Problems With The System Of Image-Text Relations

 Martin & Rose (2007: 329, 333n):

Image-text relations include expansion or projection, boundary strength and identification. These … options in image-text relations in Figure 9.14.⁹

 

⁹ We have used the term IMAGE-TEXT BOUNDARY whereas Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) use the term ‘framing’ for boundary strength, which conflicts with Bernstein’s (1971, 1996) use of ‘framing’ for control within a context.

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously observed, expansion and projection do not feature in the discourse semantics of Martin & Rose. Of the expansion categories, the authors provided no example of an extension relation between image and text, and neither example of elaboration or enhancement withstood close scrutiny. With regard to projection relations between image and text, the authors provided no examples, and importantly, a text cannot project an image as a locution, because locutions are wordings, and images lack a lexicogrammatical stratum.

[2] Importantly, as previously observed, boundary strength is an expression plane distinction, but Martin & Rose here again misconstrue it as being of the same level of symbolic abstraction as (conjunctively related) content plane systems.

[3] As previously observed, the authors' example of image-text identification did not withstand close scrutiny, because it involved the false claim that people depicted in a photograph were gazing at the text to the left of the photograph, despite the fact that their gaze was actually directed to the stage in the background of the photograph.

[4] To be clear, this footnote at the end of the chapter acknowledges the intellectual source of the the authors' model, and identifies their own contribution as rebranding the original system, on the spurious pretext that the original term has a different meaning in a different field (which can also be said for many other terms. such as 'projection', for example).

Problems With The System Of Image Textual Organisation

Martin & Rose (2007: 329, 333n):

In sum, images and layouts are organised by their left-right, top-down and centre-margin axes, and by the relative salience of their elements. … These options in textual organisation are set out in Figure 9.13. … ⁹

 

⁹ Kress and van Leeuwen’s terms Given and New derive from Halliday’s description of the linguistic system of INFORMATION (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). We have generalised their Given-New, Ideal-Real and Centre-Margin contrasts as options in INFORMATION DISTRIBUTION. 

The term ‘salience’ is used by Kress and van Leeuwen, but the SALIENCE values of high/neutral/low are our own. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this confuses the spatial dimensions of images with textual organisation: the relative textual highlighting of information in images. In doing so, it omits the depth dimension: from foreground to background, and misconstrues the centre-margin relation as an axis.

[2] To be clear, the validity of the network can be challenged on two grounds: its features and its wiring. 

With regard to its features, as previously observed, the 'horizontal' system makes the unwarranted assumption that Given always precedes New, whereas in the source model, New may precede Given, Given may be absent, or "surround" the New. 

With regard to the 'vertical' system, the features 'ideal' and 'real' are categories of ideational meaning, not categories of textual highlighting. 

With regard to the 'central' system, the centre of an image is not always the textual focus, as previously demonstrated for the case of maps. 

And with regard, to the 'SALIENCE' system, Martin & Rose have not demonstrated three levels of salience in their analyses.

With regard to the wiring of the network, it allows for the contradictory combinations of textual highlighting (New, Central) with low SALIENCE, and textual downplaying (Given, Marginal) with high SALIENCE.

[3] To be clear, this footnote at the end of the chapter acknowledges the intellectual source of the their model, and identifies their own contribution as a system name and feature scaling.

Enhancing Image-Text Relations

 Martin & Rose (2007: 323, 328-9):

The left-right axis of the page, the vectors in the inauguration-flag image, and its relations with preceding text, combine to construct an indexical temporal sequence. The gaze of people in the crowd is up to the stage and across to the left. Implicit in these gazes is the inauguration ceremony they are watching, and its central protagonist, Mandela. And their gaze is also towards Mandela’s life story that lies to the left of the image. These vectors realise implicit identification, all pointing anaphorically to ‘him’, Mandela. But Mandela himself is not in the picture. Counterbalancing this up and leftward gaze is the powerful vector in the flag, which points down and right towards the people who surround it, cataphorically identifying ‘them’. In sum, the layout and images indexically construe a complex activity sequence, in which not only apartheid belongs to the past, but also the struggle against it, and Mandela’s own life story. In contrast the future belongs to the people.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is not true. The two photographs construe the same temporal location — that of the inauguration of Mandela as President — but the text, an excerpt from the Meaning of Freedom text (reproduced below) is not located in time relative to the inauguration.

[2] This is misleading, because it is not true. The gaze of the crowd in the right-hand photograph is towards the background in the image, not left to the adjacent text.

[3] To be clear, this confuses paying attention (looking at phenomena) with directing the attention of others (pointing at phenomena).

[4] To be clear, this "powerful vector in the flag" is directed only to one anonymous head, in the foreground of the photograph. That is, every other person in the crowd is excluded by this vector.

[5] As demonstrated above, this conclusion is not warranted by the authors' analyses. The 'activity sequence' is confined to the text, and the two photographs, both of the same occasion, are not related temporally to the text.

∞

Meaning of Freedom

I was not born with a hunger to be free. I was born free - free in every way that I could know. Free to run in the fields near my mother's hut, free to swim in the clear stream that ran through my village, free to roast mealies under the stars and ride the broad backs of slow^moving bulls, As long as I obeyed my father and abided by the customs of my tribe, I was not troubled by the laws of man or God.

It was only when ! began to learn that my boyhood freedom was an illusion, when I discovered as a young man that my freedom had already been taken from me, that I began to hunger for it.

At first, as a student, I wanted freedom only for myself, the transitory freedoms of being able to stay out at night, read what I pleased and go where i chose. Later, as a young man in Johannesburg, I yearned for the basic and honourable freedoms of achieving my potential, of earning my keep, of marrying and having a family - the freedom not to be obstructed in a lawful life.

But then i slowly saw that not only was I not free, but my brothers and sisters were not free.

I saw that it was not just my freedom that was curtailed, but the freedom of everyone who looked like I did. That is when I joined the African National Congress and that is when the hunger for my own freedom became the greater hunger for the freedom of my people. It was this desire for the freedom of my people to live their lives with dignity and self-respect that animated my life, that transformed a frightened young man into a bold one, that drove a law-abiding attorney to become a criminal that turned a family-loving husband into a man without a home, that forced a life-loving man to live like a monk. I am no more virtuous or self-sacrificing than the next man, but I found that 1 could not even enjoy the poor and limited freedoms I was allowed when I knew my people were not free.

Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me. 

It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. 

I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man's freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. 

The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their humanity.

When I walked out of prison, that was my mission, to liberate the oppressed and the oppressor both. 

Some say that has now been achieved. But I know that this is not the case. The truth is that we are not yet free; we have merely achieved the freedom to be free, the right not to be oppressed. We have not taken the final step of our journey, but the first step on a longer and even more difficult road. For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning. 

I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. I have taken a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on the distance I have come. But I can only rest for a moment, for with freedom come responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.

(Mandela 1995: 746-51)

Elaborating Image-Text Relations

Martin & Rose (2007: 323, 328):

In the horizontal triptych, image-text relations are both elaborating and enhancing. The image of the boy restates the words that begin Mandela’s story, I was not born with a hunger to be free . . . It was only when I began to learn that my boyhood freedom was an illusion ... that I began to hunger for it. The analogy with the text is signalled by the weak image-text boundary, with the photo intruding into the text. In contrast, the image of the inauguration is more strongly bounded from Mandela’s story, and Mandela himself is noticeably absent from the photo, replaced by the people of South Africa under the flag of their new nation. So this image is clearly marked off from the text as distinct new information.

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously noted, the logico-semantic relations of elaboration and enhancement do not feature in Martin's model of logical discourse semantics, conjunction, because it is a rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's (1976) model of cohesive conjunction, which was written before they had formulated the most general categories of logical relations.

[2] To be clear, this is manifestly untrue. The image is a photograph of a boy at Mandela's inauguration as President. As such, it does not restate Mandela's words about himself. This can be demonstrated by presenting the photograph to someone and asking them what it "states".

[3] To be clear, this is a bare assertion, unsupported by argument as to why a "weak image-text boundary" should represent a relation of analogy, rather than anything else, or why a "strong image-text boundary" should not represent a relation of analogy. Moreover, it is not true that the image "intrudes" into the text, since there is no overlap of image with text. Instead, the text wraps around the image, each remaining distinct from each other.

[4] To be clear, this is bare assertion, unsupported by argument as why this image-text boundary is "more strongly bounded" than the other. On the contrary, both images are unframed, and both images are separate from the texts adjacent to them. This would suggest that the image-text boundaries are the same for both images.

[5] To be clear, Mandela is absent from both photographs. The boy depicted in the left-hand photograph is not Mandela, but a member of the crowd at Mandela's inauguration as President. Accordingly, Mandela has not been replaced in the right-hand photograph.

[6] To be clear, this conclusion is not validated by the propositions that precede it; see [4] and [5].

The Vertical Textual Organisation Of Layout: Ideal/Real

 Martin & Rose (2007: 323, 328):

The semantic contrast between the top and bottom texts is between the historical origins of apartheid (Ideal) and their outcomes in the recent past and present (Real);  the text above deals with both the inauguration of a new republic and erection of the former apartheid regime; the text below notes the effects on people, first of the old regime (harsh and inhumane), and then of the new (respect for the rights and freedoms of all peoples). The photo of the boy mediates this temporal succession: the top-bottom layout construes the apartheid regime as preceding the boy’s protest, and its overturning as following his protest. The relatively high salience of the image has the effect of emphasising the causative role of the people’s defiance, represented by the boy, in overturning the inhumane regime. This is a reading of the texts enhancing the image, but as we discussed above for appraisal, the boy’s tenacity can also be read as determination for the future, which is elaborated by the words in the text below (overturned forever).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, "the top and bottom texts" are one text, or more properly, an excerpt of one text, interrupted by the photograph of a boy in the crowd at Mandela's inauguration as President.

[2] The authors' claim here is that Mandela is presenting the erection of the Apartheid system as ideal, and that 'ideal' is textual meaning, rather than ideational meaning.

[3] The authors' claim here is that Mandela is presenting the overthrow of the Apartheid system as not ideal, and that 'real' is textual meaning, rather than ideational meaning.

[4] To be clear, this is the authors' interpretation of the ideational meaning of the text above and below the photograph. Martin & Rose present this as an analysis of the textual meaning of the layout.

[5] To be clear, this is absolute nonsense. The photograph simply depicts a boy celebrating — not protesting — at the inauguration of Mandela as President. That is, it depicts the Range of the opening thematic circumstance of the text: On the day of the inauguration.

[6] On the one hand, the relatively high salience of the image is in terms of its (iconic) expression, relative to the (symbolic) expression of language. Whether this salience translates to its content needs to be established by reasoned argument. 

On the other hand, as previously explained, the authors' claim that the depicted boy is expressing defiance derives from their interpretation of him as metaphorical for Mandela, and then transferring the defiance they attribute to Mandela onto the boy himself. The photograph simply depicts a boy celebrating the inauguration of Mandela as President.

[7] To be clear, as demonstrated above, neither of the authors' claims regarding enhancement, time [5] or causation [6], withstand close scrutiny.

[8] Again, the authors' claim that the depicted boy is expressing tenacity derives from their interpretation of him as metaphorical for Mandela, and then transferring the tenacity they attribute to Mandela onto the boy himself.

[9] On the one hand, experientially, the authors' claim here is that determination for the future is encoded by reference to the words "overturned forever":

On the other hand, logically, the authors' claim is that the words "overturned forever" either restates or exemplifies or specifies in greater detail determination for the future.

∞

Procrustean Bed: a scheme or pattern into which someone or something is arbitrarily forced

The Horizontal Textual Organisation Of Layout: Given/New

Martin & Rose (2007: 323, 328):

In the horizontal triptych on pages 202-3, the photo of the boy is Given and that of the inauguration is New.  The photos are more salient than the texts by virtue of their colour intensity and Given-New positions, with the inauguration image by far most salient. Our eye is attracted first to this large picture, then back to the photo of the boy, and then to the texts to explain the images for us. Within the left-hand vertical triptych, the image of the boy is more salient than the marginal texts above and below him, due to its size, colour and centrality. As a result we expect these texts to expand on the meaning of the photograph, and indeed they do, with enhancement.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin & Rose provide no argument here for the applicability of Halliday's information unit to images and page layout. The authors merely accept its use by Kress & van Leeuwen (1996) without question. Moreover, there is no argument for treating the unmarked sequence, Given^New, as the only possible ordering. For information units, the structure may be:

• Given^New
• Given^New^Given
• New^Given
• New

Here the left image is claimed to be Given information merely because it is positioned to the left of the other image, which is claimed to be (the focus of) New information merely because it is positioned to the right of the other image. Martin & Rose provide no argument as to why a photograph of a boy in the crowd (who is not mentioned in the text) should be Given information relative to the photograph of the flag in the same crowd. It might be argued that the new South African flag is presented as New, but Martin & Rose do not make that argument.

[2] To be clear, here Martin & Rose have (unwittingly) switched their attention from the content plane to the expression plane, confusing salience of expression (size, colour, layout position) with salience of content.

[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue. While it is true that the photograph provides an instance of 'the dark-skinned peoples' mentioned in the texts, the texts above and below the photograph say nothing whatsoever about the meaning of the photograph:

See further in the following post. 

Image-Text Relations

Martin & Rose (2007: 327-8, 333n):

Image-text relations include their logical relations, the boundaries between text and image, and identification. Logical relationships can be mapped in terms of expansion or projection, as we described for texts in macrogenres in Chapter 8. For example, images and texts can restate, specify or summarise each other (elaborating), they can be added to each other (extending), or explain or follow each other in time (enhancing). Images can also project wordings as thought or speech bubbles, and the reverse is also possible. Boundaries between image and text may be weak or strong: images may intrude into text, and text may overlap images, or there may be strong demarcation. And finally elements of images may be identified explicitly in accompanying texts (e.g. in captions), and elements of text or other images may be referred to in accompanying images, for example by vectors that point to them.⁸

⁸ Kress and van Leeuwen draw attention to vectors, which can be constructed through the gaze of participants or lines formed by the position of people and things. Whereas they interpret vectors in ideational terms, its seems to us that vectors are realisational strategies for ideational or textual functions.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Importantly, and not acknowledged here, these logical and identification relations obtain at the level of content, whereas the text-image boundary relations obtain at the level of expression.

[2] To be clear, the authors' model of logical discourse semantics, the system of conjunction (now rebranded 'connexion'), does not use the general category 'expansion', and 'projection' is entirely absent. This is because Martin's model is his rebranding of cohesive conjunction (Halliday & Hasan 1976), in which the general category of expansion had not yet been theorised by Halliday, and in which projection plays no cohesive function.

[3] To be clear, this would involve instances like he said <image>, and she thought <image>.

[4] To be clear, as previously demonstrated in the examination of Chapter 5, the authors' model of identification is a confusion of 'reference' in the textually cohesive sense, and 'reference' in the ideational sense of denotation. It will be seen that this misunderstanding is maintained in their discussion of image-text relations.

Problems With The Model Of Textual Organisation Of Images

Martin & Rose (2007: 326-7):

To interpret the semantic relations of images to texts in the layout of pages 202-3, we need to introduce several dimensions of textual organisation and image-text relations. Kress and van Leeuwen (1996) suggest two forms of textual organisation for images, ‘polarised’ and ‘centred’. On the one hand there is polarisation along horizontal and/or vertical axes. For images that are horizontally polarised, the lefthand side is glossed as Given and the right as New — organisation comparable to that outlined by Halliday for the English clause, as introduced in Chapter 6 above. For vertically polarised images Kress and van Leeuwen suggest the terms Ideal and Real, where Ideal may be characterised as a more general or abstract category, and Real as more specific or concrete. Alternatively, images may be organised around a Centre and Margin principle, with Centre the nucleus of information on which marginal elements depend. These axes are schematised in Figure 9.12.

A further textual dimension is the relative salience of elements in an image or page layout that draws readers’ attention to one element before another. Salience may be indicated by a number of factors, including size, colour intensity or the strength of vectors, as well as centre-margin, left-right, top-down positions.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, for Halliday, Given and New are elements of the information unit, not the clause.

[2] To be clear, 'ideal' and 'real' are ideational categories, not textual categories. That is, Martin & Rose follow Kress & van Leeuwen (1996) in mistaking a claim about ideational organisation for textual organisation.

[3] To be clear, the functionality of this problematic model can be tested by applying it to the following image:

The claim then is that this pictographic image construes the following textual distinctions:

• the 'New World' (western hemisphere) is Given, whereas the 'Old World' (eastern hemisphere) is New;
• the northern hemisphere as Ideal, whereas the southern hemisphere is Real; and
• the Mediterranean region is Centre, whereas all else is Margin.

Or more specifically:

• North America is Given and Ideal;
• South America is Given and Real;
• Eurasia is New and Ideal;
• Australasia is New and Real;
• Africa is Marginal and neither Given nor New.

[4] To be clear, Martin & Rose have just previously interpreted these factors as resources for interpersonal graduation but here reinterpret them as resources for textual salience.

Problems With The System Of Interpersonal Meanings In Images

 Martin & Rose (2007: 326, 327):

In sum, the two photos illustrate options in attitude, engagement and graduation, set out in Figure 9.11.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, as demonstrated in previous posts, none of these applications of ATTITUDE features survives close scrutiny.

• The authors' application of affect misrepresented ideational construals of emotion as interpersonal assessments using emotion (affect). 
• The authors' application of appreciation confused ideational construals in a photograph with the appreciation of these by a viewer (the authors). 
• The authors' application of judgement involved reconstruing the boy in a photograph as a metaphor for Nelson Mandela, whom the authors judged as tenacious, and then incongruously transferring that judgement to the boy.

[2] To be clear, as observed in previous posts, the authors here misrepresent 'engagement' in the sense of Kress & van Leeuwen (1996) as 'engagement' in the appraisal sense.

[3] To be clear, Martin & Rose have not demonstrated three levels of graduation in images. As demonstrated in previous posts

• in exemplifying the graduation of appreciation, the authors confused scalable ideational qualities with the degree of their appreciation of them, and mistook textual prominence for interpersonal graduation, and
• in exemplifying the graduation of judgement, the authors interpreted the hand shape of the boy in a photograph as intensifying the tenacity they attributed to Mandela; see [1] above.

Applying Appreciation, Graduation And Engagement To The Inauguration-Flag Photograph

Martin & Rose (2007: 326, 327):

On the other hand the inauguration-flag photo invokes positive appreciation, including aspects of reaction, composition and valuation. With respect to terms exemplified in Table 2.10, the inauguration crowd appears imposing, exciting and dramatic, as does the huge flag, whose composition is both complex and unified, and which carries values that are at once profound, innovative and enduring. These values are amplified by the size and centrality of the flag, and the intensity of its colours. With respect to engagement, the people are facing directly away from the viewer, so we are obliquely invited to enter the scene in the direction they are facing.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin & Rose are not identifying the meaning created by either the photographer or the boy in the photograph, but by specific viewers of the photograph (themselves). In doing so, they confuse ideational construals made by the photographer with interpersonal assessments made by the viewer.

[2] To be clear, here Martin & Rose confuse scalable aspects of the depicted flag with the degree (graduation) of their own appreciation. Moreover, to the extent that the foregrounding and centrality of the flag focuses attention on the flag, this is the "graduation" of textual meaning, not interpersonal meaning.

[3] To be clear, as previously observed, this is 'engagement' in the sense of Kress & van Leeuwen (1996), but misrepresented by Martin & Rose as 'engagement' in the appraisal sense.

Misapplying A Misrepresentation Of Engagement To A Photograph

 Martin & Rose (2007: 326):

As the boy directly faces the viewer, his defiance/celebration engages us directly, but at the same time his oblique gaze averts a potentially confronting challenge to the viewer. The message is not that I’m defying you, but is rather an invitation to join us in the victory over injustice.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because the boy does not directly face the viewer. His face is oriented to the left and down, relative to the viewer, his eyes further to the left, and his body tilts down and faces to the right of the viewer.

[2] To be clear, the authors' claim that the boy is expressing defiance is inconsistent both with the occasion, the inauguration of Mandela as President, and with other photographs of children purported to depict defiance, such as:

[3] To be clear, as previously observed, this is 'engagement' in the sense of Kress & van Leeuwen (1996), but misrepresented by Martin & Rose as 'engagement' in the appraisal sense.

Applying Judgement And Graduation To A Photograph

Martin & Rose (2007: 326):

In APPRAISAL terms, the photo of the boy invokes a positive judgement of tenacity that must be read in relation to the texts that surround him.  The protest against the regime construed by his raised fist reflects the tenacious resistance of Mandela and his comrades as recounted in the adjacent Freedom text.  The fist can then be read as amplifying his tenacity to the level of defiance (more so than if he had waved or saluted with an open hand).  This is a retrospective reading of his tenacity as defiance against the old regime;  on the other hand his tenacity can also be read prospectively as youthful determination in the nation’s hopes for the future. These are complementary readings as protest against the regime vs celebration of its overthrow, that are expanded by the texts above and below the photo — image-text relations that are discussed in the following section.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin & Rose are not identifying the meaning created by either the photographer or the boy in the photograph, but by specific viewers of the photograph (themselves); see further below.

[2] To be clear, if the meaning of the image depends on the accompanying text, then the meaning is made by both semiotic systems, not by the image alone.

[3] To be clear, here Martin & Rose construe three levels of meaning within the image:

• the tenacious resistance of Mandela and his comrades, realised by
• the protest against the regime, realised by
• his raised fist.

More specifically, the middle level of meaning, the protest against the regime, is metaphorically encoded by reference to the lowest level, his raised fist, and the highest level, the tenacious resistance of Mandela and his comrades, is metaphorically decoded by reference to the middle level, the protest against the regime.

That is, the judgement of tenacity in this image of a boy is made on Mandela and his comrades by Martin & Rose.

[4] To be clear, here Martin & Rose have become confused by their levels of abstraction and incongruously transferred their judgement of the tenacity from Mandela and his comrades to the boy ('his tenacity') in the photograph. This is analogous to transferring a judgement of a movie character to the actor playing the rôle. With this confusion, they claim, without supporting argument, that the shape of the boy's hand is an amplification of his tenacity to the level of defiance, despite the fact that 'tenacity' means persistence, whereas 'defiance' means resistance.

[5] To be clear, here again Martin & Rose misattribute the tenacity they have ascribed to Mandela and his comrades to the boy ('his tenacity') in the photograph, and decode his tenacity by reference to youthful determination in the nation's hope for the future.

[6] To be clear, Halliday (1985: xvii) comments on discourse analysis seem apposite here:

A discourse analysis that is not based on grammar is not an analysis at all, but simply a running commentary on a text … the exercise remains a private one in which one explanation is as good or as bad as another.

[7] To be clear, as can be seen below, the texts above and below the photograph of the boy (p324) do not expand the meanings of the photograph, as interpreted by Martin & Rose:

'regimes' above photo of young boy

On the day of the inauguration I was overwhelmed with a sense of history. In the first decade of the twentieth century, a few years after the bitter Anglo-Boer war and before my own birth, the white-skinned peoples of South Africa patched up their differences and erected a system of racial domination against the dark-skinned peoples of their own land.

'effects' below photo of young boy

The structure they created formed the basis of one of the harshest, most inhumane, societies the world has ever known. Now, in the last decade of the twentieth century, and my own eighth decade as a man, that system has been overturned forever and replaced by one that recognised the rights and freedoms of all peoples regardless of the colour of their skin. (Mandela 1996: 202)

Applying Appraisal Theory To Images

Martin & Rose (2007: 325):

In terms of APPRAISAL developed in Chapter 2, images can inscribe feelings, for example with an image of a person crying or smiling, or invoke them with images that we respond to emotionally; they can invoke appreciation of things by the relative attractiveness of the object or scene presented; and they can invoke judgements of people, by means such as their activity, stance or facial expression. Engagement with the viewer can also be varied in images, for example by the gaze of depicted people looking directly at the viewer, obliquely to one side, or directly away from the viewer into the image. And of course feelings, appreciation and judgement can also be amplified and diminished.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is a basic misunderstanding that pervades work on APPRAISAL. The AFFECT system of APPRAISAL is concerned with interpersonal assessment through emotion, not with the ideational construal of emotion. The depiction of a person crying or smiling is an ideational construal of behavioural processes that manifest states of consciousness (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 302).

[2] To be clear, creating an image that induces an emotional response in the viewer is not a variation of creating an image that depicts an interpersonal assessment through emotion.

[3] To be clear, this blurs the distinction between an appreciative assessment made by the creator of an image and feelings of appreciation induced in a viewer by an image. This is analogous to blurring the distinction between what a speaker says and the reaction of the addressee to what is said.

[4] Again, this blurs the distinction between a judgemental assessment made by the creator of an image and judgements induced in a viewer by an image. Again, this is analogous to blurring the distinction between what a speaker says and the reaction of the addressee to what is said.

[5] To be clear, this misunderstands the APPRAISAL system of ENGAGEMENT, which is concerned with whether or not other points of view on propositions are acknowledged, how they are acknowledged, and to what rhetorical ends.  As Martin & White (2005: 92) explain:

[Engagement] is concerned with the linguistic resources by which speakers/writers adopt a stance towards to the value positions being referenced by the text and with respect to those they address … the different possibilities for this stance-taking which are made available by the language, … the rhetorical effects associated with these various positionings, and … what is at stake when one stance is chosen over another.

Martin & Rose, on the other hand, here misinterpret engagement as (metaphorically) realised by the behavioural stance of an entity of an image (metaphenomenon) relative to a viewer of the image (phenomenon). That is, this is 'engagement' in the sense of Kress & van Leeuwen (1996), but misrepresented by the authors as 'engagement' in the sense of Appraisal Theory.