Discourse, Context & Media 44 (2021) 100539

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Discourse, Context & Media

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/dcm

Cut to the chase – How multimodal cohesion secures narrative

orientation in film trailers
Christian R. Hoffmann
Universität Augsburg, Philologisch-Historische Fakultät, Lst. Für Englische Sprachwissenschaft, Universitätsstraße 10, 86159 Augsburg, Germany

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Recent years have seen a growing number of studies explore the narrative, persuasive and multimodal
Received 1 March 2021 design of film trailers (Maier, 2009, 2011; Wildfeuer and Pollaroli, 2017). While such work has primarily
Received in revised form 23 July 2021 looked at the ways in which trailers realize persuasive functions (Hediger, 2001; Maier, 2011; Krebs,
Accepted 9 August 2021
2020), this paper examines how the (audio-visual) representational choices made by trailer editors can
Available online 6 October 2021
provide narrative orientation for the film audience. Inside a self-compiled corpus of 150 genre-
stratified US-American film trailers, recurring audio-visual, cohesive patterns are elicited. It will be
Keywords:
shown that the visual effects of this cohesive thrust can be tied to the cinematographic choices editors
Film trailer
Telecinematic discourse
make in the opening shots of the trailer, by using specific shot scales, (types of) settings and (non-)
Multimodality human represented participants. To capture the verbal dynamics of trailer cohesion, the study explores
Film the key semantic domains to which all lexical expressions in the trailer dialogues can be linked
Cohesion (Rayson et al., 2004). Results of this study confirm that both visual and verbal elements form recurring
Coherence genre-specific patterns. They unleash their multimodal potential of film trailers by tapping into the pre-
Semantic domains vious (genre) knowledge of trailer audiences, facilitating the cognitive uptake of audiovisual information
Corpus-assisted multimodal discourse for the audience as the trailer unfolds.
analysis
Ó 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction
Film trailers (also called movie previews) play a decisive role for
today’s film industry in promoting feature films in movie theatres,
on home television or via Internet streaming services (Hediger,
2001; Hixson, 2006; Karray and Debernitz, 2017; Redfern, 2020).
Despite their growing economic and cultural impact, linguistic
research on film trailers is scarce, with few notable exceptions
(Maier, 2009; Tseng, 2013; Wildfeuer and Pollaroli, 2017). Despite
this lack of research, film theorists have argued for a long time that
film trailers constitute a veritable film genre in its own right that
deserves more scholarly attention (Kernan, 2009: 45, Hediger,
2001: 15).1 This study contributes to closing this research gap. To
do so, it investigates the structural make-up of film trailers. As
Hediger (2001: 192ff) shows, the production of effective and persua-
sive film trailers is a complex and demanding task since editors
strive to make trailers comprehensible and entertaining while, at
the same time, overcoming compositional obstacles along the way.
E-mail address: Christian.Hoffmann@philhist.uni-augsburg.de
1
Perhaps their strange nature as para-texts (Genette, 1997), their prominent use in
mass-media entertainment, and trailer’s semblance of formal simplicity may have
prevented further academic scrutiny in the past.
Most importantly perhaps, trailer editors must balance trailers’ per-
suasive appeal against their narrative plausibility, so that the film
audience is enticed to go and watch the feature film the trailer pro-
motes without losing track of the film’s broad storyline and charac-
ters. In this study, it is argued that cohesion plays an instrumental
role in balancing this structural ‘‘conflict”. To this end, trailers’ use
of audio-visual cohesion will be analyzed systematically to show
how recurring cohesive tracks enable film audiences to quickly rec-
ognize trailers as part of a specific film genre. This recognition, it is
shown, enables film audiences to understand trailer storylines and
character types more quickly when they can integrate them into
their previous knowledge of film genres.
For the first time, the paper explores multimodal cohesive pat-
terns in a cross-generic corpus of 150 US-American standard film
trailers (Augstrail corpus, 38,737 tokens). The study follows
Bednarek’s (2015:73) corpus-assisted multimodal discourse anal-
ysis (CAMD) which is applied to film trailers in this study. It com-
bines the use of corpus linguistic methods (to analyze the verbal
(audio) track of the trailers) with a systematic investigation of
patterns of (visual) representation styles in trailers’ opening
shots, i.e. shot scales, settings (non-) human represented
participants.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2021.100539
2211-6958/Ó 2021 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
C.R. Hoffmann
2. Introducing film trailers
Maier (2009: 159) defines film trailers as ‘‘multimodal texts in
which several semiotic modes are combined, and parts of texts cre-
ated for other purposes are transferred, rearranged and supple-
mented in order to attain a promotional purpose.” Trailers have
been classically used in the US film industry to promote future
releases of feature films. Today they are still regularly shown in
film theatres at the beginning of film screenings (see Krebs,
2020). In their early days (1920’s and 1930’s), however, trailers
would have been projected in movie theatres between the screen-
ing of what was known as ‘‘double features”, i.e. two short films
screened in a row (Hediger, 2001: 61).
Film editors usually distinguish different types of trailers, which
serve different promotional purposes. Teaser trailers, for instance,
are the first trailers to be released in public (Kernan, 2009: 242)
and they tend to be rather short (less than 2 min). Their primary
function is to arouse the interest of the viewing audience and
evoke the general ‘‘feel”, mood or ambience or the feature film
being promoted. Standard theatrical trailers, exclusively used in this
study, are typically longer than teaser trailers (approx. 2–3 min)
and are commonly released in film theatres and on television chan-
nels. In contrast to teaser trailers, theatrical trailers commonly pro-
vide more details about the general storyline of the feature film
and its main characters. While some standard trailers are screened
exclusively in the USA (also called national trailers), international
trailers are typically used in all regions around the globe. Other
forms of trailers include creative trailers, which are filmed and edi-
ted by directors of the final feature films, video clips, i.e. short dia-
logue shots, to be used for promotional purposes in television talk
shows and featurettes, which provide rich insights into the (post-)
production of a given film. Before we return to trailers to introduce
their cohesive structure in section five and six of this study, we
must first address the way in which linguists have explored cohe-
sive patterns in the past.
3. From verbal to visual cohesion
Cohesion in this study is regarded as ‘‘the texture that is con-
structed by the ‘reappearance’ of film elements as a film unfolds,
identifying, tracking and classifying such reappearances as they
occur” (Bateman, 2014: 321, my emphasis). Note that the term
‘‘film elements” does not relate to visual resources exclusively
but comprises other semiotic resources as well, e.g. spoken mono-
logue or dialogue, musical styles or chords, repetitive sounds. In
addition, filmic elements need not recur between different shots
of one and the same film trailer but can likewise re-appear in sim-
ilar patterns across film trailers that belong to the same (sub)genre,
In this latter view, a ‘‘vertical” reading of cohesive patterns is tar-
geted to generate cohesive profiles of film genres over time
(Hoffmann, 2012: 155).
Note that such a broad reading of cohesion pays tribute to the
way the concept has evolved in discourse analysis. Firmly estab-
lished by Halliday and Hasan’s seminal work (1976), studies on
(verbal) cohesion have shaped the linguistic subdiscipline of dis-
course analysis for decades. While early work focused on discover-
ing the (semantic) bonds that hold between clauses, sentences or
utterances, later research (in the 19800 s and 19900 s) explored
how (and to what extent) such cohesive ties could possibly consti-
tute a text’s conceptual, general or social meaning (cf. Hasan, 1984;
Bublitz, 1994, 1999; Hoffmann, 2012). Scholars additionally
reflected on the intricate relationship that holds between concepts
such as cohesive texture or cohesion, which were classically con-
fined to the text’s internal structure and organisation, and coher-
ence, which was often seen as the individual, dynamic and
2
Discourse, Context & Media 44 (2021) 100539
mental process of meaning-making (Widdowson, 1980, Stubbs,
1983, Bublitz, 2006). With this renewed interest in matters of
coherence also came a gradual shift of studies in the field. For-
merly, studies had focused on the formal description of cohesive
links in text documents, but new research began to privilege ques-
tions of comprehensibility, inference and interpretation informed
by new insights from psycholinguistics and cognitive studies (cf.
Hoey, 2003, 2005).
Atthesametime,scholarschartedthecohesivelandscapeofdiffer-
ent text genres (Neumann and Fest, 2016) and adopted corpus-
linguistic methods to capture cohesive chains, collocations, intertex-
tual patterns and discursive trends on a larger scale (see Flowerdew
and Mahlberg, 2009; Hoffmann, 2012; Tanskanen, 2006). More
recently, more attempts have been made to include visual resources
ofexpressionin the analysisof cohesion,elicitingmore complex,mul-
timodal patterns of cohesion, which work particularly well in digital
discoursegenres(cf.Kress,2010;Janney,2010;Tseng,2012).Filmdis-
coursecohesion,or in ourcase, cohesionin filmtrailers,canserveas an
interestingcaseinpoint.Maier(2009),whowasoneofthefirstlinguists
toexaminethemultimodalcompositionoffilmtrailers,hasshownhow
various techniques, e.g. close-up shots, camera movements, captions,
transitionsandspecialeffects,areco-deployedtoexpressvisualevalu-
ationsintrailers.Shealsoprovesthatshotscanbe‘‘strengthenedorsub-
verted by evaluation provided by the non-diegetic voice-over
commentsor off-screen wordsuttered by characters [. . .]” (175).
In a different paper, Maier (2011:153) reveals how the narrative
staging in film trailers can inform its persuasive shape and how the
functional relations that hold between the different narrative
stages of the trailer can trigger some of the persuasive effects the
trailer genre is known for. In contrast, Janney (2012) describes
how classic verbal cohesion can be fruitfully applied to capture
visual patterns of cohesion across film shots. Tseng (2013) provides
a similar but more refined classification scheme to capture and
classify a range of co- referential chains of cohesion across a series
of film shots. While both Janney (2012) and Tseng (2013) have
been influential benchmarks for the study of multimodal cohesion
in films, they do not discuss the way cohesion is strategically
deployed in film trailers. Wildfeuer and Pollaroli (2017) seem to
partially address this issue in their analysis of argumentative pat-
terns which provide structure to the audio-visual progression of
shots in the trailer of the feature film Gravity. Nevertheless, their
approach to studying cohesion by using argumentation theory is
decidedly different from the one adopted in the other studies. In
this study, I would therefore like to move beyond the existing work
in three major ways:
(1) The study does not investigate single trailers or reduced sets
of trailers but draws on a larger repository of film trailers to
examine their cohesive profile.
(2) The study examines the specific shape of audio-visual cohe-
sion relative to three different trailer (sub)genres, i.e. action
trailers, comedy trailers and documentary trailers.
(3) The study attempts to combine a corpus-driven analysis of
verbal cohesion with a multimodal analysis of visual
resources of representation, reflecting the audio-visual char-
acter of any film document.
Before the methods used in this study will take center stage, I
will spend a few lines first, reporting on the sampling methods
and the design of the corpus compiled for this study.
4. Corpus design
The corpus of film trailers (Augstrail) for this study draws on
three major youtube channels, that offer access to large online
C.R. Hoffmann
repositories of US-American standard film trailers, i.e. www.trai-
ler-track.com, www.traileraddict.com and www.fandango.com
(cf. Bednarek, 2018). The channels are searched for standard (the-
atrical) trailers, that exhibit a duration between two and three
minutes. Teaser trailers and other trailer types (see Section 2) are
precluded from the corpus for different reasons: First, standard
trailers are more frequently used in movie theatres and on televi-
sion than any of the other trailer types. Second, standard trailers
also provide more substantial information of the film’s main plot
and characters than teaser trailers. Understanding standard trailers
is thus more cognitively demanding than watching teaser trailers.
Finally, standard trailers are more easily accessible and more
widely distributed on online portals than the other types of trail-
ers. Since more recent trailers likewise tend to be more accessible
than older ones, the corpus contains US-American film trailers
released between the years 2017 and 2020. The final corpus con-
tains 38,737 tokens, dispersed across 150 trailers (50 action trail-
ers, 50 comedy trailers, 50 documentary trailers). The individual
trailers selected for the corpus were assigned to three main film
trailer genres, defined in the following:
(a) documentary trailers, i.e. feature films that report on histori-
cal, social or political real-life personalities or events,
(b) action trailers, i.e. feature films that focus on one (or a group
of) fictional character(s) that must overcome a challenging
or physically demanding obstacle to save (or help) others,
(c) comedy trailers, i.e. feature films that typically revolve
around a funny or entertaining series of events, often includ-
ing relationship conflicts that are resolved in humorous
fashion
In addition to these genre descriptions, genre classifications
suggested by the International Movie Database (www.imdb.com)
were consulted, especially in cases in which genre classification
remained unclear. In such cases, the most likely option of two
likely genre categories was selected.2 The three genres of action,
comedy and documentary trailers were selected since their semantic
extension is much broader than other possible genre candidates,
such as romance or crime. Main genres, such as action or comedy,
have also become what Bordwell calls ‘‘central Hollywood genres”
which exert their influence ‘‘at all scales of [film] production”
(2012: 396). If genres are (conceptually) close, e.g. action & thriller
films, recurring categorial overlaps seem unavoidable. To restrict
such effects of genre hybridization (Rodman, 2011: 35), genres were
chosen that are sufficiently different from each other in terms of
their narrative organization and their default character types.
The transcript function offered by youtube proved helpful in
obtaining verbal transcripts of spoken monologues and dialogues
from the trailers, but these can be of poor quality. To meet the
quality requirements, all transcripts had to be manually checked
for accuracy, fluency and consistency and, if necessary, were for-
mally adapted. This included further mark-up, such as character/
speaker labels or spelling or punctuation changes.
5. Capturing audio-visual framing devices in film trailers
This paper uses two different yet related methods to analyze
the audio-visual structure of film trailers: A visual analysis that
classifies the representational choices editors make in opening
shots, and a verbal analysis that centers on the semantic classifica-
2
The use of IMDB genre categorisations is standard practice in film corpus
compilation (see Bednarek, 2018, URL: http://www.syd-tv.com/wp-content/uploads/
2019/04/Guide-to-SydTV_april19.pdf).
3
Discourse, Context & Media 44 (2021) 100539
tion of trailer dialogues. In the following, both methods will be dis-
cussed in due order.
5.1. Representational strategies in opening shots
The idea that film shots in movies do not simply represent an
eclectic, random and unrelated series of photographic images but
carefully crafted multimodal composites is not new. In 1919, the
Russian film director Oleg Kuleshov (cf. Bordwell, 1974: 9) noticed
that film viewers appraise a film sequence differently if selective
shots of the sequence are added, deleted or replaced at different
temporal intervals. It follows that montage, or the lineal arrange-
ment of shots in a film sequence can influence the way audiences
perceive characters, understand events or interpret storylines. Ever
since, lots of ‘‘schools” and traditions of film editing have held
quite distinct views on how film shots ought to be arranged but
also how individual shots should be composed to induce visual
effects and gain control over the visual ‘‘reading” of images
(Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996: 214). To capture the representa-
tional choices that are involved in the visual composition of film
shots, Bateman et al. (2017: 331) provide a useful categorisation
scheme of different types of shot scales (see Table 1); each of the
scales in the scheme portray individuals, groups, objects or events
from a different depth and perspective. Some framings depict
objects from a vantage point far away (extreme long shots), some
from a closer range (simple long shots to medium shots) and some
from a position very close to the object of interest (close-up shots).
Shot scales cannot only involve the viewer in an event or distance
the audience from what is shown, they can also be used to provide
more (spatial) information to the viewer or constrain their visual
field in close-up shots.
Another visual parameter this study explores is Kress and van
Leeuwen’s distinction between represented and interactive partici-
pants (1996 [2005]: 119). Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) use the
term interactive participants to describe the participants engaged
in the main act of a given communication. In the case of film trail-
ers, interactive participants refer to what Dynel (2014: 39) calls the
‘‘collective sender”, i.e. the team of individuals that create the film
trailer for a projected target audience. At the same time, a second
(type of) interactive participant is constituted by the film audience,
that watches and tries to understand the trailer.
In contrast, represented participants ‘‘are the subject of com-
munication, that is, the people, places and things (including
abstract ‘things’) represented in or by the film shot” (Kress and
van Leeuwen, 1996 [2005]: 119). Two types of represented partic-
ipants can be distinguished, i.e. human and non-human represented
participants. The former refers to human individuals represented
on screen, while non-human represented participants relates to
all other (non-human) sentient beings or objects, including ani-
mals, animate or inanimate objects, etc.
Furthermore, different types of film settings are examined, i.e.
different private or public places, urban or rural settings in light
or dark shadings, pictured at different times of the day. All visual
features are systematically analysed and classified in all 150 open-
ing shots of the Augstrail corpus. Then, the visual analysis is
enhanced by a systematic look at the semantic patterns of frequent
lexical expressions in the trailer dialogues; a corpus-driven
approach which is explained in the next section.
5.2. The key domain method - detecting cohesion in trailer dialogues
The trailer dialogues of each trailer are fed into three subcorpus
files, each representing one of the three trailer genres, introduced
before. Paul Rayson’s WMatrix tool (Rayson et al., 2004) is used
to automatically assign semantic domains to each lexical expres-
sion. To this effect, it draws on a preset range of semantic tags,
C.R. Hoffmann
Table 1
Shot Scale Classification (Bateman et al., 2017: 331).
Area Technical Brief description
feature
Shot Extreme long a shot taken from a considerable distance, giving
scales shot (ELS) an overall sense of the setting (establishing shot)
Long Shot (LS) a shot showing an entire action or entire
character with some background visible
Medium Shot a shot typically framing a character from the
(CU) waist up, showing the character’s face and
gestures
Close-Up (CU) a shot showing just the face of a character,
drawing attention to expression and emotion
Extreme a shot showing a fine detail or part of a face,
Close-Up focusing specifically on what is shown
(ECU)
explained in Archer et al. (2005: 3).3 A reference corpus serves as
semantic benchmark to determine which semantic domains are
found to be more (or less) salient in each of the genre files, comput-
ing the actual overuse or underuse of semantic domains in the cor-
pus at hand. For our purposes, the genre-stratified subsections of the
Augstrail corpus are used as suitable reference corpora for each
other. This is feasible since the three corpus genre sections all consti-
tute dialogues of the same type, are of similar size and origin, and
differ only in regard to their individual genre profiles. To illustrate,
the action and comedy genre files are collectively used as a reference
corpus for the semantic categorization of the documentary (sub)cor-
pus. In contrast, the comedy and documentary subcorpus – in
combination- serve as reference corpus for the action corpus, etc.
Positive key domains in the results are automatically highlighted
by the WMatrix tool, and they indicate that a given semantic
domain is used more frequently in the target corpus than in the
reference corpus. Negative key domains suggest the opposite. When
positive key domains are found in a target corpus, the respective
semantic domains can be assumed to be foregrounded in the
respective dialogues, and thus can be expected to be particularly
relevant for the trailers (or indeed genres) under study. Using these
frequency results as a springboard, the lexical expressions which
frequently realize these semantic domains are examined in their
respective contexts of use.
6. First contact - visual representation in opening shots
Most film trailers in the Augstrail corpus comply with what
Bordwell calls ‘‘the premises of ‘classical continuity’ film editing
(2002: 16), so that trailers that begin with opening shots are
designed to ‘‘cue us to where we are” (Thompson, 2003: 34). Ful-
filling this function, opening shots are typically ‘‘far-distance, long
shots that ‘‘establish place, often time, and sometimes other neces-
sary information” (Monaco and Lindroth, 2000: 210). However,
film trailers can likewise start with medium or even close-up shots.
The next section reveals which shot scales are used as opening
shots in the Augstrail corpus; it also discusses what visual (and
narrative) effects such choices may trigger.
6.1. Shot scales and settings in film trailer genres
This section explores trends in the representational strategies
used by film editors in the first shots of trailers. Table 2 shows
the respective choice of shot scales by genre. As can be seen,
two-thirds of the action trailers employ extreme long shots, while
they are less frequently deployed in the first shots of comedy trail-
3
For a very comprehensive description of the annotation process of key domains,
using the USAS semantic tagger, consult Leech (2013: 23).
4
Discourse, Context & Media 44 (2021) 100539
ers (50% of all cases). In documentary trailers, extreme long shots
occur most rarely in opening scenes (40% of all cases). In addition,
comedy and documentary trailers use (simple) long shots twice as
often as action trailers. The popular use of extreme long shots in
the action subcorpus could be linked to the genre’s proclivity to
begin trailers in the middle of a fast-paced action sequence, in
which story characters must move swiftly from one place in time
to the next. In such cases, extreme long shots can provide easy spa-
tial orientation for viewers and allow them to track and trace the
spatial position of characters from one location to the next.
In comedy trailers, extreme long shots are equally used to
reveal story locations. Nevertheless, they are more likely to intro-
duce a scene in a spatially constrained indoor setting such as a
bar, kitchen or living room. Extreme long shots are also frequently
employed as aerial overhead shots of cities, towns, quarters or
external shots of houses, mansions or apartments. In the documen-
tary subcorpus, trailers equally tend to begin in spatially con-
strained indoor settings although documentary trailers have a
clear preference for interview settings, whose dynamic interac-
tions are better captured by long or medium shots.
We can see that the different trailer genres in the corpus appear
to afford different opening shot scales that are conducive to the
way editors wish to introduce the plotline of trailers. The deliber-
ate, recurring choice of the same shot scale in opening shots can
thus serve an important cohesive force that frames the trailer at
a fairly early stage of the viewing experience; and it might induce
audiences to activate different film genres (action: extreme long
shots, comedy: mostly simple long shots, documentary: simple
long or medium shots). As we shall see, this scaling effect is rein-
forced by editors’ choice of settings and their strategies to repre-
sent participants in the opening scene of trailers.
Table 3 reveals the most frequent types of settings for the com-
edy subcorpus. The most frequent category is PRIVATE HOMES, and it
relates to external or internal shots of private family housings, flats
or apartments. Comedy trailers use family home settings signifi-
cantly more often than the other two trailer genres (p1 = 0,0061;
p2 = 0,03).This result may be explained by the traditional focus
of the comedy corpus on family members or close friends that live
or meet in the private settings presented. In contrast, action trailers
rely heavily on overhead shots of large cities, towns, featuring
skyscrapers, buildings, streets and cars at night-time; areas which
are often stylized as a somber, dark and dangerous places. While
comedy trailers likewise use cities and towns in bright daylight
as a backdrop to their stories, the places are transformed into open,
friendly and inviting settings, using up-beat musical scores and
lighting effects to sustain such an ambience. Very few action trail-
ers rely on natural landscapes, including forests, lakes, cliffs or
mountains; and when they do they typically act as a visual back-
drop for ensuing action sequences (see Table 3).
Documentary trailers contain quite different settings in their
opening sequences. The most frequent choice includes an array
of cultural venues, e.g. theatre stages, rock concerts or cinemas.
Political and social documentaries seem to prefer institutional set-
tings, e.g. press conferences, political speeches, company
announcements. They also include workplace environments, such
as factories, corporate buildings, banks, etc. The latter are often
used as metonymic references to the companies or institutions
which these buildings represent and whose potential (mis)conduct
the film seeks to reflect or criticize. Clearly, nature documentaries
typically feature natural landscapes in their opening shots.
What we can see is that trailer genres do not only use different
shot scales in their opening sequences, but also make different use
of particular settings, times and lighting schemes to signal their
generic shape and design. In the following, we will continue this
analytical thread, exploring which humans, objects or events are
typically represented in openings shots. As can be seen, the choice
C.R. Hoffmann Discourse, Context & Media 44 (2021) 100539

Table 2 Table 4
Genre-Specific Dispersion of Shot Scales in trailer opening shots (Augstrail corpus; Genre-related use of human represented participants in the opening shots of trailer
150 trailers). genres.

Shot Scale | Trailer Action/Thriller (50 Comedy (50 Documentary (50 Shot Scale | Trailer Genre Action/Thriller Comedy Documentary
Genre trailers) trailers) trailers) (50 trailers) (50 trailers) (50 trailers)
Extreme Long 33 25 20 Extreme Long Shots (HRPs) 1/33 4/25 5/20
Shots (total)
Long Shots (HRPs) 5/9 14/17 14/17
Long Shots (total) 9 17 17
Close-Ups (total) 8 8 12 Close-Ups (HRPs) 5/8 9/8 7/12
Other scales 0 0 1
(total)

ture two other presentation styles: One shows multiple film char-
Table 3 acters assembled at a social event, e.g. marriage, Christmas party,
Genre-related use of settings in the Augstrail corpus (2 shots in Documentary genre family reunion, typically located in a (semi-)private setting (see
show no discernible background). Fig. 2, shot 2). The other option presents story characters engaged
Settings | Trailer Genre Action/ Comedy Documentary in talk (see Fig. 2, shot 3). In the corpus, such dialogue shots were
Thriller one of the preferred choices in opening shots.
Private Home (Living Room, Bedroom, 3 15 5 While dialogue shots are equally used in documentary trailers
Kitchen, etc.) (see Fig. 3, shot 1), they come in a different shape, using footage
Natural Landscapes (Parks, Trees, 12 6 8 of prominent real-word film stars, politicians, scientists or artists
Lakes, Mountains, etc.) (Fig. 3, shot 2). Documentary trailers routinely film these HRPs in
Workplace Environments 3 3 5
public contexts, for instance at institutional meetings or events
Towns, Cities, Streets 19 12 5
Institutional Settings 1 2 5 in which larger crowds of people are co-present (see Fig. 3, shot
Futuristic Settings 2 0 0 1 and 3).
Famous Sites, Memorials 1 1 2 HRP numbers and choices have been found to stratify across the
Culinary Locations (Restaurants, Bars, 1 3 0
genre corpora in distinctive and meaningful ways. Similar to shot
Hotels)
Entertainment (Theatres, Cinemas, 2 1 10 scales and setting types, they constitute recurring cohesive tracks
etc.) for each trailer genre. More specifically, we can see that the action
Sports (Clubs, Training Grounds) 0 1 2 genre prefers to display its main characters either in private, reflec-
War Zones 2 0 1 tive settings or in fast-paced action sequences, explosions, or car
Vehicles (inside) 0 2 3
chases. HRPs in comedy trailers are shown to take part in private
Workplace Environments (Factories, 2 3 2
Stores, Shops) social events or talk sequences. Documentary trailers typically
Ruins, Castles & Churches 2 1 0 show lead characters in large crowds or social gatherings in corpo-
rate or political settings or in closed interviews. Section 6.3 will
of represented participants can enrich the cohesive profiles for our now shift our focus from human to the representation of non-
three trailer genres. human represented participants (henceforth: NHRPs) and the
way these are featured in the opening shots of the corpus.
6.2. Human represented participants in opening shots

Table 4 shows the different use of human represented partici-
pants across the trailer genres of the corpus. In the corpus, comedy
and documentary trailers use human (represented) participants
(henceforth: HRP) more frequently than action trailers. In all three
subcorpora, HRPs appear more prominently in simple long and
close-up shots than in extreme long shots. This difference seems
particularly pronounced in the action subcorpus, which features
only one HRP in an extreme long shot. Following this rationale,
one could infer that the smaller the shot scale, the more likely
the use of HRPs in opening shots. This sounds plausible since
extreme long shots are primarily used by editors to provide spatial
orientation by using aerial shots and wide-angle lenses. Instead,
simple long and close-up shots tend to zone in on the (non)verbal
(responsive) behaviour of film characters and are thus more likely
to include and highlight HRPs.
There are three typical ways HRPs are represented in the action
trailers of the corpus: the first option shows the main character(s)
in a relaxed or reflective mood (see Fig. 1, shot 1). The second
option presents a story character engaged in some form of (mate-
rial) action, e.g. walking, moving, fighting, etc. (see Fig. 1, shot 2).
The third option presents a random group of individuals in a casual
or professional setting, whose daily routine is suddenly shattered
by a disruptive event (see Fig. 1, shot 3). While option one and
two are dominant in the action subcorpus, option three is clearly
used more rarely.
While comedy trailers also repeatedly draw on the second
option described before (see Fig. 2, shot 1), they additionally fea-
5
6.3. Non-human represented participants in opening shots
In the Augstrail corpus, action trailers frequently feature NHRPs
related to the semantic domain of WAREFARE, DEFENSE & THE ARMY. Apart
from the regular display of soldiers or mercenaries, we can find
military gear and vehicles, naval warships, army vessels, bombers,
rockets and weapons of all kinds (NHRPs). In fact, action trailers
that did not use either weapons, military equipment or aggressive
fight scenes were exceedingly rare. In extreme long shots, typical
NHRPs are skyscrapers, apartment buildings as well as commercial
or industrial buildings that can be classified under the rubric of AR-
CHITECTURE& BUILDINGS. Additional, yet less frequent NHRPs include
tables, chairs, counters, fridges, cupboards that can mainly be sub-
sumed to the domain of FURNITURE. The least frequent category NATURE
contained objects, such as trees, lakes, mountains, rocks or waves.
Comedy trailers frequently depict both HRPs and NHRPs
assigned to the semantic domain of HOME AND HOUSE. As such, many
shots include film characters lying on beds, couches, sitting on
chairs or resting in swimming pools. When they do, characters
are usually not alone but accompanied by family members, rela-
tives or friends. Since private residences, houses, manors, and
apartments are frequently used in extreme long shots, they can
likewise be aligned with the category of ARCHITECTURE & BUILDINGS. A
few establishing shots use visual elements from the semantic
domains of NATURE or WORK & ENVIRONMENT, picturing gardens, lawns,
parks, lakes or exterior shots of shops, such as pawn shops, karate
schools.
C.R. Hoffmann
Fig. 1. Action Trailer Opening Shots including human represented participants.
Fig. 2. Opening Shots in Comedy Trailers, including human represented participants.
Fig. 3. Opening Shots in Documentary Trailers, including human represented participants.
In documentary trailers HRPs and NHRPs are more varied than
in the two other trailer genres, and perhaps this is based on a
greater range of topics covered in the promoted documentary
films. HRPs can involve a range of different human individuals
from the pop icon down to the ‘‘ordinary person”. The diversity
is equally corroborated by NHRPs that include objects as diverse
as cars, engines, sunglasses, chairs, trees, shelves, books, moon
shuttles, microphones, buses or rocks. Despite such variability,
NHRPs are most frequently assigned to the domains of VEHICLES &
TRANSPORTATION for external shots while FURNITURE as well as
GOVERNMENT serve as semantic designators for objects displayed in
internal shots. ECONOMY and SCIENCE are appropriate candidates for
objects such as banks, dollar notes, stock exchange, space shuttles
or scientists, which appear more rarely in the corpus.
7. Key domains and their lexical expressions
While we have so far looked at the cohesive patterns that
emerge from the visual design of opening shots in different trailer
genres, this section examines the lexical expressions which realize
these semantic domains in the accompanying trailer dialogues of
the corpus. It will be investigated how the prominent use of lexical
expressions link up with the genre-bound semantic domains
explored so far (cf. Rayson and Smith, 2006). Key semantic patterns
Discourse, Context & Media 44 (2021) 100539
generate a cohesive effect that affects not only individual trailers
but works to define the prototypical thematic core of trailer genres.
Patterns of this nature can be likened to the cohesive category Hal-
liday (1976: 286) originally labelled collocation. It clusters expres-
sions that ‘‘share some recognisable lexico-semantic relation”. This
time, however, the concept does not only capture cohesive rela-
tions within single texts but lexical links which span across differ-
ent film trailers and can even spread beyond different semiotic
resources. So, in this study, the original scope of collocation will
POLITICS & be expanded considerably to include both verbal and visual modes
of expression.
7.1. Key semantic domains in the action trailers
Table 5 reveals the top ten most frequent semantic domains in
the Augstrail corpus as expressed by the lexical expressions found
in the entire dialogue corpus of all trailers explored in this study.
Results were filtered by assessing the statistical significance of lex-
ical overuse and underuse in the target corpus with the help of the
log-likelihood test (for methodological details, see Section 5.2).
Table five shows that the most frequent semantic domain in the
action corpus is WARFARE, DEFENSE & THE ARMY. The most frequent lexical
item is war (see Fig. 4), and it is also used in compound expres-
sions, such as war criminal. Other tokens include various word
6
C.R. Hoffmann Discourse, Context & Media 44 (2021) 100539

Table 5
Semantic Keyness of lexical expressions in the action/thriller trailer genre subcorpus (spoken language, Augstrail corpus, statistical measure: Log-Likelihood).

Rank Freq SC %1 Freq RC %2 Keyness LL LogRatio Semantic Domain

1 58 0.60 17 0.10 + 53.32 2.60 Warfare, defense and the army; weapons
2 42 0.43 28 0.16 + 16.54 1.41 In power
3 32 0.33 18 0.10 + 16.07 1.66 Crime
4 10 0.10 1 0.01 + 14.61 4.15 Electricity and electrical equipments
5 137 1.41 157 0.91 + 13.77 0.63 Time: Future
6 50 0.52 41 0.24 + 13.45 1.11 Dead
7 15 0.15 5 0.03 + 12.60 2.41 Flying and aircraft
8 19 0.20 11 0.06 + 9.19 1.62 Sailing, swimming, etc.
9 30 0.31 24 0.14 + 8.50 1.15 Vehicles & Transportation
10 42 0.43 39 0.23 + 8.41 0.93 Law & Order

Fig. 4. Concordance sample of the lexical expressions which realise the [WARFARE, DEFENSE & ARMY] domain.

forms of the lemma SHOOT as well as firearms, ammunition or weap-
ons. Military-related NHRPs refer to lexical expressions that repre-
sent military vehicles or related concepts, e.g. pilot, chopper,
helicopter, parachute, plane or airship. Interestingly, this result
seems to corroborate research by McIntyre (2012: 19) whose key-
word analysis of thirteen blockbuster screenplays (mostly action
films) also listed expressions like ship as abbreviation for starship)
or cockpit among the 20 most frequent keywords in the corpus
dialogues.
Similar HRPs include tokens like thief, gangster, smuggler, kid-
napper, robbers or felons in the semantic domain of CRIME. The
domain IN POWER is commonly realized by nominal groups related
to HRPs assuming a position of rank or power, e.g. king, queens.
Some of these units pay tribute the frequent presence of characters
in action films that are responsible for the planning and execution
of military missions, criminal raids or spy extractions, e.g. leader,
controller or administrator. They commonly use a range of technical
tools to break into safe rooms or to escape from prisons listed in
the domain of ELECTRICITY AND ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENTS.
To this end, we can see how the recurring lexical expressions
can be subsumed to semantic domains that, when combined, gen-
erate cohesive patterns of genre setting, protagonists and semantic
‘‘landscapes” conducive to the trailer genre under study. In the case
of action genres, such a cohesive profile amounts to military-or
7
crime-dominated themes, characters and objects, involved in
dynamic fight or flight scenes, using technical equipment of vari-
ous sorts.
Note that in Table 5 the semantic category TIME: FUTURE emerges
as another prominent semantic category in the action genre. The
dominance of the domain is primarily due to the regular use of
the modal auxiliary will in action trailer dialogues. While some
use of the modal expression is volitional, other uses clearly express
futurity, pointing out coming states or events (see Fig. 5). This is
sustained by the frequent use of the be going to construction in
the corpus. Frequent references to future events in verbal dialogues
might be used by trailer editors as narrative ‘‘shortcuts” of key
transitions or future developments in the film’s narrative. The
use of such expressions can thus be a useful strategy to compress
story events.
7.2. Key semantic domains in the comedy trailers
Table 6 offers an overview of key semantic domains used in the
comedy trailer subcorpus. The most frequent semantic category in
the comedy trailer genre is labelled DISCOURSE BIN (see Table 6). A clo-
ser look at the lexical expressions that constitute this category
reveals a range of lexical features, traditionally linked to the use
of spontaneous, casual face-to-face conversation (cf. Biber and
C.R. Hoffmann Discourse, Context & Media 44 (2021) 100539

Fig. 5. Concordance sample of the lexical expressions which realise the [TIME: FUTURE] domain.

Table 6
Semantic Keyness of lexical expressions in the comedy trailer genre subcorpus (spoken language, Augstrail corpus, statistical measure: Log-Likelihood).

Rank Freq SC %1 Freq RC %2 Keyness LL LogRatio Semantic Domain

1 456 3.13 199 1.45 + 89.15 1.11 Discourse Bin
2 52 0.36 9 0.07 + 31.06 2.45 Education in General
3 67 0.46 20 0.15 + 24.13 1.66 Relationship, Intimacy and Sex
4 3001 20.58 2495 18.14 + 21.79 0.18 Pronouns
5 147 1.01 79 0.57 + 17.00 0.81 Kin
6 30 0.21 7 0.05 + 14.09 2.02 Drinks & Alcohol
7 27 0.19 6 0.04 + 13.26 2.09 Language, Speech & Grammar
8 323 2.22 239 1.74 + 8.18 0.35 Negative
9 113 0.77 72 0.52 + 6.93 0.57 Evaluation: Good
10 9 0.06 1 0.01 + 6.90 3.09 Mathematics

Conrad, 2019: 86f). Such expressions include inter alia interjections
(Ah; Oh), greetings (Hey; Hello; Good morning), expressives (Oh my
God), thanking responses (Thank you), backchannel signals, affir-
mation markers (Yeah; Yes; Yep; Right), interrogatives (Do you
think), hesitation signs (um), politeness markers (please) or infor-
mal intensifiers (see Fig. 6).
The semantic domain EDUCATION IN GENERAL contains frequent lexi-
cal expressions, such as class, viva, SATs, students, professors or
teachers. Another popular plotline in the dataset revolves around
love Affairs or coming-to-life stories of teenagers. This finding ties
in with the third most frequent semantic domain OF RELATIONSHIP, INTI-
whose lexical expressions emerge in scenes of romantic
MACY AND SEX,
encounters, dates or talk about story characters’ interpersonal rela-
tions. The domain also contains different forms of verbal aggres-
sion, simple profanities (fuck) or intensifiers (fucking), which are
equally embedded in the talk exchanges and point to the often con-
flictive and emotive thrust of comedy dialogues (see Fig. 7).
The category of DRINKS & ALCOHOL might show that comedy char-
acters tend to consume (alcoholic) beverages to distract them-
selves from interpersonal conflicts with their peers. It might also
simply show that they typically frequent places, like bars or restau-
rants where alcoholic beverages are ordered or served. The fre-
quent use of kinship terms, such as father, mother, brother,
daughter, uncle, in turn, establishes the comedy genre as one that
centers on family-related concerns and events.
The frequent use of negations in the comedy genre is notable.
The many contracted negations are often coupled with first person
pronouns as well as modal auxiliaries, i.e. I can’t do X, I don’t
want X, I haven’t thought about X. In this shape, they epitomize
the conversational conflicts that often dominate the spoken inter-

8
C.R. Hoffmann Discourse, Context & Media 44 (2021) 100539

Fig. 6. Concordance sample of the lexical expressions which realise the [Discourse Bin] domain.

Fig. 7. Concordance sample of the lexical expressions realising the [RELATIONSHIP, INTIMACY AND SEX] domain.

action between comedy characters. Equally frequent is the use of
first and second person pronouns, that is typical in casual conver-
sations (cf. Biber and Conrad, 2019: 7). We should also mention the
frequent use of positive evaluations, e.g. super, well, great, good,
fantastic, that comedy characters routinely employ to negotiate
and secure interpersonal rapport.
Most of the semantic domains are conducive to narrative con-
ventions in the comedy film genre, such as the relatively young
age of story characters, their typical settings in schools, colleges,
restaurants, bars or family homes. The lexical expressions are also
reminiscent of the fact that conflict often serves as a key plot ele-
ment in comedy films.
7.3. Key semantic domains in the documentary trailers
The visual analysis of opening shots in documentary trailers
already revealed a trend to portray protagonists from the world
of politics, the media or individuals with a corporate background.
The semantic domains reappear in the list of frequent lexical
expressions in documentary trailers (see table 7). The domains of
POLITICS & GOVERNMENT are primarily represented by morphological
variants of the base politic*, e.g. political, politicians or political par-
ties, or in the case of GOVERNMENT, by expressions such as president,
nation, government regime, state or country. Frequent expressions
for the domain of MEDIA are reporters, journalism, press or papers.

Table 7
Semantic Keyness of lexical expressions in the documentary trailer subgenre (spoken language, Augstrail corpus, statistical measure: log-likelihood).

Rank Freq SC %1 Freq RC %2 Keyness LL LogRatio Semantic Domain

1 27 0.37 10 0.04 + 40.73 787.32 Politics
2 1797 24.33 4983 20.53 + 37.08 18.51 Grammatical Bin
3 67 0.91 104 0.43 + 21.30 111.72 Geographical names
4 12 0.16 4 0.02 + 19.06 885.91 The Media: Newspapers, etc.
5 37 0.50 47 0.19 + 17.42 158.71 Work & employment: Generally
6 30 0.41 36 0.15 + 15.50 173.86 Government
7 12 0.16 6 0.02 + 15.20 557.27 Degree: Approximators
8 22 0.30 27 0.11 + 10.97 167.78 The Media. TV, Radio & Cinema
9 66 0.89 130 0.54 + 10.76 66.85 People
10 8 0.11 4 0.02 + 10.14 557.27 Quantities: many, much

9
C.R. Hoffmann
Fig. 8. Concordance sample of the lexical expressions realising the [GRAMMATICAL BIN] domain.
WORK & ENVIRONMENT is typically reified by word forms of the
lemma work*, e.g. works, working, worked, etc. as well as lexical
items related to professions, e.g. journalist or staff. The category
GRAMMATICAL BINcontains mostly prepositions, such as for, about, up,
on as well as the infinitive marker to. The frequent use of preposi-
tions in documentaries might imply a necessity for spatial descrip-
tions; a common feature of stories that interviewees or off-screen
narrators relay to the viewers (see Fig. 8). Such descriptions also
align with the frequent use of approximators (nearly, almost, pretty)
and quantifiers (most, many) in the dataset, deployed by intervie-
wees to mitigate the probability of their assertions.
As can be seen, semantic domains are relatively stable within
genre boundaries but they differ from one genre corpus to the next.
While the dispersion of lexical expressions that realise the seman-
tic domains is limited between trailers of the same genre subcor-
pus, their frequent lexical expressions largely correspond to the
same, limited range of semantic domains described before. Trailer
dialogues thus repeatedly use particular semantic domains in dif-
ferent trailer genres and they frequently use particular lexical
expressions or patterns of lexis which sustain the general plot
and character orientation of each genre in question. We could elicit
distinct patterns of (verbal) cohesion which provides a recurring
semantic prosody for each of the three trailer genres investigated
in this study. These visual patterns described in section seven
strike a chord with the visual patterns of cohesion in opening sce-
nes explored in section six. Both coincide to enable movie audience
to assign genre characteristics to each movie trailer as quickly as
possible. Genre categorization, it is believed, can contribute
tremendously to integrating the viewing experience into the gen-
eric frame knowledge of the movie audience. As a result, under-
standing a trailer will be much easier for viewers who succeed in
intergrating the (often subtle) cohesive, audio-visual clues and
clusters into their previous cinematographic knowledge of film
genres.
8. Conclusion
The study has shown what choices editors make to stage the
opening scenes of film trailers. Such choices yield cohesive clusters
that comprise specific types of shot scales, settings or (non-)human
represented participants. For instance, in action trailers main char-
acters are primarily shown in a private, reflective mood or depicted
in everyday activities which are suddenly disrupted by unforeseen
events. In contrast, HRPs in comedy trailers are usually assembled
in private social venues, e.g. parties, meetings, and in documentary
trailers, characters are typically placed in interview settings or in
10
Discourse, Context & Media 44 (2021) 100539
the middle of larger social gatherings. In a similar vein, NHRPs in
action trailers are assigned to the semantic domains of WARFARE, MIL-
ITARYor CRIME, while NHRPS in Comedy trailers primarily feature
objects from the semantic domains of HOME, HOUSE or ARCHITECTURE.
documentary trailers, instead, used objects from the domains of VE-
HICLES & TRANSPORTATIONor ARCHITECTURE & BUILDINGS.
In line with this genre-defining use of visual elements, the key
domain analysis of trailer dialogues has uncovered the key seman-
tic domains of the three genre subcorpora. When combined, the
verbal and the visual analysis yield decisive multimodal patterns
of cohesion which differ in significant ways from one genre to
the next. We can therefore contend that trailer genres define the
way multimodal cohesion is construed in film trailers. The cohe-
sive means explored in this study reinforce each other, creating a
simultaneous audio-visual stream that stems from the same
semantic lineage. The resulting cohesive force makes its mark on
the early dialogue and imagery of trailers and thereby projects
the (proto)typical narrative hallmarks each film genre is known for.
The study hopes to have shown how multimodal cohesion can
be measured and tracked within and across larger sets of film trail-
ers and trailer genres. It has likewise provided a new corpus-
assisted framework which captures both verbal and visual means
of expression to explore multimodal cohesive profiles across genre
boundaries.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
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