Handbook of Corporate Communication and Public ... - Blogs Unpad

on an imaginary level. There may be a further
vector formed by a gesture in the same direction.
This visual configuration can create a
visual form of address by acknowledging
the viewer explicitly or it can constitute
an ‘image act’ whereby the producer uses
the image to do something to the viewer. This
type of image is termed ‘a demand’. There is
a demand that the viewer enters into a
relationship.
The relationship is often signified by other
means, perhaps by the facial expression of
the represented participant. The converse of
the demand is ‘the offer’, where the picture
addresses the viewer indirectly. The viewer is
not the object but the subject of the look. No
contact is made. The viewer’s role is that of
an invisible onlooker. It offers the represented
participants to the viewer as an item of
information as though they were in a glass
case. The contrast between the offer and
demand is a choice which can be used to suggest
different relations with different others to
make viewers engage with some and detach
from others.
It is normal for viewers to attach more credibility
to some kinds of message than to
others. Although reality is in the eye of the
beholder the eye has had a cultural training
and is situated in a social setting and a history.
Realism for a particular group is an effect
of the practices which define that group. A
particular kind of realism is itself a motivated
sign in which the values, beliefs and interests
of that group find their expression. Different
realisms exist side by side in the same cultural
context. What is expected and accepted as
real in one mode, say in a glossy magazine
about the countryside where naturalism is as
close as the picture editor can achieve, may
differ from the case of photographs of cars in
an automotive manufacturer’s brochure. Even
here there may be a form of idealized reality
which is accepted as idealized by the viewer.
They may identify with the participants,
despite the fact they know objectively it is a
fantasy environment where the sun always
shines and every car is in showroom
condition.
Kress and van Leeuwen argue that the
modern densely printed page has ceased to
be a significant textual unit of meaning
because words and concepts flow from one
to the next and the flow can be broken by the
typesetter (or computer) at any point in the
text without changing its meaning. The page
becomes a single semiotic unit structured not
by its linguistic content but by its visual composition.
When the readers scan the page of a
corporate brochure they are not necessarily
linear in the direction and movement of their
eyes. The eyes may go from centre to margin,
in circular fashion or vertically and it becomes
a ‘nonlinear composition’, a form of page
design which encourages multi-directionality.
In western society it is assumed that what
appears on the left is the given in informational
terms and what appears on the right is
new or not yet known to the reader. There is
thus a sense of continuous movement from
left to right following societies’ left–right reading
pattern. The word ‘given’ in this case refers
to what can be assumed to be known by the
viewer and the word ‘new’ is what is assumed
and cannot yet be known.
Composition of a picture or a page involves
different degrees of salience and, as such,
salience can create a hierarchy of importance
among elements which can change the
value between the ‘given’ and the ‘new’.
The perception of salience in speech results
from a complex interplay between a number
of auditory factors such as pitch, loudness,
vowel colouring and so on. Salience in visual
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors