Seeing Meaning: 5 Visual Metaphor and the Encoding of Value

Having established immersion, temporality, and multimodal integration, we now examine how images and animations instantiate metaphor and encode value. Unlike verbal metaphor, which maps between conceptual domains via lexicogrammar, visual metaphor operates through perceptual and relational alignment — actualised in the viewer’s embodied construal.

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1. Metaphor as Perceptual Construal

Visual metaphor does not rely on symbolic substitution; it construes one perceptual or experiential element through another:

• Example: Light descending in a scene may convey hope or enlightenment; descent may signify decline or danger.

• Relational dependence: The meaning of a perceptual element emerges from its alignment with spatial, temporal, and multimodal context.

• Temporal layering: Motion or sequence can extend the metaphor through anticipation, transformation, or resolution.

Systemically, metaphor is a form of evaluative construal embedded in the semiotic field.

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2. Tokenisation of Value

Individual perceptual elements function as value-tokens:

• Each token carries potential affective, moral, or aesthetic significance.

• Tokens are relational: their meaning depends on the interplay with surrounding elements, attention flow, and viewer perspective.

• Tokenisation is context-sensitive: the same form may signify hope in one composition, peril in another.

This parallels SFL’s treatment of lexical choice: just as a word realises experiential, interpersonal, and textual meaning, a visual token realises multiple evaluative and perceptual dimensions simultaneously.

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3. Evaluative Layering

Visual media can encode multiple evaluative strata concurrently:

• Moral tone: Light, shadow, and gesture may imply ethical stance.

• Emotional resonance: Colour, motion, and composition shape affective interpretation.

• Aesthetic valuation: Symmetry, balance, and rhythm modulate the viewer’s sense of beauty or harmony.

The semiotic effect is cumulative: evaluative, affective, and aesthetic meaning are inseparable from perceptual construal.

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4. Analytic Implications

Understanding visual metaphor as value-tokenisation informs systematic analysis:

• Meaning arises relationally, not by symbolic mapping.

• Each perceptual element functions within a network of temporal, spatial, and multimodal relations.

• Metaphorical construal depends on immersion, perspective, temporality, and multimodal alignment.

Thus, evaluative meaning is grounded in embodied perception and relational organisation, rather than conventional symbolisation.

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5. Bridging to Systemic Synthesis

Visual metaphor completes the analytical arc:

• Immersion positions the viewer within the field.

• Temporality structures attention and transformation.

• Multimodality integrates perceptual channels.

• Metaphor and value encode evaluative significance.

These interdependent strata converge to form a relational semiotic of visual media. Part 6 will synthesise all dimensions into a coherent framework, showing how meaning is fully actualised through embodied perception, attention, and evaluative construal.

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Next in the Series: A Relational Semiotics of Visual Media

We will integrate the preceding strata — immersion, temporality, multimodality, and value-tokenisation — into a concise systemic model of visual meaning.