Reading Images offers a model of three accounts for images: representational meaning, interactional meaning, compositional meaning. | INFORMATION READING IMAGES - THE GRAMMAR OF VISUAL DESIGN Gunther Kress & Theo van Leeuwen Routledge, 2006, ISBN-13: 978-0415319157 Tran Thi Hieu Thuy* VNU University of Languages and International Studies, Pham Van Dong, Cau Giay, Hanoi, Vietnam 1. Introduction “Print- and screen-based technologies” have innovated the definition of literacy. The traditional definitions are no longer comprehensive enough in a world where texts are becoming increasingly multimodal - they communicate to us through graphics, pictures, layout techniques as well as through words. In fact, “it is difficult these days to find a single text which uses solely verbal English” (Goodman, 1996). Visual literacy, as its name suggests, denotes the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. This notion extends the meaning of literacy, * Tel.: 84-902323386 Email: thuytth@ which commonly signifies interpretation of a written or printed text. Visual images, like all representations, “are never innocent or neutral reflections of re-present for us: that is, they offer not a mirror of the world but an interpretation of it” (Midalia, 1999, p. 131). For that reason, several questions are posed to the viewers. Some common ones might be “How can we come to justified and grounded meaning(s) of the picture?”; and “How can we understand the basic structure of an image text?” (Hermawan, 2011, ). The path of seeking answers to these questions suggests that there should be an underlying pattern or structure that people can rely on to interpret the meaning of visual texts. To this direction, Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (second edition), by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen, offers “a usable description of major compositional structures which have become established in the course of the history of Western visual semiotics, and to analyse how they are used to produce meaning by contemporary image-makers” .
