Week 12 Media and Multimodality: Analysing images

1. Week 12Media and Multimodality: Analysing images BAEBPCFundamentals of Media Communication 2010

2. What’s this image marketing?

3. Photograph of naked anorexic woman shocks Milan fashion week September 25 2007 • A PHOTOGRAPH of a naked anorexic woman appeared today in Italian newspapers and on billboards to highlight the effects of the illness during Milan fashion week while promoting a fashion brand. • Written above the photo of the woman, used to advertise fashion group Flash&Partners's clothing brand Nolita, are the words: "No Anorexia". … • http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22478372-5006007,00.html retrieved Sept 28 2007

4. Genres or kinds of images: • In written and spoken texts we can describe the kind of text it is as a genre. A genre is a culturally evolved way of going about the process of achieving some goal through language. So examples of written language genres would include: • Description: Is the text describing a phenomenon, for example, a scene or an object or a person? • Report: Is the text functioning to convey factual information? • Explanation: Does the text explain how something works? • Procedure: Does the text set out steps in a process? • Narrative: Does the text tell a story?

5. Narrative or Conceptual • The general social purpose or GENRE of a particular image is. • = two broad categories or types of image or ‘genres’ • Narrative images represent doings or happenings. They represent some unfolding of events or some process of change. They tell or ‘suggest’ a story or explain a process or a procedure. • Conceptual images on the other hand represent the generalised, stable, timeless essence of something. In other words they are about something ‘being’ or ‘meaning’ something.

6. Image 1: Narrative or Conceptual? Photo by Altaf Qadri, EPA Sunday, 15 August, 2004 Source: the best of photo journalism 2005, retrieved 13 September 2006 http://bop.nppa.org/2005/still_photography/winners/INS/26645/49953.html

7. Image 2: Narrative or Conceptual? Source: Hello Magazine (on-line) retrieved 5 Nov 2008 http://www.hellomagazine.com

8. http://www.theage.com.au/retrieved 5 Nov 2008 Image 3: Narrative or Conceptual? Great expectations Barack Obama quickly assembles his administration, as the world ponders the change to come in America

9. Image 4: Narrative or Conceptual? Road to safety: Rescuers assist one of 25 construction workers trapped for 26 hours after a highway tunnel collapsed on Monday near Guangnan, Yunnan province.Food and drink delivered through steel pipes helped sustain the workers, who were all brought to safety yesterday. Photo: AFP References: China SCMP retrieved 13 September 2006

10. Image 5: Narrative or Conceptual? Israeli soldiers take part in a military operation in the West Bank village of Beit Kahel near Hebron September 12, 2006. (WEST BANK)Source: Today Ruters News, retrieved 13 September 2006

11. Image 6: Narrative or Conceptual? The tickertape party for Lewis at McLaren's headquarters was preceded by a private celebration in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, with his family and girlfriend Source: Hello Magazine (on-line) retrieved 5 Nov 2008 http://www.hellomagazine.com

12. 2. Metafunctions: • In any communication in any language we, as humans, make three kinds of meanings to each other whenever we use language. We do this simultaneously, that is the one text will simultaneously convey these three kinds of meanings, or metafunctions: • Ideational: When we use language in communication with others we are talking (or writing) about something. We are saying something about “who is doing what, where, when, how, etc”. So we are making meanings about the world as we see or understand it. We are constructing a sense of reality of how the world is.

13. Interpersonal: When we use language in communication with others we are also conveying some meaning about who we think we are in relation to them (or vice versa). In other words we are establishing some meaning about our relationship with each other, and also our attitudes to each other and to our subject matter. • Textual Finally, in our communication, we are also conveying some meaning about the channel of communication that we are using. We are packaging and presenting our message in a way that shows we are aware of the channel of communication being used.

14. Metafunctions and Image • These metafunctions will also provide us with a framework for thinking about the meanings of images. In an analysis of metafunctional meaning in images, we can use slightly different terminology (because we are dealing with a different semiotic system) but the meanings are the same. So in the work of Kress and van Leeuwen, for example, they refer to: • Ideational meaning as Representational • Interpersonal meaning as Interactive • Textual meaning as Compositional We will take each in turn and explore the grammar of each.

15. 3. Ideational or Representational meaning: • What is this image/text about? • What is going on? • Ideational grammar of texts: • In the grammar of texts, we can consider ideational meaning in terms of these questions: • What process is represented? • Who are the participants? • What are the circumstances? e.g., Where? When? How? Etc. This is referred to as ‘transitivity’ in the grammar of English.

16. Types of processes: • Action (‘doing’) • Verbal (‘saying’) • Mental (‘thinking’, ‘feeling’, ‘liking’) • Existential /Experiential (‘being’ and ‘having’)

17. Image 2: Action, Verbal, Mental, or Existential /Experiential?

18. Image 5: Action, Verbal, Mental, or Existential/Experiential?

19. Look at examples of images. • What kinds of processes are represented? • What are the salient processes? • Who or what are the participants? • What are the circumstances ? e.g., Where? When? How? Etc. Sometimes a process will have only one participant, e.g., • The soldiers fired. • He spoke. • She was thinking and sometimes a process will have two participants, e.g., • The soldiers killed innocent civilians • He spoke to the crowd • She was thinking about the weekend

20. Vectors: • The ‘transfer’ from one participant to another can be achieved in an image through the use ofvectors.These are lines that lead the eye in an image. Vectors: • can be formed by objects or parts of objects, or abstract shapes • are angles set up in the image • or elements such as direction of a person’s eyes Vectors are important in conveying transitivity in images. They create the sense of a transaction or a process from one participant to another. Kress and van Leeuwan (1996): ‘Semiotic systems offer an array of choices, of different ways in which objects can be represented, and different ways in which they can be related to each other. Two objects may be represented as involved in a process of interaction which could be visually realized by vectors’ (40)

21. Image 1: What vectors?

22. Image 4: What vectors?

23. 4. Interpersonal or Interactive meaning • 1) Aspects of Interpersonal meaning: • Involvement: • What is the degree of involvement that the viewer feels with the image? • Does the viewer feel direct contact with the image? • Does the viewer feel a close personal contact or a more distanced one? Power: • What kind of power or status does the viewer feel in relation to the image? Modality: • Does the image present a picture of something as • Real or unreal? • Stable or unstable? • Secure or insecure? Affect: • What kinds of emotions, feelings or attitudes does the image give rise to?

24. 2) What resources are available to the image-maker in the construal of interpersonal meaning? • Presence / absence of people • Gaze • Length of shot (close/distant) • Horizontal camera angle • Vertical camera angle • Clarity of image • Colour

25. 3) Kinds of interpersonal meaning and resources involved: • Involvement and power: • How are relationships set up with the viewer of an image? • Consider gaze for example. Are participants in the image looking at you? • 'Camera' angle is also important. The horizontal angle can signify involvement or distance. If a figure is front-on it is closer involvement. If the figure is in profile it is distanced. • A vertical angle signals power between the viewer and those being depicted. If you are looking down on events, it signals greater power. If you are looking up, you are in a position of less power.

26. Image 7:Colour? Gaze? Salience?Horizontal?Clarity?Moving or still? Cody Walker of Columbus, Ga., and Japan's catcher Ryota Koike play in the Little League World Series Championship baseball game. Source: TIME Magazine retrieved 13 September 2006, http://www.time.com/time/health/

27. Image 8:Colour? Gaze? Salience?Horizontal?Clarity?Moving or still? Emotion overcomes two mourners as they kneel next to one of the reflecting pools at the middle of Ground Zero. Photo: ReutersReferences: SCMP retrieved 11September 2006

28. Modality: Modality in verbal grammar has to do with the expressions of comment or attitude by the speaker towards a proposition. It has to do with signaling perceptions of degrees of truth or reality. A detailed map or flowchart, however, might be seen as showing some essential truths that are not evident in simply observing 'the real world'. They may be used to signal some abstracted or general truths. "Television news, textbooks and newspapers are filled with graphs and diagrams (…) The purpose of diagrams and graphics is to simplify and explain complicated information" (Goodman and Graddol 1996: 59)

29. The Bank of England has made a shock one-and-a-half percentage point cut in UK interest rates to 3%, the lowest level since 1955. UK interest rates slashed to 3% http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7713006.stm retrieved 5 Nov 2008

30. TASK • Visually consider the differences between for example a quick rough pencil sketch of a house and a sharp and detailed photograph. • Which is represented as more real? • What might be the impact of a blurred image?

31. Image 5: Involvement?Power?Modality?Affect?

32. Affect, emotion, judgement:Think of the role of colour as just one resource that can be used to convey particular attitudes, values or emotions. • TASK: • Brainstorm a list of colours. For each one on the list make notes of the feelings or values or meanings you associate with that colour. • You have been asked to design adverts for each of the following. • What colours might you use? • What colours will you definitely not use. • A family car • A female perfume • A bathroom cleaning agent • An international children’s toy company

33. 5. Textual or compositional meaning Given – New structures Given – New structures are commonly found in verbal English. Given information refers to that which is stated but already known to the participants, New information is that which is not already known.

34. Given & New In verbal English the Given is what comes first in a clause, and the New is what comes last. What comes last carries a special stress. In other words Given and New are realised sequentially, through ‘before’ and ‘after’. This meaning can be transposed in images by use of the horizontal axis. In images Given and New are represented spatially, through ‘left’ and ‘right’. In many images in English texts, the ‘taken for granted’, ‘already understood’ information or the Given will be represented on the left of the image. The New information will be on the right. The left of the image may represent a problem and the right a solution; the left the before and the right the after; the left the past and the right the present; or the left the present and the right the future. The vertical axis can also be used as a structuring device. Sometimes the ‘before’ or the Given goes on top and the ‘after’ or the New goes in the bottom. In other images, the ‘ideal’ or the ‘promised’ is one top and the ‘real’ or the ‘down to earth’ is on the bottom.

35. Information Value

36. Given and New

37. Image 9: Given & New Fans took photos, laid tributes and bouquets of flowers beside the wax figure of the late Canto-pop star and film icon Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing at Madame Tussauds yesterday to mark what would have been his 50th birthday. The sculpture of the Hong Kong-born star, affectionately known as Gor Gor (Big Brother), was unveiled at the museum on April 1, 2004, the first anniversary of his death. Cheung, who died at age 46 and had battled depression, leapt to his death from the Mandarin Oriental hotel, leaving a suicide note. Photo: Robert Ng References: SCMP retrieved 13 September 2006

38. Ideal and Real

39. Salience • Salience has to do with which elements of the composition stand out most in the image. • Salience results from the interaction of a number of factors: • Size • Sharpness of focus • The amount of detail or texture shown • Tonal contrasts • Colour contrasts • Placement in the visual field • Perspective (foreground vs background) • Overlap • Appearance of human figure • Potent cultural symbol

41. Image 10:Given & New?Size?Sharpness of focus?Appearance of human figure?Potent cultural symbol? References: Time Magazine 28 Aug 2008 http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,1101060828,00.html

42. TASK: • Examine the composition of a selection of images from the media to identify the role of left and right in the composition of the text. • What meanings do you associate with such positioning? • What elements are salient in the image you selected and how is that achieved? • Why are certain elements made salient?

44. Seminar Task: In groups select an image from the media, , bring it to class and be prepared to discuss the salient features: Look at examples of images. What are the salient processes, participants and circumstances are represented? What are the key features which construct an interpersonal meaning? How is the text organised?

45. Thanks Enjoy the rest of your weekend!