E300F Term 2 Week 10-2

Visual Communication for Making Meaning (II):

Word and Image in Fiction
• In this lecture, we will be
looking at fictional
texts/narratives for both child
and adult readerships which
use images alongside words.

• The particular focus will be

the creative juxtaposition of
word and image, as this is
often crucial to how readers
interpret the text as a whole
to communicate and to
make meaning literary
creativity
• An example of the use of images
in fiction is illustration.

• Some features of illustration:

– The illustrations are often

separated from the verbal text,
printed above or below it, or even
as separate plates.

– In this way, the narrative is told in

words while the illustrations have a
supporting role, reinforcing the
narrative or perhaps even
illuminating a salient, significant
detail.
• The following example is an excerpt from
Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland by Lewis
Carroll (1865). See how the illustration
‘accompanies’ the narrative texts.
So she was considering in her own mind (as well as
she could, for the hot day made her feel very sleepy
and stupid), whether the pleasure of making a
daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting
up and picking the daisies, when suddenly a White
Rabbit with pink eyes ran close by her.

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor

did Alice think it so very much out of the way to
hear the Rabbit say to itself, `Oh dear! Oh dear! I
shall be late!' (when she thought it over afterwards,
it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered
at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural);
but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its
waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried
on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across
her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit
with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take
out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across
the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to
see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the
hedge.
Functions of visual elements in fiction

• The section will investigate how visual elements perform

various accompaniment and significant functions in fiction.

• In other words, we will be looking at what images ‘do’ and

how they might be seen to ‘make meaning’ in narratives.

• The five functions of such are:

– 1) Locating the reader in the fictional world

– 2) Providing visual support
– 3) Claiming authenticity
– 4) Conveying emotion
– 5) Characterization
Locating the reader in
the fictional world
• When we read, we create a ‘text world’.

• As described by Semino (1997, p.1), the ‘text

world’ is “the context, scenario or type of
reality that is evoked in our minds during
reading and that (we conclude) is referred to
by the text.”

• When we enter the text world, we create a

‘mental map’ from the description of a
location and the way elements are described
in relation to each other.

• Sometimes, authors draw ‘actual maps’ for

readers to better locate themselves in the
fictional world.
• Task: The following map appears in A.A.
Milne’s Winnie the Pooh. Besides being able
to have yourself located in the ‘text world’,
what catches your attention when you are
reading the map?
Analysis:

• The map is poetic, in Formalist terms, for several

reasons.

– Deviations from standard Ennglish spelling

• piknicks, 100 Aker Wood, drawn by Me and Mr Shepard helpd

– Childlike speech and writing

• floody place, sandy pit where Roo plays

– Unusual version of the compass

• All these deviant forms draw your attention as a

reader of the map deviation foregrounding
interpretation
Providing visual support
• Sometimes the illustrations in
narratives seem to be less
concerned with explanation or
elucidation but with providing
visual support for the narrative.

• Tom Hughes’ Tom Brown’s

Schooldays (1949) uses
illustrations to provide visual
support for the narrative.
• The image is entitled ‘A few
parting words’.

• The image provides visual support

to where, how, who and to whom
the parting words are said.

• In this way, the image does not

tell us anything new or explain
something unclear from the
verbal narrative, but appears to
signify ‘this is what happened, and
this is exactly how it happened’.

• This is the ‘magic’ of ‘showing but

not telling’ in narratives, probably
from the metaphor ‘seeing is
believing’.
Claiming authenticity

• Images can also make a claim to

truthfulness or reality for the story.

• If the places and artefacts are real

(i.e. can be seen as illustrations),
then it might be easier to see the
story as real.

• In this way, the images function to

verify the truthfulness of the story.
• The illustration shows the ‘old minute hand of the great
clock’ an artefact which is real and true

• In linguistics:

– this kind of claim to truthfulness/authenticity is termed as ‘high

modality’ – events or things are represented as if they were
true and real.

• In semiotic terms:
– the image denotes a real-life artefact; and
– the image connotes truth, reality and honesty – its asks us to
accept its authenticity.
Conveying emotion

• Some authors use images in

fiction at the level of
connotation – they add affective
meaning but do not seem to
have an explicitly narrative
function.

• The following image is from The

Coma by Alex Garland (2004).
• The narrative tells a story of a man who is beaten
unconscious on a late-night train and is
hospitalized as a result.

• The image is in the form of woodcut which is

monochrome and dark in every sense (e.g. the
large black shapes of the policemen and
doctors), by means of which the following
affective emotions are conveyed:

– There is a distancing effect as everything is only in

their outlines and shadows.

– The comatose character is under vague and

unspecified threats.

– What’s going on inside the comatose man’s head

is also blurred and uncertain. He cannot grasp
what has happened to him, nor is he dead or
alive, asleep or awake.
Characterization
• Many literary works use images
as clues to characterization
which is, besides plot, an
important aspect of narrative.

• A good example is Mark

Haddon’s The Curious Incident
of the Dog in the Night-Time
(2003).

• The book is about Christopher,

the central 15-year-old
protagonist and the narrator,
who has Asperger’s syndrome.
• Asperger’s syndrome:

– Patients of which have trouble

understanding what people
mean if they depart from the
strictly literal.

– They find it difficult to

understand gestures, facial
expressions and metaphors.

– In other words, they cannot read

the semiotic codes on the
connotative level.
• The following excerpt is taken from the book. It is narrated by Christopher
himself about his problem:

I find people confusing. This is for two main reasons.

The first main reason is that people do a lot of talking without using any
words. Siobhan says that if you raise one eyebrow it can mean lots of
different things. It can mean ‘I want to do sex with you’ and it can also
mean ‘I think that what you just said was very stupid.’

[…]

The second main reason is that people often talk using metaphors.
These are examples of metaphors:

I laughed my socks off.

He was the apple of her eye.
They had a skeleton in the cupboard.
We had a real pig of a day.
The dog was stone dead.
• The following figure illustrates Christopher’s writing when
he feels the need to explain detail which to most people
would seem superfluous but which to Christopher is
crucial:
Picturebooks and multimodality
• Unlike the role of images which
is largely supplementary to
texts in narratives, there are
many modern picturebooks
where the images assume a
central role in telling the story
and creating the central
meanings of the narrative.

• In these picturebooks, images

may be wholly integrated with
the words. In this way, layout,
image and typography may be
intertwined.
• An example of such picturebooks is
a children’s story by Sarah Fanelli.

• Background of the story:

– The story is about a butterfly who

lacks the confidence to fly.

– The butterfly travels around asking

the world’s experts for help.

– She has partial success in Italy before

leaving for Paris.
• Task: Examine the two pictures and explore:
– 1) signs indicating ‘Italian-ness’ and ‘French-ness’.
– 2) layout indicating take-off and landing
The cartoon format as
narrative device
• Comic strip (i.e. a series of pictures drawn
inside boxes that tell a story cartoon) is also
a popular form of narrative.
• The following two pages are taken
from Raymond Brigg’s story of the
life of his parents, Ethel and
Ernest.

• Background of the story:

– It is an affectionate narration of
the lives of the author’s parents,
from their early adulthood in the
late 1920s when they first met,
through the birth of their son, the
trials of living through WWII and
their later life.

– The book ends with their deaths,

within a year of one another, in the
• Task: As you read,
consider the following
questions:

– 1) Why do you think the

author chose the cartoon
format for his story?

– 2) What elements of the

visual and verbal text
seem to you significant
and why? (What are the
signs and what do they
connote?)
Analysis:

• Emphasis and intonation are conveyed through large,

bold type, capitalization, exclamation marks and ‘spiky’
speech bubbles.

• The cartoon is carefully hand-drawn, and the writing is

also genuinely handwritten rather than produced with
a computer-generated cursive font, both of which may
have its semiotic significance the care and attention
to detail seem to add to overall meaning of the book as
a ‘homage’ to the author’s parents.
Conclusion: ways in which words and
images can be combined

• Nikolajeva and Scott (2000,

pp.225-6) describes a
variety of ways in which
words and images can be
combined in fiction so as to
reinforce and create
meaning creativity.
• Symmetrical interaction
– Words & pictures tell the same story, repeating information in
a different medium.

• Enhancing interaction
– Pictures amplify more fully meanings of the words, or the
words expand the pictures with different information in each
mode.

• Complementary interaction
– Very significant enhancing interaction produces a
complementary relationship.

• Counterpointing interaction
– Words and images collaborate to communicate meanings
beyond the scope of either one alone.

• Contradictory interaction
– An extreme form of counterpointing interaction, where words
and pictures seem to be in opposition to one another.
Visual communication in fiction
• It is a common assumption in
some cultures that while
literature designed for children
contains pictures, adult fiction
does not.

• This view is not universal. In

other words, there are cultures
in which pictures are a strong
tradition in fiction aimed at an
adult readership.