Exploring Cosmic Realms Through Corpus Linguistics: Unraveling Multiverse Concepts in 'Everything Everywhere All at Once'

Discovering the multiverse offers countless experiences and mysteries that are just waiting to be solved. This research looks at how the film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” explores and portrays the idea of a multiverse by using multimodality and corpus linguistic analysis. Firstly, the movie’s poster was analyzed to investigate the theme of the multiverse, and found poster graphically communicates the idea of the multiverse to the fullest. After poster analysis, the movie’s transcription was analyzed using corpus analysis such as an astronomy-focused semantic field with words like “universe,” “multiverse,” “alpha-verse,” and “cosmic” was found. Analysis of frequency revealed that “multiverse,” “alpha-verse,” and “cosmic” showed up less often, with 3, 1, and 1 occurrence, respectively, but “universe” was a dominant component with 26 occurrences. Additional analysis focused on the actual and anaphoric use of “universe” (26 and 29 instances, respectively), illuminating its pivotal function in the film's story and conversation. It shows a common use of the word “universe” to refer to several realities or settings in the story, indicating the presence of many parallel universes. The usage of “universe” in anaphora fosters linkages between various tales and character viewpoints while enhancing narrative consistency and thematic coherence. Concordance research reveals subtle similarities in the contextual use of the term “universe,” highlighting its thematic relevance as a primary motif in the examination of speculative tales and existential issues. This study emphasises comprehensibility if we use different modes of communication, i.e. poster and transcription, concerning multimodality analysis and corpus analysis both. © 2024 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.