Exploring the Circle of Social Interaction in Non-Human Relation in Multimodal Texts

Abstract

Images, colours and other non-verbal resources are no longer used mainly to entertain and illustrate, rather, they are becoming significant in communicating and meaning-making. Thus, visual culture is part of our living.The study explores the theory of visual grammar as an extension of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) which proposes three functions of language (metafunctions). These metafunctions are also applicable to different modes other than language such as images, gesture, colours etc. The Interpersonal Metafunction focusses on the representation of social relation between the visual (image) and the viewer. Social relations with others determine the kind of social distance we maintain with them in our daily activities. This social distance is also applicable to non-human representation of objects and environment. Interaction and social relations have been studied from different perspectives. However, much attention has not been given interaction between the viewer and non-human representation such as objects and environment. This study adopts Kress & Van Leeuwen’s Reading Images: TheGrammar of Visual Design (2006) to explore the circle of social interaction and relation that exists between inanimate objects and the viewers. The aim is to show how distance determines the relation between the viewer, objects, buildings and landscapes. This study concludes that in this present information era, where knowledge has become an unstable element, with changes occurring as a result of constant global dialogues generated by new technologies, many images contain ideas about socio-cultural matters. Therefore, exploring distance between a viewer and image in any social interaction enhances critical thinking and meaning construction process in foreign language learning andother domains.