Dorothy Economou

Sydney University

The evaluative orientation of readers through images and image-text relations in news media feature stories

This doctoral project explores how print news feature stories combine verbal and visual meanings to orient readers to evaluate an current social issue under debate.

Feature stories from mass circulation metropolitan weekend newspapers in two different countries (Greece and Australia) and languages (Greek and English) are compared, to see how each represents and evaluates a similar issue, that of illegal immigrants, through the the multimodal meanings of image-text relations.

Using a SFL theoretical framework, two kinds of multiplicative effect are explored in the meaning choices made in these multimodal texts.

One effect is the contribution made to evaluative meanings by the combined choices made in all three metafunctions - interpersonal, ideational and textual meanings.

The other effect is the total evaluative meaning made by the combination of all interpersonal meaning choices made simultaneously in both verbal and visual modes.

In order to explore these multiplicative meanings, the SFL-based image analysis frameworks developed by Kress and van Leeuwen (1996), O'Toole (1994) are extended by incorporating recent SFL theorising on evaluative meaning, particularly the Appraisal System (Martin, 2000, and White, 2003) and further work on multimodal texts (Martin, 2002 & Thibault, 2000)

References:

Kress, G & van Leeuwen, T 1996 Reading Images Routledge: London

Martin, J.R. 2000 Beyond Excnange : Appraisal Systems in English in Evaluation in Text (Eds) G. Hunston & S. Thompson Oxford University Press : Oxford.

Martin, J.R. 2002 Fair Trade : negotiating meaning in multimodal texts. in P. Coppock (Ed), The Semiotics of Writing : transdisciplinary perspectives on the technology of Writing .Belgium : Brepols

O’Toole, M. 1994 The Language of Displayed Art Fairleigh Dickinson Uni Press : UK

Thibault, P. 2002 The multimodal Transcription of a Television Advertisement : Theory & Practice in Multimodality & Multimediality (Ed) Baldry, A. Palladino Editore:Italy

White, P.R.R. 2003 Beyond modality and hedging: a dialogic view of the language of intersubjective stance, in Text 23(2) pp.259-284