Drawing out the meaning in images (Kress and van Leeuwen)

In 1972, the Pioneer 10 spacecraft was sent on a course out of our solar system with a plaque showing simple scientific facts, including depictions of a man and woman, and a diagram of the sun and planets.  An arrow emerges from the third planet, and points to an icon of the spacecraft.  This was meant to represent Pioneer 10’s origin and trajectory to whomever (or whatever) discovered it.  But would an arrow have meaning to these hypothetical ETs?  What if their ancestors didn't spear other creatures for their flesh?  The arrow is very simple: one long line, with two angled short lines on one end.  It’s an example of a symbol that seems to have a shared meaning for all of us here on the pale blue dot.

The plaque from the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, meant to explain Earth to the 
friendly extraterrestrials who find it.

Kress and van Leeuwen think that visual communication is a basic form of communication apart from speech and writing.  They also think it gets short shrift in a globalized (Western) culture where the written word is still paramount.  The authors go through the usual story of writing developing out of the need to record amounts and transactions (21).  But where did the symbols come from that came to represent how many heads of oxen are owed to which king?  From pictures.  Symbols for ox became letters that began the word for ox.  To Kress and van Leeuwen, this represents verbal language subsuming the visual (22). 

In 21^st century Western culture, purely visual communication is often seen as childish, a form of expression below writing (17).  Why do teachers shift their evaluation from our pictures to just our writing as we move through school?  If writing originated as images, wouldn't this make visual literacy at least as important as its verbal and written equivalents?  Kress and van Leeuwen certainly think so.  They don’t say so explicitly, but I get the feeling they think visual communication is more paramount by being more primal.

The aboriginal Australian who drew this 

image had no written caption to leave.

The authors buttress their conviction by explaining how visual literacy is central to children’s understanding of the world.  They relate the story of a child making a series of drawings, and only resorting to words when asked by an adult what the images meant (36).  They posit that “[i]t may well be that the complexities realized in the six images and their classification were initially beyond the child's capacity of spoken expression, conception and formulation” (39).  The implication is that there’s nothing wrong with this.  The child was able to fully express something meaningful to him without recourse to words until forced.  This can be as true for adults as children.  The dominant mode of literacy that happened to originate with Bronze Age Mesopotamian traders isn't necessarily the default for all cultures.  As Kress and van Leeuwen note, Australian Aboriginal drawings exist apart from verbal translations, as an independent form of communication (22).

In our own culture, the trend may be rolling back.  Digital technology is giving visual design greater importance to more people.  Whereas visual layout was mostly the concern of a small number of experts, desktop and web publishing have opened up the field to people who have a greater need to communicate visually.  Which is a more sensible way to convey a scientific concept: a textbook with occasional static diagrams that illustrate the writing, or an interactive animation with writing that anchors the images’ context?  Science education has, in fact, been heading in this direction, and the authors wonder whether it even constitutes a different understanding of science from the older writing-centric method (31).  I had an astronomy professor who has gradually built up a curriculum of Flash animations that, in his opinion, more richly convey the concepts he wants to explain.  While there is sometimes substantial text, the visual simulations are the centerpieces of his lessons.

It’s a strange revelation to think that we, as members of our culture, are constantly translating between modes of expression.  It may be that no form of literacy takes precedence over any others, but a recognition of how they interact is central to a nuanced interpretation of all symbols.  This includes recognizing that images can have meanings in and of themselves, no translation needed.

Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen.  Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design.  London: Routledge.