Film / Music / Narrative: A Multidimensional Mapping Processes by Juan Chattah

Film / Music / Narrative: A Multidimensional Mapping Processes by Juan Chattah

In this study, Juan Chattah advances an analytical framework that (re)frames cross-modal and cross-domain correspondences as metaphorical mappings mediated by image schemas. Because music in film often acts as one agent within a multidimensional mapping that involves the visuals and the narrative, Juan draws exclusively on the film music repertoire.

First, he unpacks Lakoff & Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Johnson’s (1987) Image Schema theory. Second, Juan applies these theories as investigative frameworks to explore multidimensional mappings within a film, and survey related supporting research from cognitive and empirical musicology. Third, he reviews theoretical and empirical research that seeks to uncover the neural underpinnings of metaphor and image schema theories.

Overlaying the metaphor and image schema frameworks onto the investigation of cross-modal and cross-domain correspondences within film provides numerous advantages— such approach reveals an (unobserved) implicit directionality of mappings, uncovers the intrinsic qualities of the domains that enable such mappings, expands the relevant body of research to include investigations on the neural underpinnings of metaphor and image schemas, and ultimately serves to lay an experiential foundation upon which broader testable hypotheses may be constructed.