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A Poster on Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design by Kress & Van Leeuwen
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Karen Neckyfarow & Lauren Saks
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The Highlights
The grammar of visual design, like that of linguistic structure, can be interpreted through analysis of cues and signs that have individual meaning and may string together to create a larger layered effect. The grammar is history and culture specific. By using different modes, meaning is conveyed through design, production and interpretation. Participants in the grammar include the creator and the viewer (interpretor), although the creator cannot always control the method of interpretation used by the viewer. The modality of a sign within an image gives cues as to how to interpret an image within a given context, with specificity to beliefs, cultural norms and expectations. By categorizing cues within an image, the reading becomes somewhat explicit and the meaning can be interpreted by multiple interpretors.
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Narrative Representations
Narrative representations tell a story where the participants are actors who carry out processes. Kress & Van Leuuwen explain that these represenations are presentational where the present unfolding actions or events.
ACTION PROCESSES:
The participant is the actor who carries out a process which is represented by a vector. The actor may carry out the process upon another participant who/which is the goal.
REACTIONAL PROCESSES:
The participants are not actors but reactors and the process represented by the vector (in this instance a glance or gaze) towards the phenomena.
OTHER NARRATIVE PROCESSES:
- Speech/Mental Processes: thought or dialogue is connected to a participant by a vector.
- Conversion Processes: chain of participants where each is both an actor and a goal in relation to another.
- Geometric symbolism: includes only vectors where meaning is constituted only in symbolic value.
- Circumstances: narrative images where participants may not be connected by vectors and one/some participants could be left out without changing the meaning of the image -- although some information would be lost.
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Conceptual Representations
Conceptual representations present the participants of the image in generalized categories: class, structure, or meaning.
CLASSIFICATIONAL PROCESSES:
Participants are related in terms of a taxonomy (kind, type, classification) where one participant (or group of participants) act as subordinates in relation to another participant (or group of participants).
ANALYTICAL PROCESSES:
Participants are related in a part-to-whole relationship where a carrier (the whole) is related to its possessive attributes (the parts).
There are multiple types of analytical processes that are explained here.
OTHER CONCEPTUAL PROCESSES:
- Symbolic Processes: represent what a participant means or is (identity is established in the relationship between the carrier and the symbolic attribute).
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Position and Arrangement
Arrangement gives initial and important meaning through interaction of smaller elements contained in a larger image. As a culture, we read text left to right, top to bottom as a general rule. We usually read images in the same fashion, as it is the cultural norm. Gaze, subject interaction within the image, subject and viewer interaction and what can and cannot be seen within a frame all are directly involved with the positioning and reading of the image.
Traditional images are read from right to left without a signal or vector indicating the directional value.
 Peanuts comic strip
Images containing elements that flow top to bottom use an ideal/real relationship where the ideal is represented on top, with the real depiction shown underneath. The viewer experiences the ideal first, so the reading of that element is dominant.
 Cacao Reserve Ad
As an image moves in meaning from left to right or top to bottom, the contrast between related images can be seen as given and new. The given image, read first, portrays something the viewer is already familiar with and has established as true. The new, the changed image, represents something that the viewer has learned or will come to conclude based on the inner meaning of what is represented in the shift. Advertisements often use text as the given and imagery as the new.
 Benson and Hedges Ad
The text gives a dichotomy familiar to the viewer as well as the product name. The image displays how the two go together, enticing the viewer to want a similar reaction.
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Modality: modeling the real
Modality is a way of refering to the 'truth value' of the sign. Just as in linguistics, where the concept of modality was developed, there are modality markers, which are grammatical cues (linguistic or visual) that highlight degrees of modality (degrees of reality or truth). Other posters have provided expicit analysis of these modality markers (see Arca or Wine).
This image was taken from a website that sells travel packages. Although the participants may be unfamiliar subject matter, the setting is realistic enough. The color and contrast are consistant with a high level of modality -- if there was not high modality would a prospective consumer of the travel services offered want to travel there?
 Source of the original image: www.exodus.co.uk
This image could have been altered with a higher degree of contrast and brightness to provide an ethereal feel, but a lower modality.
The image also could have been altered with a high degree of contrast, color saturation, differentiation, and modulation to provide a more vibrant feel, but also a lower modality.
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Discussion
Kress & Van Leeuwen's approach is extremely process oriented (i.e. explore the image for it's (visual) grammatical structure, use the structure to undertake analysis, determine meaning through analysis of constituent parts, composition, modality, etc.). What are the benefits of such an approach? What does this approach lack?
The authors acknowledge the complexity of the image. This taken as true, does a semiotic/grammatical approach to visual analysis provide enough allowance for complexity?
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Synthesis #1
Graham Eng-Wilmot
The text was presented as a “rite of passage” and a “method manual” of how to read images through different modes (design, production, interpretation). This method was broken into two parts: narrative representations (participants are actors who carry out processes) and conceptual representations (participants of the image are presented in categories/taxonomies). As a class we quickly worked through the differences between the two representations, as well as the various processes and basic definitions that are involved in each of them.
We also looked at how viewers create meaning when looking at images, specifically through the concepts of the viewer and the gaze. One of the important points was how “reading” is culturally specific in that much of how we understand images involves our own assumptions and the cultural context that we have been engrained with. For example, the Western activity of reading follows a pattern of scanning from left to right.
We had a short overview of modality, the truth-value of a given image. We focused on a photograph from a travel website and worked through how varying degrees of color saturation, brightness, etc. have an impact on whether the image looks real or not. In this case, it was in the interest of the travel company to present an image that looked as natural as possible in order to entice customers. Hence a photograph with natural colors, easily identifiable subjects, etc.
Much of our open discussion focused on more general questions about the usefulness of the text’s concepts in praxis. We were challenged with the question of what kinds of work would the methods presented be useful for? The major responses included analyzing art (images found in museums), breaking down images that involved some form of persuasion (advertisements), and looking at images that are constructed or deliberately posed.
There was no consensus among the students about the ultimate usefulness of the Kress and Van Leeuwen methods though. Some students stated that it provides a framework for the initial steps of actually looking at images – that it helps illuminate the elements or individual parts of an image, as well as it helps the researcher to analyze all of the cultural assumptions/framing that are involved in his or her interpretation. While some said there was value in having a basic rubric to begin with, another person raised the point that the structures presented in the text could limit the interpretation or understanding of an image as the method forces images into a box that may or may not be appropriate for an analysis.
We did leave a number of questions on the table: how are the Kress and Van Leeuwen methods like those employed in linguistic discourse and how are they not? Do images carry more visceral weight than text? Is meaning more fixed in language where as it is more complex in images?
It appeared as though the bottom line for the professor is that we should be “careful” to not simply accept the methods without questioning them first, particularly with regard to making arguments based in new media or images. That is, it is necessary to really consider how and why a researcher may be taking a particular methodological approach to analyze a set of images.
Synthesis #2
Micah Trapp
Overview of Karen and Lauren’s poster
Noted that book is setting out a methodology rather than having a lot of theoretical points to discuss. With this laying out of a methodology comes an excessive amount of terminology—best just to refer to the book rather then memorize their elaborate grammar.
Discussion
What kind of work is Kress and Van Leeuwan’s “grammar” useful for?
• Media studies, particularly for understanding what people pay attention to on a screen, for example a CNN screen.
• Analyzing art (or images that are carefully posed or intended, e.g. graphic design)
• Persuasive media, such as ads
• For an initial reading of an image. Basically a good starting place. For example, you can break an image down in to constitutive parts, which in turn can help you to abstract the image and compare it to something else.
• Things that represent language
• How people learn—helps you to understand and meet needs (?) of different learning styles
• Does it work for moving images? General response, not so convinced.
• Does it work for a snapshot? If so, where is the intent coming from in a snapshot? We discussed the idea of a tradition of intent, such that the novice photographer does not consciously construct images, but draws upon an implicit tradition of intent.
• This approach can help to point out cultural nuances and implications that we have that we don’t realize.
Why might we be hesitant about Kress and Van Leeuwan?
• Can be problematic to force images into this vocabulary—it’s a rather exclusive language. Only applicable to “Western” images and media—culturally specific.
• Is there something replicable? (This question does not imply that only replicable methods are useful)
• This theory will not tell you about the meaning about a specific element of an image. For example, we discussed the image of receiving a diploma at a graduation ceremony. K&VL’s method will not tell you the meaning of the graduation gown.
• As this model draws on Critical Discourse Analysis, it heavily influenced by linguistic structures (well, actually entirely). The question then arises if such a model can so easily transfer to images. Our discussion suggested that our interactions with images exist at different levels of consciousness. In this sense words are more fixed than images. Images have a visceral impact. (My note: this then connects to their postscript and the question of affect. I think we more or less decided that the analysis of “Colorful Thoughts” was a stretch and just ridiculous.)
WARNING: be careful about why you are using this model. It doesn’t seem to work so well by itself.
Brief discussion of Marcus’ digital story on Soviet images:
He is going to other places in order to get meaning. For example, the meaning of the red scarves demands culturally specific knowledge OR needs further analysis (particularly in the case of his discussion of irony). Also was suggested that he could have interacted more visually—Monday night football style. This raised and important question about when and why you use the visual. What does it give you that words don’t? With this, when working with theory in digital stories, how do we get beyond word dropping? Some suggested remembering the significance and value of sound, visual, gesture and words.
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