1. The Problem
Research into images has often proceeded by analogy with language. Images are treated as though they possess grammars, visual elements are assigned meanings, and analysis frequently begins with visible forms and asks what they signify.
From a Hallidayan perspective, this approach is theoretically problematic.
The issue is not whether images are meaningful. The issue is whether they should be understood through the same architecture that explains language.
This paper argues that they should—but not in the way usually assumed.
2. The Hallidayan Starting Point
The defining characteristic of Systemic Functional Linguistics is not a set of analytical categories but a mode of explanation.
SFL gives priority to the view from above.
Explanation proceeds from value to token:
- system over structure,
- function over form.
Structures are explained through systems; forms are explained through functions.
This methodological commitment remains fundamental whether the object of study is language or any other semiotic system.
3. Visual Semiosis in Halliday's Architecture
Halliday's architecture distinguishes among three global dimensions:
- stratification,
- instantiation,
- metafunction.
Visual semiosis may be investigated within the same dimensions.
Like language, visual semiosis possesses content and expression planes which together realise context.
Unlike language, however, visual semiosis does not appear to possess a lexicogrammatical stratum.
This distinction is crucial.
4. Why Images Are Not Languages
Images are semiotic.
It does not follow that they are linguistic.
Language possesses a uniquely stratified content plane consisting of semantics and lexicogrammar.
Images do not.
Consequently, the search for visual clauses, visual syntax, or visual grammar mistakes a property of language for a property of semiosis in general.
Images are not languages.
They are visual semiosis.
5. Content and Expression
The failure to distinguish content from expression has generated persistent confusion in visual analysis.
Colour provides a familiar example.
Blue is often said to mean tranquillity; red is said to mean danger.
Such formulations collapse content into expression.
Colour belongs to the expression plane.
Meaning belongs to the content plane.
The theoretical task is not to determine what colours mean but to investigate how colour participates in the realisation of meaning.
6. Photography and the Transparency Illusion
Photography is often treated as though it bypasses semiosis and presents reality directly.
This transparency is illusory.
Photographs participate in semiosis no less than paintings, drawings, or diagrams.
Their apparent naturalness obscures rather than abolishes the semiotic relations through which they function.
The photograph is not explained by the world it depicts.
It is explained through its participation in meaning.
7. A Research Agenda
A systemic-functional theory of images therefore begins from a different set of questions.
Not:
- What does this visual feature mean?
- What is the grammar of this image?
But:
- What systems organise visual content?
- What expressive resources realise those meanings?
- How are visual meanings distributed through register?
- How do visual meanings enact ideational, interpersonal, and textual functions?
- How are content and expression related in visual semiosis?
These questions remain largely open.
8. Conclusion
The future of visual semiotics lies not in treating images as languages.
It lies in extending Halliday's theory of semiosis beyond language while preserving the distinctions that make the theory coherent.
The central methodological commitment remains unchanged:
explanation proceeds from above.
A systemic-functional theory of images therefore begins not with visible forms but with the semiotic architecture that makes those forms meaningful.
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