Music and discourse: A systemic-functional approach for music analysis in multimodal contexts

Abstract

Meaning in music constitutes an issue that have risen (and still rises) a strong debate. Although it has been approached from different perspectives there seems to be no consensus for its theorization. From a Social Semiotic perspective, music can be analysed as a part of a bigger construction, sharing the task of making meaning with other modes (verbal, visual, etc.). This paper aims to make a contribution to multimodal studies proposing a way to include music analysis in Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. We adopt as framework Halliday’s theory (1978; 1994), although we start from Kress and van Leeuwen (2020) adaptations and include McKerrell (2015) and van Leeuwen (1999). Our working hypothesis is that, in multimodal contexts, music contributes with the construction of meaning, particularly ideational meaning, establishing a relation with other modes.