When You Start Analysingmultimodal Textsquestions Should Begin Your Analysis

Visual literacy is the ability to deconstruct images in various contexts for particular purposes using the appropriate language and theoretical tools.

Below is a table which contains some of the grammar that will assist you when you analyse visual texts:

Representational Interactive Meanings Compositional Meanings Meanings

Colours - are the colours used within the text symbolic? e.g. Red Image, act, gaze Information - value - distance - passion, anger, fire, all things intense and passionate

Represented participants (Who/what?) Framing, social distance Salience (What do you see first?)

Positioning - Transactional processes Left/right/top/bottom/centre (Who/what?) Power, status (angles) margin

Reactional processes (Who is Modality Framing - Strong, weak, isolating, reacting and how?) (real>idealised>abstract) inclusive

Vectors (lines within the Colour scales and brightness image - that create reading Text - Font, positioning, size (saturation) paths)

Symbolism Levels of illumination

Shapes Background (contextualised, non-contexualised)

When you start analysing multimodal texts questions should begin your analysis

1. What is the purpose of the text?

2. What is the salient image?

3. How are the vectors within the image used to frame the subject of the text?

4. Who are the represented participants and what sort of relationships are developed in the text, through the gaze, social distance and interactions?

A Scaffold for Reading Visual Images Use this scaffold to make notes to support your analysis of texts that incorporate visual images

1 Use this scaffold to make notes to support your analysis of texts that incorporate visual images

Target Audience and Social Context

What is the social context within the visual text/who is the text aimed at? Brief description of the text - e.g. end papers on a picture book, book jacket, advertisement, poster... VISUAL CODES - What's going on within the visual text? Where do the vectors take you eye? REPRESENTATIONAL What is the reading path? MEANING Is there a narrative or is the text about an idea or concept of both?

Describe the emotion in the gaze - cheeky, angry...

Gaze - demand/offer

Background - Is it contextualised or non-contextualised? Is the background realistic or abstract? Saturated? How does the composer use angles to establish reactive/active Active Reactive INTERACTIVE relationships? Who is dominant? MEANING Symbolic Saturation How is colour used?

Illumination - How does the composer use shade, shadow, light?

Modality - levels of reality - from realistic to abstract

Frontal - are you part of the character/s world? Are readers included or excluded? What is the salient image?

What is the distinction (often a line COMPOSITIONAL of text or a horizontal line) MEANING between the real and the ideal? Does the framing suggest social distance? Private or public?

2 Key terms

Appropriation to take or use something from one context and put it into another to create a new meaning from the original text e.g. The Simpsons (TV show) appropriates segments from movies, plays, poetry and history

Appropriated images from historical contexts are used within Shaun Tan's artwork The Wheel of Industry - some places to look for their historical or cultural significance would include websites on World War 1 and excerpts from the film Metropolis (1927).

Audience those who view or hear a text - also called responders or readers...or VIEWERS!

Background the background of a visual text can be either contextualised or non-contextualised. A contextualised background is one which provides a place, time or setting for the audience. A non-contextualised background is one which can be saturated colour and provides less contextual information for viewers or responders

Contextualised background Non-contextualised background

Colour the property or aspect of something that involves hue, lightness, and saturation or, in the case of light, hue, brightness, and saturation. Colour can also be symbolic - can be influenced by culture.

Composer a person or group who produces a text by arranging and expressing ideas, feelings, concepts or images, using any medium of production 3 Context cultural, historical, situational and personal circumstances in which a text is composed and responded to

Fragmentation the process of breaking up an image into sometimes disparate segments

Framing the way something is framed – provides composition of a scene within a visual field

Gaze the way subjects in visual texts engage their audience e.g. demand – simulates direct contact, offer – this is more open to interpretation and suggests ambiguous and multiple meanings

This is a demand This is an offer

Illumination the use of shading and light within a text

Intertextuality is a term used to describe the ways texts interrelate with each other e.g. You're watching a horror film and the young blonde heroine is walking up the stairs towards a closed doorway. The background music is a single note from a violin. Do you know what's going to happen when she opens the door. We know enough about the how genre works to know what to expect. The information from past texts is therefore influencing our understanding of the text we are watching.

Modality levels of realism within a text. High modality suggests the image looks ‘real’ while low modality suggests more conceptual or abstract images

Low modality High modality 'real' For low modality look at Leunig's visual images - some of his line drawings provide excellent examples of low modality.

4 Perspective

When considering perspective you need to consider both the view of the 'reader' and the represented participants within the image. This image taken from The Viewer shows the 'reader' and the malevolent viewer in the text is gazing at the boy while his gaze (a demand) looks back at both viewers. Tricky stuff! Perspective means the view an individual or group has of the world.

Postmodernism relating to art , architecture, literature or thinking – developed after and usually within a reaction to modernism. Postmodern texts often aren't resolved like, let's say, realistic fiction. It is up the responder to make their own sense of the text. A postmodern ending might make you feel uneasy, annoyed or challenged, you might not make sense of it...but you'll be thinking about the text!

Representation the expression of ideas by a composer/author to a viewer/responder/audience

Subversion a technique that undermines an ideal or philosophy

Vectors vectors are the lines within a visual image which draw the responder’s eye to particular focal points within a visual image. Vectors provide a reading path for a visual text.

Visual literacy is the ability to deconstruct images in various contexts for particular purposes using the appropriate languaage and theoretical tools. Visual literacy in film shares many components of visual literacy for still, print and electronic images.

5 The view from inside The television frames the frame of the the curious boy and television shows the the objects rejected in boy framed by the dump of shadows...(consider civilisation symbolic implications of shadow/darkness).

Apart from looking closely at the images, within a text, there are several other aspects of visual images that require analysis. Visit the resources page and check out the visual literacy glossary and scaffold created for analysing visual texts.

The images from the dump surround the boy. They include historical artefacts, religious iconography, social, technological, scientific and cultural artefacts.

Meaning is made in visual texts because represented participants (the who and the what in the image) are connected and interact. Postmodernism texts often include historical (documentary) reference, and the appropriation of popular media.

Within a text there are three different types of meaning representational meaning, interactive meaning , compositional meaning.

See if you can guess what each of these types of meaning include!

6 Some definitions of terms used in visual analysis

What is the first object, person or thing, within the Salient image image, that your eye is drawn to? How do the lines within the image suggest movement or highlight particular Vectors sections within the image (include lines created through shadow)? High modality is closer to a 'real' image while low Modality modality provides abstract or expressionistic imagery. Do the participants in the image look directly out at the responder? Is there Gaze - Demand or offer room for interpretation of their gaze because their eyes are hidden or veiled? It th background saturated with colour or does it Contextualised/ or Non- provide a context within contextualised background which we can make meaning? How are the images framed? e.g. look at the Framing curious boy - the TV provides a framing device. Who/what are the Reactive/active relationships within the relationships image? Are we seeing a real or idealised world within the Real/ideal image? (Advertisers often use idealised images to sell their products.)

7  Question whether the images are textually, historically, culturally, socially and personally dense