Different social situations draw upon different regions of visual meaning potential, giving rise to distinctive patterns of visual semiosis.
This observation, however, leaves an important question unanswered.
How is visual semiosis organised internally?
To answer this question, we must turn to another of the fundamental dimensions of Systemic Functional Linguistics: axis.
The dimension of axis is often discussed through grammar. Yet it is not peculiar to grammar, nor even to language itself. It is a general semiotic principle.
If visual semiosis is a semiotic system, then it is reasonable to ask whether it too exhibits paradigmatic and syntagmatic organisation.
The Dimension of Axis
Halliday distinguishes between two complementary forms of organisation:
paradigmatic order (system)
syntagmatic order (structure)
A system is a set of related alternatives.
A structure is a configuration.
The relation between them is one of realisation.
Structure realises system.
Importantly, this distinction is not a distinction between meaning and form.
Nor is it a distinction between potential and instance.
It is a distinction between two modes of semiotic organisation.
The dimension of axis is therefore independent of both stratification and instantiation.
System and Structure Are Not Restricted to Meaning
One reason the distinction is often misunderstood is that discussions of system and structure frequently focus on grammar.
This can create the impression that systems belong to meaning while structures belong to form.
But Halliday's architecture is more general than this.
The distinction between paradigmatic and syntagmatic organisation applies wherever a semiotic system exhibits relations of choice and configuration.
Thus, in language, we find systems and structures not only in lexicogrammar but also in phonology.
The distinction therefore cannot be reduced to the content plane.
Axis cuts across the semiotic architecture.
It is a way of organising semiotic phenomena rather than a particular kind of semiotic phenomenon.
Why This Matters for Visual Semiosis
Once this point is recognised, a common assumption about images becomes less convincing.
Many approaches to visual analysis begin by describing structures.
An image is analysed in terms of:
composition,
framing,
balance,
symmetry,
salience,
contrast,
and other observable configurations.
Such descriptions are often valuable.
But they leave a theoretical question unanswered.
Are these structures related to systems?
Or are they merely collections of visible features?
A Hallidayan approach cannot be satisfied with structural description alone.
If visual semiosis exhibits axis, then structures should be intelligible as realisations of systems.
The challenge is therefore not simply to identify structures.
It is to understand the systems those structures realise.
The View from Above Revisited
This brings us back to the central methodological principle of the series.
The view from above gives explanatory priority to system rather than structure.
This does not mean structures are unimportant.
On the contrary, structures are indispensable.
Without structures, systems could never be realised.
The point is that structures do not explain themselves.
A configuration becomes intelligible through its relation to alternatives.
To explain a structure is therefore to show how it participates in a system.
The question is not merely:
How is this image organised?
but:
What alternatives make this organisation meaningful?
A Different Question from Visual Grammar
At this point it is important to avoid a familiar misunderstanding.
To ask whether visual semiosis exhibits systems and structures is not the same as asking whether it possesses a grammar.
These are different theoretical questions.
The existence of paradigmatic and syntagmatic organisation does not entail the existence of a lexicogrammatical stratum.
Language possesses both.
Visual semiosis may possess the former without possessing the latter.
Indeed, this possibility may be one of the most important implications of a Hallidayan approach.
Images need not be languages in order to exhibit systemic organisation.
What Might Visual Systems Be?
This question remains open.
The purpose of the present post is not to provide a completed inventory of visual systems.
Rather, it is to establish the theoretical space in which such an investigation becomes possible.
If visual semiosis exhibits axis, then we should expect to find:
paradigmatic relations among visual alternatives,
syntagmatic configurations realising those alternatives,
and systematic relations between the two.
The task of analysis would then be to reconstruct those relations.
Not to catalogue structures in isolation, but to understand them as moments within a larger semiotic organisation.
Beyond Structural Description
This perspective suggests a shift in emphasis.
Instead of treating composition, framing, or salience as self-explanatory categories, we begin asking what systems they may realise.
Instead of accumulating inventories of visual features, we investigate networks of semiotic alternatives.
Instead of beginning from structure alone, we seek the paradigmatic relations that make structure meaningful.
The goal is not to abandon the study of visual structures.
The goal is to place them within a systemic account of visual semiosis.
Looking Ahead
If visual semiosis possesses both content and expression planes, and if both may potentially exhibit paradigmatic and syntagmatic organisation, then a further question immediately arises.
How are the resources of visual expression related to visual content?
This question becomes particularly pressing when we consider colour.
Colour has often been treated as though it possessed meanings in its own right.
Yet from a systemic-functional perspective, colour first appears as an expressive resource.
How, then, does colour participate in semiosis?
The next post revisits one of the most familiar topics in visual analysis and asks a deceptively simple question:
What exactly are we talking about when we talk about colour?
No comments:
Post a Comment