Discourse Analysis of Multimodal Texts: A case study of Kupal movie poster based on Visual Grammar

Introduction: The movie poster is a visual tool that can play an important role in attracting the audience and persuading them to watch the movie. An evaluation of movie posters can be implemented in different ways. Kress and Van Leeuwen 's visual grammar is one of the appropriate frameworks for purpose of evaluation. This framework examines images from the following perspectives: representational meaning, interactive meaning, and compositional meaning. Analyzing and understanding the meaning in multimodal texts 6can be useful in evaluating the success or failure of this tool in transmitting information in a movie poster.
Theoretical background: This method has not been used for analysis of Iranian film posters. There are some related forein articles to this work as below.
María Martínez Lirola (2016) in "Multimodal analysis of a sample of political posters in Ireland during and after the Celtic Tiger" analyzed political posters based on Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar . The study pointed out that the poster is a powerful tool that can be used in election campaigns to highlight the power of political parties.  In another study, Menguyan Bi (2019) in "Multimodal Discourse Analysis of News Pictures" took the visual grammar as the theoretical framework and said that it has a good explanation of meaning. The results showed that visual grammar is feasible and operational in the analysis of multimodal news texts. Huafang Hu (2019) in a study entitled "A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Movie Posters Based on Visual Grammar" conducted a multimodal analysis of the movie poster Youth and cited that analysis and interpretation of the composition of multimodal meaning of the movie poster not only help the readers deeply understand the connotation of the movie, but also help readers improve their cognition of multimodal discourse. In another study in 2020, Saputra and Rosa used multimodal analysis in Man of Steel and Avengers Infinity Wars movie posters. The researchers found 6 types of elements of multimodal in Man of Steel and Avengers Infinity Wars posters such as material, behavioral, mental, identifying, attributive, and intensive. Nguyen Thi Thuy Linh (2021) in "A MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF ROMANTIC COMEDY MOVIE POSTERS" concluded the theoretical framework, Visual Grammar, with its well-structured system, provides a powerful tool to break visual images into different elements and construe their meanings. Ghaleb Rabab'ah (2021) in "A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of English Posters in Violence Awareness Campaigns against Women" said that the qualitative analysis of the yielded results was couched with Kress and Van Leeuwen’s framework and indicated that English posters employed a variety of semiotic modes. By the same token, the yielded results indicated that the majority of the sampled posters are conceptual. Such visual characterization demonstrates that the English posters tend to be static and immovable. Wenbo Zhao (2021) in "Multimodal Visual Grammar Analysis of Chinese Martial Arts Movie Posters" applied visual grammar to analyze the poster of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and the results pointed out that through the observation of the compositional meaning in the case, the characters or main images are placed in the central position of the visual space to attract the attention of the audience to the greatest extent, so as to achieve its specific visual communication and marketing purposes. Zhuyan Peng (2022) in "A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Movie Posters from the Perspective of Visual Grammar — A Case Study of "Hi, Mom"" said that as a common multimodal expression mode in the film propaganda, it is important to analyze and study the posters from the visual grammar theory.  Qianru Qiu, Xueting Wang and Mayu Otani (2023) in "Multimodal Color Recommendation in Vector Graphic Documents" said Color selection plays a critical role in graphic document design and requires sufficient consideration of various contexts. Pengfei Zhang (2022) in "Visual Grammar in Multimodal Discourse: A Case Study of Nezha's Poster Images" concluded that a comprehensive analysis of visual grammar in multimodal discourse can not only foster a more profound understanding of the themes and connotations of Nezha's posters, but also signal an aesthetic evolution under changing times, thereby providing inspiration for contemporary poster designs and cultural transmissions.
Purpose and question of the research: The question of the current study is how visual grammar occurs in posters. The purpose of this research is to examine each of the three meanings of the visual grammar point of view in the formation of meaning.
Research methodology: The method of this research is descriptive and the study sample is the poster of Kupal and Each of the three dimensions of visual grammar are studied on this poster. 
Analysis and discussion: The findings of the present research show that although the cultural and social context can lead to different interpretations in the analysis of meaning, , it is possible to have a correct interpretation of meaning by paying attention to both fixed principles and contextual aspects. In the Kupal movie poster, from the point of view of the meaning of representation, the movement vectors are moving from the eyes of the participant in the image to the audience. Also, the participant shows the state of demand, personal, involvement and equality from the point of view of interactive meaning. Due to the centrality of the image and information, the accuracy of the information on the right and left side of the image is equal, and the short sentence above has the most importance, followed by the participant's image, the English title of the film, the director's name, and finally other casts are placed in lower degrees of importance.