THE DEPENDENCE OF VERBAL PASSAGES ON VISUAL REPRESENTATION IN MEANING-MAKING

Abstract

A lot of studies have been focused on the comprehensibility of written passages owing to facts that texts are generally presented in written or verbal form. Visual images are merely thought of as additional ornament just to make the verbal texts representation look more eye-catching. The presence of such visual entities as graphic, figures, tables, diagrams, visual illustration, and the like is oftentimes reckoned solely as complement to the verbal form in meaning-making. With an assumption that visual images play a significant role in aiding readers to better understand the respective verbal texts, it is questioned to what extent meaning-making is dependent on the visual representation of the texts. In order to answer such a question, some groups of English Department students who were still in their sixth semester were the subject of this study. They were assigned to work out questionnaires asking for their perception about the dependence of verbal texts on their respective visual representation. Documentary study was also conducted in order to see the ways in which verbal passages were related to their respective visual images. Learning such skill subjects as listening, reading, speaking, writing, grammar, and vocabulary as well as content subjects like linguistics, stylistics, and discourse studies, the students were expected to be capable of understanding passages be they entirely in verbal form or accompanied with visual images. The results of this study show that (1) the dependence level of verbal passages on visual images depends on the text types and the target readers’ degree of education; (2) while presenting visual images to clarify the meaning of verbal passages was considered being important, verbal texts more often stand alone, letting their readers to rely their capability of understanding meaning merely on the verbal representation; (3) given that visual images may only take the role of accessories accompanying verbal passages, relating verbal texts to their respective illustration may even be in vain, if not misleading. Key words : multimodality, visual image, meaning-making