This thesis addresses the problematic categorization of film music in terms of a
reductive diegetic/nondiegetic distinction (‘the binary’) and presents an alternative
analytical framework. Following the law of parsimony, we reconstruct this original
binary distinction in order to establish a new tripartite schema that accounts for the many otherwise ambiguous categories of sound that had occupied an unknown or
indeterminate region of the binary zones. Drawing on the works of Bordwell,
Kassabian, and Neumeyer in particular, the thesis seeks to put an end to the
theoretical indeterminacy that haunts the binary distinction by introducing a new
and inclusive ternary schema of sound cinema
