Comparing the semiotic construction of attitudinal meanings in the multimodal manuscript, original published and adapted versions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Abstract

AbstractThis paper analyzes the attitudinal variations in multimodal literary works by comparing the manuscript, the original published edition, and eight contemporary adapted versions of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Drawing upon the appraisal system of attitude (Martin and White 2005, The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave) and the social semiotic approach to visual images (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2006, Reading images: The grammar of visual design, 2nd edn. London: Routledge), the analysis demonstrates that the deployments of linguistic and visual attitudinal resources in the adapted texts differ from those in the manuscript and the original published work in terms of the semantic region, what is being appraised, positive or negative attitude, the explicit or implicit way of expression, and the degree of attitudinal commitment. Variations within different adaptations are found to accommodate the needs of different target audiences. It is also found that the intermodal relation in constructing the overall attitudinal stance shifts from complementarity in the manuscript to enhancement in the original published work and then to co-instantiation in the adaptations. The semiotic exploration may shed light on the understanding of the variations of meanings arising from the interplay of multiple semiotic resources in the different versions of the timeless multimodal literary classic.