Contextualising screen violence: An integrative approach toward explaining of the functions of violent narrative events in audiovisual media

Chiao-I Tseng

doi:10.1515/cogsem-2018-2001

Article

Contextualising screen violence: An integrative approach toward explaining of the functions of violent narrative events in audiovisual media

Chiao-I Tseng
Dr Chiao-I Tseng is a research associate for the Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Sciences at the University of Bremen. She has been developing methods for multimodal textual analysis, such as frameworks for analysing cohesion, event types, narrative space, and character motivations in narratives across filmic, graphic, and interactive media. Her publications include the monograph Cohesion in Film (Tseng 2013, Palgrave MacMillan) as well as several international peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on empirical issues such as the persuasive function of media, complex narratives, and cross-media and genre comparisons.

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From the journal Cognitive Semiotics Volume 11 Issue 2

Abstract

This article aims to examine the narrative impacts and social influences of screen violence in audiovisual media. It suggests an integrative approach to synthesising the recent research findings in different disciplines such as cognitive science, media studies, neuroscience, and social semiotic theories. Based on the theoretical synthesis of narrative effects and persuasive functions, this paper establishes a method for analysing the contextualisation of violent events. In particular, the analytical method focuses on the two main narrative mechanisms for contextualising violent events, justifications of characters’ motivations for using violence and depictions of consequences. This article will apply the method to elucidate how different kinds of contextualisation yield different types of narrative impacts, persuasive potentials, and the ways in which social, political, and ideological issues can be learnt. Furthermore, a typology of characters’ motivations is also provided, which are often used for justifying the characters’ violent actions in audiovisual narratives. This paper also unravels how genre expectations are closely related to narrative functions of screen violence, particularly how genre shapes the viewers’ prediction and interpretation of violent events. Finally, the methods for motivation analysis of violent narrative events are extended to examine a particular genre of interactive audiovisual texts — empathy games.

Keywords: screen violence; empathy games; motivations and values; moral conflict; moral justification; persuasion; narrative re-contextualisation; narrative impact; video games

About the author

Chiao-I Tseng

Dr Chiao-I Tseng is a research associate for the Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Sciences at the University of Bremen. She has been developing methods for multimodal textual analysis, such as frameworks for analysing cohesion, event types, narrative space, and character motivations in narratives across filmic, graphic, and interactive media. Her publications include the monograph Cohesion in Film (Tseng 2013, Palgrave MacMillan) as well as several international peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on empirical issues such as the persuasive function of media, complex narratives, and cross-media and genre comparisons.

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Published Online: 2018-10-02

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https://doi.org/10.1515/cogsem-2018-2001

Keywords for this article

screen violence; empathy games; motivations and values; moral conflict; moral justification; persuasion; narrative re-contextualisation; narrative impact; video games