent, complete message, expressed using verbal and non verbal signs, organized in accordance with the intention of a collective functionally differentiated author using cinematic codes, recorded on material medium and intended for reproduction on the screen and audio visual perception by the audience” (Slyshkin, Efremova, 2004). They suggested that the verification of a film text is possible in two ways: as a coded structure and a classification which they called a linguosemiotic. First, she argued that one could consider it a code text of a film. Then the differentiation of film texts is based on the dominance of non verbal index or iconic characters and speech style for verbal style. They also distinguish art (fiction) and documentary (non fiction) film text and classify film discourse by genre.

In this regard it is worth noting that frames are units of cinema discourse and the term is used differently by different people. For instance, cinematographers speak of a frame as a unit of cinematographic work. In the words of S. M. Eisenstein, a motion picture is produced by juxtaposing frames of one or several chosen thematic elements. Each fragment of the motion picture carries something that is common to the whole theme and is its unity (Zaretskaya, 2010). Worth argues, that it is very convenient to differentiate between the cameraman’s frame which is the continuous movement of the motion capturing camera during the shooting set, and the editing frame or edema, that is the part of the cadem incorporated into the film (Worth 1984).

  1. M. Lotman discusses the relationship of the frame in comparison to the word regarding the whole. Although a frame can be viewed at the micro level, it can also be perceived at the macro level. For instance, frames can be viewed as being part of a sequence. A frame also serves as the basic unit of cinema language. Meanwhile, a feature that distinguishes the frame from a static photograph or painting is that it allows for motion within its borders. Thus, according to Lotman, a frame is a phenomenon that is dynamic (Lotman 1973).

Y.G. Tsivyan observes that a cinema text unit is always a set of two nuclear frames which the author refers to as the basic chain or the syntagma of the cinema text. Y. G. Tsivyan refers to a nuclear shot as the segment of film text in which the subject of the shoot (character, etc.) and the space in which or in relation to which the subject moves are distinguishable. At least two nuclear frames must be considered in order to extract a cinema text message (Tsivyan, 1984). K. Metz thinks that the plan is the basic unit of cinema (Metz, 1993/1994). P. P. Pasolini used the term image-sign (Pazolini, 1984).

  1. Deleuze differentiates image-movement as the primary aspect of devices of cinema and extracts six varieties of images from it: image of perception, image of emotion, image of impulse, 164 165 Encyclopedia “Discurso” Encyclopedia “Discurso” image of action, image of reflection and image of attitude (Deleuze, 2004). U. Eco asserts that the basic unit of the video cinematic code is an iconic sign, however, not as an object standing for a reality as in the films the objects in the frame often are meaningful only on the basis of the expectations built during the narrative to see something – this makes the viewer have knowledge in the object what in a single frame would not be identified.

Most complete characteristics of film discourse as a system of signs is given by S. S. Zaichenko. We give her postulates below.

Film discourse belongs simultaneously to an optical (that can be seen) and an auditory (that can be heard) sign systems.

Film discourse is a non-biological (cultural) form of natural semiotics that arises without planning or organization.

Film discourse involves multi-level semiotic system and it makes use of various sub-herarchical signs. In the context of semiotics, signs are put together in accordance with specific regulations, and rearranging the placement of any single sign modifies the significance of the entire arrangement of signs.

Film discourse is a semiotic cinematography that is open for interpretations and can engage with the surrounding culture.

The components of a cinema discourse can be regarded as the smallest indivisible visual elements: broad units (frame, shot) that encompass movement, sounds, etc. as well as the sequence of shots.

Cinema discourse is understood as a post-structural semiotics that relies on multiple underlying codes that are active within every system of generation. At the same time, there exist the codes which manage the integration of various semiotic systems in the film and operate at the boundaries of the systems.

Film discourse is a semiotic cinematography that is open for interpretations and can engage with the surrounding culture. While focusing the research towards cinema discourse, one can consider the basic non-partitionable image constituents to be large segments (frame, plan) which in addition to the visual element have movement, sound, etc. together with the chain of frames.

The production of films involves several forms of language and culture, meaning that cinema is constructed with several semiotic codes. Classification emotiveness and emotionalgenic emotion (drama, comedy, purgative tragedy, thriller, etc.) in addition to the artistic chronotope rendered within archetypal retrospective perspective of the furopic film and historical localization)s of alien life and events, and a forsaken God’s town in Texas, are just a few examples of those coding them. The cinema discourse gives attention to the aportionment of the film creators’ ethnocultural patterns and its socioenvironmental interplay.

Conclusion. Last but not least, the cinema discourse articulates general interdependence or relativeness concepts which creates a direct implicit value engravement of the directors intention mesage, the cameramen, the screenwriter - the masters of word and imagery. His imagination and worldview is aided by the artistry of film, the general and his staff of assistants including the set and costume makers and the beauticians he likes.

References

Deleuze, J. (2004). Cinema (B. Skuratov, Trans.). Ad Marginem.

Zaichenko, S. S. (2011). Some features of film discourse as a sign system. Philological Sciences. Questions of Theory and Practice, 4(11), 82–86.

Zaretskaya, A. N. (2010). Features of the implementation of the subtext in film discourse (Doctoral dissertation, Cand. philol. sciences). Chelyabinsk.

Kazakova, A. I. (2014). Features of the formation of phraseological semantics in the discursive space of Russian cinema (Doctoral dissertation, Cand. philol. sciences). Astrakhan.

Lavrinenko, I. N. (2012). Criteria for the classification of film discourse. Bulletin of the Kharkov National University, Discourse: Semantics and Pragmatics, 1003, 41–44.

Lotman, Y. M. (1973). Semiotics of cinema and the problems of cinema aesthetics. Eesti Raamat.

Bahodirovna, A. M. (2022). Semantic field of ‘spirituality’: Lexical analysis and psychological, philosophical features. European Journal of Life Safety and Stability, 14, 124–131. http://ejlss.indexedresearch.org/index.php/ejlss/article/view/468

Akhmedova, M. B. (2019). Ways of translation of ‘spirituality’ terms in English and Uzbek languages. Proceedings of the ICECRS. https://doi.org/10.21070/icecrs.v4i0.124

Akhmedova, M. B. (2021). Problems in translating the concept of "spirituality." IEJRD - International Multidisciplinary Journal, 6(TITFL), 290–295.

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Author Biography

Dilnoza Erkaeva ,
Bukhara State Pedagogical Institute

Teacher of the Department of Foreign Language Teaching Methods 

How to Cite

Erkaeva , D. (2025). Film Discourse: the semiotic and nature. The Lingua Spectrum, 2(1), 208–211. Retrieved from https://lingvospektr.uz/index.php/lngsp/article/view/409

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