Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Egyptian Political Movies: Framing Social Justice in the Movie Ahl El Kemma (Cream of the Crop)

Abstract

Nascent research is conducted on the advancement of discourse analysis in film to include different modes as images, sound and text. This study is focused on how images are embedded within texts in an audio-visual medium such as cinema to highlight political messages; it also seeks to broaden our understanding of politics beyond a relatively narrow conceptualization of the "political" through studying non-traditional discourses such as cinematic discourse. The aim of the study is to develop a systematic approach to film analysis to examine political nuance sin film. The method adopted in this research is Multi modal Discourse Analysis (MDA) focusing on embedding visuals, audio, and text in the film to examine how a political meaning can be conveyed through the interaction between those different modes. Drawing on the multi modal discourse analysis literature, different modalities will be studied to understand how those modes interact in the cinematic discourse. The film, "Cream of the Crop", is selected as an example to examine how political meanings in film can tackle the cinematic representation of the notion of social justice. This study contributes to the vast array of literature on the multi modal discourse analysis of films by focusing on political dynamics within them.