The Authors' Analysis Of An 'Entity-Focused' Image

 Martin & Rose (2007: 323, 324-5):

In this framework, the photo of the young boy is a classifying image. In nuclear terms, we have a young black boy (central), with his hand raised in a fist (nuclear), in front of a crowd (peripheral). But from the perspective of field, each of these elements has at least two possible referents. The boy at once represents the past roles of black youth in the anti-apartheid resistance, and their future lives in a free South Africa. His ‘black power’ salute evokes both the schoolchildren’s historical protests against the regime, and the celebration of Inauguration Day. In his 1995 edition, Mandela refers to this gesture as the Afrika salute (in photos between pp402-3), underlining its function in indigenous solidarity. And the boy can be construed both as a member of the crowd, and as its embodiment — a leader in other words, implying a connection with Mandela. 

The potential ambiguity of visual images is part of their power: their interpretation is left relatively open to the viewer, widening their appeal, and their multiple interpretations can map onto each other in the manner of metaphors, to evoke more general or abstract categories than the simple images they depict (cf. the discussion of grammatical metaphor and mode, in section 9.1 above).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the claim here is that this photograph is a classifying image because it is 'entity-focused' rather than 'activity-focused'. However, Martin & Rose provide no rationâle, either in terms of content or expression, for this claim. It might be alternatively argued that the photograph is 'activity-focused', since the 'Afrika salute' is highly relevant to the represented event, as well as being what chiefly distinguishes this image of a boy from other images of boys.

[2] To be clear, this is not an argument for the claim that the photograph is 'entity-focused' because it analyses its content in terms of ideational meaning (nuclearity) rather than textual meaning (focus); see previous post. Moreover, the analysis, which interprets the entity as if it were a nominal group, is inconsistent with the authors' own model (p98):

If this model is applied to the authors' verbal description of the photograph, then black boy is the centre (Classifier Thing), young is nuclear (Epithet), and both with his hand raised in a fist and in front of a crowd are peripheral (Qualifier).

[3] To be clear, in SFL Theory, such "referents" are Values that are realised symbolically by Tokens.

[4] To be clear, these reinterpretations of the meanings of the photograph, the boy and his raised fist, are reconstruals of them as metaphorical realisations of a higher level, more congruent meaning; see Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 272, 289).

[5] This is a non-sequitur. If the boy "embodies" the crowd, then he "embodies" the opposite of a leader. As such, the photograph does not imply a connection with Mandela in this sense.

[6] Trivially, this ambiguity could also narrow the appeal of an image to viewers, as when one possible meaning of an image is interpreted as offensive to some members of a community.