Envisaging Human-Nature Conflict in the Trailer for Oppenheimer (2023): A Multimodal Ecolinguistic Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33806/ijaes.v25i2.769Keywords:
ecolinguistics, human-nature conflict, multimodality, trailer for OppenheimerAbstract
Ecolinguistics is widely acknowledged as a field of study that cares about the relationship between language and ecology. Since the conflict between humans and nature has been intensifying, ecolinguists have concentrated on ecological studies adopting discourse analysis approaches to demonstrate how discourse constructs the relationship between humans and the ecosystem. This study aims to conduct a multimodal analysis of ecological dynamic discourse in an attempt to integrate multimodality with ecolinguistic studies, an area which is still under-researched. The trailer for Oppenheimer (2023) comprises the data of the study. The movie is a dramatization of the life story of Oppenheimer, the leader of the Manhattan Project that produced the first nuclear weapons. The research focuses on exploring how the human-nature conflict is rendered via multimodal resources. The theoretical framework of the study dwells upon Visual Environmental Communication Research (Hansen 2018) supported by the updated version of the Relevance Theory (RT) as extended to multimodal communication (Forceville 2020). By utilizing ecolinguistics as an analytical lens and applying RT, this study uncovers how movie trailers significantly underscore the urgency and cruciality of the human-nature interconnection amid tragedy and destruction. The findings of the study indicate that multimodal affordances in Oppenheimer trailer, both verbal and non-verbal, contribute to portraying the complexities of nature-human interface.
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