The Senior Common Room at St Anselm’s possessed many traditions, but among the most enduring was the tendency for apparently harmless phrases to become the site of extended intellectual bloodshed.
On this occasion the phrase was visual grammar.
Mr Blottisham had arrived carrying a recently published volume of multimodal studies and was radiating the confidence of a man who had encountered a term he believed to be entirely self-explanatory.
"Perfectly sensible expression," he declared. "Language has grammar. Pictures have grammar. One arranges things in sentences and the other arranges things in images. Same principle."
Professor Quillibrace glanced up from his tea.
"No."
Mr Blottisham sighed.
"You haven't even heard the argument."
"I have," said Quillibrace. "You completed it."
Miss Elowen Stray looked up from her notebook.
"I suspect the difficulty lies in what we mean by grammar."
"Structure," said Blottisham immediately. "Organisation. Patterning. The way things fit together."
Quillibrace regarded him with mild concern.
"That is rather like defining a cathedral as 'a collection of stones.'"
"It is a collection of stones."
"And a symphony is a collection of noises."
"Exactly."
"The fact that one can produce a description so broad as to be useless does not make it correct."
Miss Stray smiled into her tea.
Quillibrace continued.
"In Systemic Functional Linguistics, grammar is not a synonym for structure. It is a very specific theoretical object. Lexicogrammar occupies a particular stratum within a stratified semiotic architecture."
Blottisham waved a hand.
"Details."
"No," said Quillibrace. "The details are the entire issue."
A brief silence followed.
Blottisham opened his book.
"Very well. These scholars speak of visual grammar. They analyse composition, framing, salience, spatial organisation and so forth. What is the problem?"
"The problem," said Quillibrace, "is that the phrase can mean two entirely different things."
Miss Stray leaned forward.
"One possibility would be that images possess something analogous to the grammatical stratum of language."
"Precisely."
"And the other?"
"That grammar is being used metaphorically to mean organised visual patterning."
Blottisham frowned.
"I still fail to see the difficulty."
"You fail to see many things."
"I mean theoretically."
Quillibrace folded his hands.
"If images possess a grammar in the systemic-functional sense, then one is making a rather substantial claim. One is importing Halliday's stratification model into visual semiosis."
Blottisham nodded uncertainly.
"Which means?"
"It means that visual meaning would be organised through strata related by realisation. One would need something functionally analogous to semantics and lexicogrammar. One would be committed to explaining visual structures as realisations of higher-order systems of meaning."
"That sounds reasonable."
"It may or may not be reasonable. The point is that it is a theoretical commitment."
Miss Stray nodded.
"And a fairly large one."
"Exactly."
Blottisham looked down at his book again.
"But many analyses simply discuss patterns in images."
"Indeed."
"Composition. Layout. Salience."
"Yes."
"Framing."
"Quite."
"Colour distribution."
"Mm."
"And these are what they call visual grammar."
"Then grammar is no longer naming a stratum."
Blottisham paused.
"What is it naming?"
"A convenient collection of observable regularities."
Miss Stray set down her cup.
"So the same phrase may either refer to a stratified system of meaning or merely to recurring structural patterns."
"Precisely."
Blottisham looked unconvinced.
"Perhaps it refers to both."
Quillibrace gave him a look usually reserved for experimental bridge designs.
"That is the problem."
The rain tapped gently against the windows.
Miss Stray considered the matter.
"So the ambiguity is not merely terminological."
"No."
"It concerns explanatory architecture."
"Entirely."
Blottisham sighed.
"I suppose you're going to tell me that explanation proceeds in different directions."
"How perceptive of you."
"Years of practice."
Quillibrace ignored him.
"If grammar is understood in the systemic-functional sense, explanation proceeds from above."
"From systems?"
"To structures."
"From meaning?"
"To form."
"From function?"
"To its realisation."
Miss Stray nodded.
"Exactly."
Blottisham rubbed his chin.
"But if one begins with visual features themselves..."
"Then explanation moves in the opposite direction."
"From form to meaning."
"Yes."
"From observable patterns to inferred functions."
"Indeed."
Blottisham sat back.
"So the same phrase can conceal two completely different methodologies."
"Now you are beginning to see the difficulty."
For several moments nobody spoke.
Finally Miss Stray broke the silence.
"It seems the phrase acquires much of its authority from its association with systemic-functional theory."
Quillibrace nodded.
"Yet in many cases the actual explanatory procedure may be operating quite differently."
"Using the vocabulary without necessarily importing the architecture."
"Just so."
Blottisham looked faintly troubled.
"Then when someone speaks of visual grammar, the important question is not whether images are structured."
"Images are obviously structured."
"Nor whether patterns can be identified."
"Certainly not."
"But what kind of explanation those patterns are supposed to support."
Quillibrace smiled.
"A rare moment of accuracy."
Miss Stray closed her notebook.
"So the phrase marks a theoretical crossroads."
"A fault line," said Quillibrace.
"Between two views of explanation."
"Yes."
"One beginning from systems of meaning and moving towards formal structure."
"And the other beginning from form and moving towards meaning."
Quillibrace reached for the teapot.
"Which is why the term is never quite as innocent as it appears."
Blottisham stared thoughtfully into the fire.
"Curious."
"What is?"
"I arrived believing visual grammar simply meant that pictures have structure."
"And now?"
"I appear to have accidentally committed myself to an entire theory of semiosis."
Quillibrace poured the tea.
"That, Mr Blottisham, is what happens when one borrows terminology without checking what machinery is attached to it."
The fire crackled softly.
Miss Stray smiled.
"And the machinery, as usual, turns out to be the interesting part."
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