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).