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developed in this chapter as an aid to analysis
for managers who lack training in semiotic
theory.
The application of semiotic theory
to the visual
Kress and van Leeuwen 2 in their seminal work
Reading Images, examined ways in which
images communicate meaning. By looking at
the formal elements and structure of design,
colour, perspective, framing and composition
they developed a visual grammar.
Visual representation not only expresses
meaning that is separate from, and often
different from, written text but it can have its
own grammar. Meanings arise out of the society
in which people live. There is a plethora
of differences between societies and the
people in them but messages replicate these
differences through contrasting codings.
Communication takes place in social structures
which are inevitably marked by power
differences. This affects how each participant
understands the notion of understanding. The
commercial sign-maker needs to understand
what social changes are at work and whether
they are understood in their interrelation.
Language has always existed as only one
mode in a total list of modes which can be
used in the production of a text. For the
majority of communication specialists, many
of them trained in the skills of journalism, the
language mode has been paramount and the
one in which they received training.
As a starting point we must accept that
what in language is described in words such
as ‘action verbs’ are in pictures realized by
shapes or elements that can be termed vectors.
These may be realized, for example, by a
figure pointing, an outstretched arm or the
line of a building, roof or road. The visual
structuring and the linearity of the story set the
foundation of the visual text. When participants
are shown to be doing something to
each other they are connected by a vector
which forms a narrative that can show class,
ideology, and other meanings. Because of
their size or position in the picture, the actor
and the goal are often the most salient of the
participants. They contrast against the background,
the colour and its variations, the
sharpness of focus of the picture, and possibly
through the psychological salience they have
for the audience to whom the picture is
intended.
Kress and van Leeuwen use the word ‘participants’
within a picture because it suggests
something is actively happening by virtue of
the participants’ involvement. There are two
types of participant, the ‘interactive participant’
who appears to be speaking or listening
or is in some way in the act of communication,
and a subset which can be described as
‘the implied interactive participant’, who is
silently instructing us, the viewer, through the
design of the picture.
It is important how the participants relate
to each other. One set of participants can, for
example play the role of ‘subordinates’ to at
least one of the other participants who is
termed ‘superordinate’. Equivalence may or
may not exist between subordinates and this
can be visually realized by symmetrical or
asymmetrical composition. The subordinates
being placed at equal (or not) distance from
each other, given the same size (or not) and
the same orientation (or not) towards the
horizontal and vertical axes.
Kress and van Leeuwen say that ‘When
represented participants look at the viewer,
vectors are formed by participant’s eye-lines’
which connect the participants with the
viewer. Contact is established, even if it is only
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors