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.