Reading Images

Kress & Van Leuwen


Vectors: pg.46


  • Relations within pictures can be described in numerous different ways, but Kress and Van Leuwen give us very specific terms in which one can better “read images.” One of these terms is a vector, which is often visualized by oblique lines within pictures. According to Kress and Van Leuwen, “what in language is realized by words of the category ‘action verbs’ is visually realized by elements that can be formally defined as vectors” (46). Oftentimes, participants within images are connected by vectors; when this occurs, “they are represented as doing something to or for each other” (59). In other words, vectors are lines of action within images that represent relationships between objects or participants.
This advertisement contains a vector between the Gatorade bottle and the man’s mouth. It can be described as a visual line of action- Gatorade pouring into a man’s mouth, that displays a relation between the advertised product and the participant.

Participants: pg. 48


  • In every semiotic act, there are two types of participants that are involved. The first are the interactive participants who “speak and listen or write and read, make images or view them” (48). The other are the represented participants who “constitute the subject matter of the communication’ that is, the people, places and things (including abstract ‘things’) represented in and by the speech or writing or image, the participants about whom or which we are speaking or writing or producing images” (48).
This is an example of interactive participants because one of the participants is communicating with the others. The represented participants are those that are listening.

Realizations: pg.63–72


Action Processes

  • The Actor is the participant from which the vector emanates, or which itself, in whole or in part, forms the vector. A non-transactional process has no goal, and is not aimed at anyone or anything. It is the opposite of a transactive process, represented in the phrase “the sky is dropping water.” In non-transactional processes, more is left up to the audience’s imagination due to the ambiguity of the action.
Fig. 1 — Communication model showing the Actors

The Goal is the participant to whom or which the action is done, or at whom the action is aimed. Events are actions that only include the Goal, and the audience cannot see who or what is making the action happen. Sometimes, the Actor is deleted from the situation, or made anonymous, employing “passive agent deletion.” This concept plays a significant role in linguistics and discourse analysis, and lends clues to the agenda/perspective behind the message.

Fig. 2 — Process of translating goal from Actors
  • Occasionally, there are multiple transactional processes within a situation. Vectors can not only connect an Actor and a Goal, but also other corresponding, minor processes involving other actors and goals. The argument has been made that the influence Western culture has on the English language acts as a model for a semiotic schema. Arrows and boxes can serve as a translation from language into visual.
Fig. 3 — Shows use of arrows as portraying multiple transactional processes
  • Visual structures emphasize procedures over substantive content, in the way that marketing experts are more concerned with strategies for reaching consumers rather than the goods/services they are marketing.
  • Transactional structures can also be bidirectional, with the Actor and the Goal varying interchangeably within a situation. These particular participants are known as Interactors, indicating the dual nature of their role.
Fig. 4 — Illustrates bidirectional transaction process incorporating Shannon Weaver model

Reactional Processes

When the vector is formed by eyeline or direction of the glance of one or more of the participants. The reactor (the one who does the looking), must be a creature with visible eyes that have distinct pupils and facial expressions. Like actions, reactions can be transactional or non-transactional. It is sometimes left to the viewer to decide what he or she is thinking.

Speech Processes and Mental Processes

Thought balloons and dialogue balloons that connect drawings of speakers or thinkers to their speech or thought. This use to only be used in comic strips, but have recently made their way into things like textbooks or on the screens of automatic bank tellers.

This is an example of a character being connected to their thoughts, surrounding sounds, or thoughts so that the viewer can understand them more.

Conversion Processes

The Shannon and Weaver communication model results in a third kind of participant. A participant called the “transmitter”, who acts as a goal with respect to the “information source” and as actor with respect to the “receiver”. This kind of participation is called a relay, that an image-text relation in which the text extends rather than elaborates.

This is the Shannon Weaver model shown being applied to more human interactions, and when this human interaction happens it is represented although it was a natural process.

Geometrical Symbolism

This happens when there are no participants. There is just a vector, which means that there is only a direction lead by “infinity” rather than an arrowhead. This shows a process in isolation and why helical vectors are better for showing communication rather than straight or curved arrows. There are many symbolic meanings of the helix that Dance brings to light. Images like this use abstract patterns.

Circumstances

Sometimes images contain secondary participants. These participants are related to the main participants through ways other than via the vectors. These participants are known as the “circumstances” and could be left out of the big picture without really affecting anything vital even though their removal would result in some loss of information. “Locative Circumstances” connect other participants to the “setting.” These calls for a contrast in the foreground and background in a few different listed ways. The things used in action processes are usually referred to as “Circumstances of Means.” The settings can be seen as as “embedded analytical processes,” according to Kress and Van Leuwen.

Here the setting is darker than the foreground, creating an over-exposed type of look.