At this point in the series, the diagnostic trajectory has become clear. What has been identified is not a set of isolated problems in the analysis of images, but a consistent displacement in explanatory orientation: explanation from below replacing explanation from above, catalogue substituting for system, stratification quietly collapsing into undifferentiated meaning.
The question that now emerges is not simply what has gone wrong, but what would be required for a genuinely systemic-functional account of visual semiosis to hold.
This is not a proposal for a new “visual grammar” in the descriptive sense. Nor is it an attempt to extend linguistic categories into visual domains. It is a specification of the architectural conditions under which such a theory could be said to be systemic-functional at all.
Four requirements follow directly from the analysis so far.
1. Explicit Stratification (If Claimed)
If a theory of visual semiosis invokes stratification, it must be prepared to maintain it consistently.
This means that content and expression cannot be collapsed into a single undifferentiated domain of “visual meaning”. Expressive resources—colour, spatial organisation, framing, compositional structure—must not be treated as already semantic in themselves. They must be treated as realising meaning, not as being identical with meaning.
Where stratification is not maintained, the architecture of explanation shifts imperceptibly from realisation to attribution. Meaning is then read off from form rather than explained through distinct levels of semiosis.
A systemic-functional visual theory must therefore either:
- explicitly maintain stratification, or
- explicitly отказаться from it
What it cannot do is invoke it selectively while allowing it to collapse in analysis.
2. Explicit Separation of System and Structure
A second requirement concerns the relation between system and structure.
A systemic-functional theory requires that visual meaning be organised as a system of differences: a network of meaning potentials defined by internal relations of opposition.
Structures are not systems. They are realisations of systems.
Where system is treated as a catalogue of observable regularities, or where structural description substitutes for systemic explanation, the architecture of meaning is reduced to classification.
A genuine systemic-functional approach must therefore make explicit:
- what counts as systemic opposition in visual semiosis
- how those oppositions define meaning potential
- and how structures realise positions within that system
Without this, “visual grammar” remains descriptive rather than explanatory.
3. Explicit Orientation from Above
The third requirement concerns explanatory direction.
A theory is systemic-functional only to the extent that it gives explanatory priority to the view from above.
This means that explanation must proceed from:
- systems → structures
- functions → forms
- meaning potential → realised instance
and not the reverse.
Analyses that begin with the image as a fully constituted object and infer meaning from its features may be empirically rich, but they do not satisfy this requirement.
The view from above is not a rhetorical preference. It is the condition under which system, stratification, and realisation retain explanatory force.
Without it, systemic-functional vocabulary can still be used—but its explanatory role is altered.
4. Explicit Treatment of Content and Expression
Finally, a systemic-functional visual theory must make its treatment of content and expression explicit and consistent.
If visual semiosis is stratified, then expression cannot be treated as directly meaningful. It must be understood as the realisation of content-level organisation.
If visual semiosis is not stratified, then the theory must explicitly account for how meaning is organised without such a mediating level.
What is not acceptable, from a systemic-functional standpoint, is the oscillation between:
- treating expressive features as form, and
- treating them as direct carriers of meaning
depending on analytical convenience.
This oscillation is precisely what produces the instability identified in earlier posts.
Concluding Claim
Taken together, these requirements define a clear threshold.
Much work described as “visual grammar” is not incorrect in its observations, nor deficient in its descriptive attentiveness. It is, rather, operating within a different explanatory regime.
It begins from structure rather than system, from form rather than function, and from instance rather than meaning potential. It may produce rich accounts of visual organisation, but it does not consistently adopt the architectural commitments that define systemic-functional theory.
A genuine systemic-functional visual theory is therefore not distinguished by its terminology, nor by its attention to meaning, but by its adherence to a specific explanatory discipline:
system over structure, function over form, and explanation from above.
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