Visual Grammar Research Articles

Greek preschoolers drawing the TV of their dreams

This research illustrates how young children conceptualize the image and role of ideal television in their life. Building upon Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) theoretical framework of Visual Grammar, 70 drawings of children from kindergartens of Thessaloniki were analyzed both qualitative and quantitative. Children’s pictorial depictions of their understanding of dream TV suggested they viewed the desirable TV quite close to the traditional TV that has two main aims: entertainment and environmental education. Moreover, the concept of dream TV was closely defined by play both as outdoor activity and organized sports but also toys advertisements. The results of this research revealed that children sketch a quite positive and powerful image of dream TV painted with vivid colors and joyful pictures which has an active role in their lives.

On time and space: An excerpt from ‘Drawing unbelonging’

This short comic is an excerpt from my doctoral dissertation ‘Drawing unbelonging’, where I draw comics with an experimental approach to explore the potential of the medium and its uses in scholarly communication and graphic medicine. Throughout the dissertation I make use of several innovations enabled by the medium, such as the De Luca effect (where the artist draws multiple images of a single character in different stages of action against the backdrop of one static scene), to demonstrate how the medium allows for multiple temporalities to co-exist simultaneously on the page. My goal is to use comics not as an illustrative tool to supplement the text, but as a method to think, strategize, find patterns, give form to an inchoate idea through investigative drawing and develop a deeper understanding of how the visual grammar of comics can be utilized to map the connection between the public health challenges of our time, and socioeconomic, racial and environmental inequality. In this excerpt, I use the ‘sequential and simultaneous’ nature of comics to show the various and intersecting uses of the medium through visual metaphors.

WHAT DOES THE DMK’S 2021 ELECTION CAMPAIGN SONG FOCUS ON? : A MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Methods to convince voters are continuously evolving since the inception of elections. Contesting political parties have used every possible media from posters to short videos to approach and impress voters. With creativity paving ways to innovative campaign strategy and methods, studies focusing on them are gaining momentum. Campaign songs play an engaging role in this campaign communication strategy in the state of Tamil Nadu. Initially, campaign songs were written to create awareness of parties’ name, symbol, and ideology among the illiterate population. With time, the focus of the songs has shifted to party leaders. The 2021 Tamil Nadu election witnessed the release of campaign songs by state and national political parties. Thanks to social media, these songs had massive reach on social networking sites among people of all age groups. In this context, this paper aims to analyze the official campaign song released by the state political party DMK for the 2021 Tamil Nadu election based on the multimodal discourse analysis informed by Visual grammar.

Revealing Equiterra Campaign by United Nations Women: Multimodal Perspective

Equiterra is a digital campaign that was released on 2020 International Women's Day by United Nations Women and Ruby Taylor. It is a digital illustration of a utopian country where equality and fairness manifested. It is constructed by rich verbal and visual elements which makes it a multimodal text. This study aims to analyze the three metafunctions of visual and verbal elements of Equiterra. The study is conducted using a qualitative method by analyzing the visual and verbal elements within illustration using the theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics by Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) and Visual Grammar by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), also analyzing the interplay between verbal and visual elements using Intersemiotic Complementarity by Royce (1998). The data are the nine parts of Equiterra which are taken from the official website of United Nations Women that are separated but also joined together into forming a path. The analysis finds that Equiterra tries to represent people with various socio-cultural backgrounds to perform their activities and to obtain their maximum potential fairly and equally along with actively encouraging the viewer to make it possible. Furthermore, Equiterra is a feminist digital media that delivers the intersectional issues related to gender, equality, and inclusion which are used to raise awareness towards the problems around these topics.

Gender-Based Double Standard in Taylor Swift's Song

This research examines the way gender based double standards represented in Taylor Swift’s song namely “The Man”. The objects of the research are the song lyrics and music video of Taylor Swift’s “The Man”. The research applies social semiotic analysis theoretical framework. The song lyric is analysed using the ideational metafunction of Halliday, while the music video using the representational meaning of Kress and Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar. The result shows that, in the lyrics, the portrayals of gender-based double standards mostly realized through the use of relational and material processes. The relational processes relates man with attributes such as “more of a boss”, “fearless leader”, “alpha type”, and “Leo”(Leonardo Di Caprio), while the material actualizes man’s action such as “play the field”, “hustled” and “put in the work”. Additionally, the Music Video is dominated by reactional processes that reveal people’s positive reaction towards man’s action and followed by symbolic attribute process that represents men in a more central, active and agentive manner and women in a marginal, passive, and object positions. Man is also portrayed as successful leader, greatest dad, rich man, while women are mostly seen laying down, wearing sexy attire and as object’s to man’s pleasure.

Women's Empowerment in Nike Advertisements: A Multimodal Analysis

Aside from promoting certain products, advertisements are also utilized to promote social issues. One of the social issues promoted is women’s empowerment. This type of advertisement, which promotes women’s empowerment, is named as femvertising. In promoting this issue in a video advertisement, the combination of verbal modes and non-verbal modes are used to convey the message. The study examines two recent advertisements by Nike to reveal the message of women’s empowerment. The study used multimodal discourse analysis to examine the advertisements which were in the form of moving images, as it tried to uncover the modes present in both advertisements, and how those modes construct the discourse of women’s empowerment delivered by the narrators of both advertisements. In exploring the visual modes, Kress and van Leeuwen’s framework of visual grammar, which included representational meaning, interactive meaning, and compositional meaning, was used. The verbal analysis was explored using Hallidayan three layers of metafunction, which included the analysis of transitivity, mood structure, and theme-rheme. The study revealed that the interplay of all the modes that were analyzed put women to be doing sporting activities in sports-related settings, to possess more power than the viewers, as the most salient elements, and to be narrated with encouraging utterances in both advertisements.

The role of women in STEM disciplines. A multimodal analysis of crowdfunding project videos for the iGEM science competition.

The gender gap in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) is a matter of growing social concern: although the female presence in these disciplines has grown during the last decades, men still outnumber women (Corbett & Hill, 2015). It has been shown that this is partly because of the lack of visibility that the work of women scientists has had along history, which has led to unconscious beliefs and stereotypes about gender and professional careers, and therefore, the disinterest in science on the female side (Nimmesgern, 2016). Previous research has shown that these stereotypes are reinforced through television programs depicting fictional women characters in STEM scenarios (Steinke, 2017; Davis & Coleman, 2018), and the present study aims to explore the representation of real female and male scientists on the Internet. By applying a multimodal analysis from a social semiotic perspective, I examine how gender identities are represented in eight crowdfunding project videos of science created by undergraduate students for an international science competition, the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM). Relying on the Swalesian move-step analysis genre approach for the verbal content (Swales, 1990, 2004), and Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar (VG) model for the visual content (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006), the analysis intends to uncover ideological purposes and meanings about gender roles within a context of scientific research. The results are compatible with previous studies that confirm that women are underrepresented in STEM, highlighting the ideologies that lead to the reinforcement of gender bias at the scientific workplace.

Multimodal Portrayal of Joko Widodo on Tempo's Cover Story: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis

An Indonesian-language Tempo Magazine's cover story published in the September 14, 2019 edition was controversially perceived and interpreted by some parties as an insulting discourse towards Indonesian President Joko Widodo (Jokowi). The cover story in that edition was undeniably motivated by a political issue in Indonesia at the time. The issue was President Jokowi's approval of the new bills for the Corruption Eradication Commission (Indonesian: KPK). In this research, we investigated how the cover story in that edition had portrayed President Jokowi. The Tempo Magazine's cover story was selected as this research data. The cover story consisted of pictorial and linguistic modes. In the analysis, we employed a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (MCDA) approach to reveal ideological meanings behind those modes. After analyzing them, we found that the cover story had portrayed President Joko Widodo negatively. The negative portrayal came from the silhouette in the pictorial mode and the social actions represented in the linguistic mode. The results of this research can scientifically contribute to answering the question of whether the cover story insulted the Indonesian President or not. Keywords: Cover Story, Insulting Discourse, Joko Widodo, Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, Visual Grammar.

The Status of the Close-Up in the Age of the Selfie

FQ columnist Manuel Betancourt ponders the power of the cinematic close-up in an era when the screened face is a ubiquitous presence on phones in selfies, front-facing videos, and Zoom grids alike. Taking Roland Barthes and Argentine writer Manuel Puig’s reverence for the faces of the silver screen sirens of Classical Hollywood as his starting point, Betancourt discusses the focus on the face in two recent films: the Mexican film Dos estaciones (Juan Pablo González, 2022) and the Chilean film Vendrá la muerte y tendrá tus ojos (Death Will Come and Shall Have Your Eyes, José Luis Torres Leiva, 2019). Although they have little in common thematically or aesthetically, both films share a focus on older queer female protagonists along with the visual grammar of the face, allowing Betancourt to appreciate the power of the close-up anew.

Contradictions and Continuity: Constructing Asian American Political and Aesthetic Subjectivities in the Work of Ruth Asawa

Considering contradiction and continuity as a framework to examine the aesthetic and political subjectivities in Ruth Asawa’s work, this essay explores how the visual grammar of contradiction and continuity became a generative force for the artist to negotiate the politics of Asian American citizenship, and navigate various roles and responsibilities as an Asian American woman artist. Through a critical engagement with works by contemporary Asian American and feminist theorists such as Lisa Lowe and Anne Anlin Cheng, it raises issues of the ornamental, domesticity, citizenship, and otherness as a backdrop of Asawa’s Asian American subjectivity, and argues that Asawa’s work needs to be understood simultaneously within and against the rhetoric of binaries of inside and outside, that both articulates and establishes the boundaries of citizenship.

Introduction

Introduction

VISUAL GRAMMAR OF THE VIETNAMESE ADVERTISING DISCOURSE

Vietnamese copywriters combine languages and images to convey the contents of advertisements to readers. However, the arrangement of images along with other non-linguistic factors follows certain rules due to cultural differences. The paper uses the theory of Kress and Leeuwen’s (1996, 2006) visual grammar so as to find out how Vietnamese copywriters present the contents of advertisements to persuade the readers to buy advertised products or use advertised services. The findings from the layout analysis of 400 Vietnamese advertising posters indicated that the Vietnamese copywriters utilized three aspects of layout design such as framing, information value and salience to contribute to making meaning for the advertising discourse and language. The findings of the paper help clarify the application of theory of systemic functional linguistics, particularly visual grammar in daily communication and interdisciplinary studies. The findings are also beneficial to those who study image design together with language to construe meaning for the advertising discourse.

The Image of Muslim in The Kingdom Trailer: A Multimodal Analysis

Based on multimodal analysis, the study at focus analyses The Kingdom trailer (2007) by adopting Kress and van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar (1996, 2006), Chandler’s social categories of codes (2007) and Bernstein’s (2003) language codes. This kind of analysis is used to illustrate how the image of Muslim is portrayed in such a trailer. It aims to show how multimodal representational aspects are utilized in depicting such distorted image. Also, it aims at presenting how visual semiotic resources and speeches are constructing certain negative images. This research assumes that meaning construction is not monomodal but an outcome of multimodal means of communication.
 The prime conclusions of the current study can be presented as both, visual and verbal aspects which disseminate a negative image of Muslims. Through guns, fight, and extreme behaviour, Muslims are presented as a threat to the Western and prosperous way of life that necessitates force majeure, military actions and murdering. The study at focus also shows that this trailer makes use of a visual mode more than language and the kind of image presented is distorted, unfavourable and misleading. Also, (mis)representation of Muslims in this trailer fuels Islamophobia in a radical manner. Moreover, it has been found that behavioural codes are utilized to link Muslims and Islam to terrorism via the depiction of religious rituals such as prayer and call for prayer after terrorist acts.

Characterization by Means of Verbal and Visual Transitivity in Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are (1963)

Framed with Halliday’s (1994) systemic functional grammar and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) visual grammar, the paper studies verbal and visual transitivity in the construction of characters in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are (1963). While the verbal transitivity is determined by the semantic property of a lexical verb, the visual transitivity is realized by vectors, by the shapes dominating the characters’ appearance, and by the positioning of the character on a page. The paper concludes that the dynamic relation between visual and verbal transitivity functions as an effective means of characterization that results in the formation of Max’s personality.

An Empirical Study on Imagery and Emotional Response in Chinese Poetry Translation-The Visual Grammar Perspective.

The study investigated the evocation of mental imagery and emotional responses when English–Chinese bilinguals read classic Chinese poems and their English translations to examine (1) the target readers' formation of non-verbal text representations of Chinese poetry and (2) whether different translations affect the target readers' imagery cognition. A total of 20 English–Chinese speaker students enrolled in a Chinese university read a classic Chinese poem in Chinese and its four versions of translation in English. Through questionnaires and interviews, participants rated the visualized words used in the poems for the degree of mental imagery and emotional response evoked based on three indicators of narrative process, salience value, and emotive validity in the theoretical framework of visual grammar. Results showed considerable individual variances in the cognitive differences in forming mental imagery in all versions of the poems and there were also effects of translation strategy. Moreover, visual language information in poetry reading and its translations evoked different emotional responses depending on the use of visual words with cultural features. Our study demonstrates the applicability and accessibility of visual language in describing different readers' mental imagery and the interrelation and interaction between the poetry language system and the emotional, social, and cultural contexts involved in poetry translation.

The impact of implementing visual grammar on learning participle adjectives by EFL learners

PurposeThis paper aims to examine the impact of using visual grammar on learning participle adjectives by EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners.Design/methodology/approachThe study follows an experimental design in which two groups participated in the study. The experimental group used visual grammar tools in learning participle adjectives. The control group was taught the participle adjectives in a traditional way. A pre–post test was designed and presented to the participants in the two groups.FindingsThe results showed that the experimental group made statistically significant improvements in their performance in using participle adjectives due to the use of visual grammar tools.Research limitations/implicationsThe current study is only limited to the effect of visual images on a particular grammatical issue, that is participle adjectives. Besides, the study does not include the gender variable; there may be variation in the results depending on the variable of gender.Practical implicationsThe present study can provide language instructors with some guidelines on how to incorporate visual grammar applications in teaching grammar aspects. Learners can also be encouraged to have a better understanding of English grammar, using the different connotations of visual images.Social implicationsUsing visual images in teaching grammar will increase the learners' ability to think beyond their classroom environment. They can use this experience whenever they face visual images in different societal activities.Originality/valueThis paper is one of the initial attempts to investigate the effect of using visual grammar on learning participle adjectives.

Towards a descontruction of symbolic violence in a sample of advertising discourse. A critical discourse perspective

This article examines the representation of women in the advertisements used by Dolce & Gabbana, in order to observe the examples of symbolic violence associated with women. The main objectives of this study are: 1) to deconstruct the main visual strategies used by Dolce & Gabbana to represent women in its newsletter; and 2) to characterize the main types of symbolic violence in the texts analysed. Data were collected from the newsletter used by Dolce & Gabbana to advertise their products through the internet from January to December 2016–19. The data are analysed based on the critical discourse analysis model of social actors proposed by van Leeuwen (2008) and Kress & van Leeuwen’s (2006) models of visual grammar.

The Representation of Shopfronts in Photography: Building a Commercial, Architectural and Ornemental Visual Grammar

Pendant la première moitié du xxe siècle, l’art de la devanture de magasin rencontre un engouement inédit auprès des architectes, décorateurs et professions spécialisées (devanturiers, étalagistes, publicitaires, etc.). Malgré des expérimentations antérieures, c’est à la suite du premier conflit mondial que tous travaillent de concert à dessiner les contours théoriques, matériels et pratiques d’une discipline tant commerciale qu’architecturale et décorative. Dès lors, de nombreux studios et opérateurs s’emploient à représenter et à diffuser massivement les formes de la devanture moderne. Quel rôle a joué la photographie dans la reconnaissance de cette pratique commerciale comme un art constructif et ornemental ? Quelles solutions techniques ont été imaginées pour représenter ce motif, et comment ces choix iconographiques ont-ils façonné une image fantasmée de la ville moderne ? Quels sont, enfin, les valeurs et les usages de ces représentations ? L’étude d’un corpus de photographies principalement issues des collections du musée des Arts décoratifs, de la Bibliothèque nationale de France et des bibliothèques spécialisées de la ville de Paris, permet de comprendre comment celles-ci ont participé à légitimer, mais aussi structurer et développer l’art de la devanture commerciale en France, pendant l’entre-deux-guerres.

Dissent by Design: A Multimodal Study of 2019 Women’s March MY Protest Signs

The power of texts and visuals in the repertoire of protests – in both its production and consumption – allows protest movements to not only spread their message faster and mobilise support, but also promote active engagement in the public sphere. The present study examined multimodal discourse of protest by analysing textual and visual resources in protest signs used to express and negotiate feminist ideology at the 2019 Women’s March MY in Kuala Lumpur. Following Kress & van Leeuwen’s Visual Grammar (2006) and van Leeuwen’s Social Actor Network (2008), three themes of the march were selected for multimodal analysis. Findings of the study show that multimodal representations through verbal and visual resources vary in its salience across different themes – where some protest signs lean more towards texts in conveying its messages with minimal visuals, others show a higher reliance on textual and visual convergence to convey meaning as well as to bait the attention of readers. Weighing in on the Malaysian feminist discourse, this study puts forth the potential of multimodal strategies through verbal and visual resources in conveying feminist messages and negotiating social change through the act of protest.

Critical analysis of dehumanizing news photographs on immigrants: Examples of the portrayal of non-citizenship

This paper analyses the main visual characteristics of sub-Saharan immigrants represented as non-citizens in a sample from the Spanish press, and deepens on how this contributes to perpetuating the ‘we-they’ dichotomy. The data consist of all the news items published on sub-Saharan immigrants in the digital editions of the Spanish newspapers El País and ABC from 1 January 2016 to 1 January 2021. Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar and van Leeuwen’s model for the visual representation of social actors will be the theoretical frameworks. The findings indicate that there are different visual ways to portray immigrants as non-citizens, which allows establishing this classification: representing immigrants’ arrival as illegal and clandestine, portraying them as invaders, representing immigrants as violent individuals or associating them with animalization. All these can be considered visual dysphemisms that problematize the arrival of immigrants and highlight the differences between Spanish population and immigrants.