Photographs in image-text-complexes

Previous research on multimodality has made several observations about the con-tent of photographs in tourism discourse. Machin (2004, p. 330) points out that unlike the highly decontextualised photography in contemporary image banks, the tourism-related photographs still retain contextual meanings, because they can be placed in a geographical context. Traditionally, the geographical context has been invoked by portraying the established landmarks and tourist attractions. The work of Jokela on the visual representation of Helsinki between the years 1954 and 1963 lends support to this claim, as “one-third of the analysed images depict the old monumental center” (2011, p. 59).

In Hiippala (2007), I proposed that photography in the tourist brochures may also be shifting towards representing the values associated with certain ‘lifestyles’, as opposed to only portraying landmarks and touristic attractions. Such a shift

column-2-photo RESTATEMENT

ELABORATION s-4.28: Photo: Railway station tower

s-4.29: The clock tower of Helsinki Railway Station.

s-4.30: The building was designed by Eliel Saarinen and completed in 1916.

Figure 7.7: An image-text complex with a restatement relation inTGH 1980 would be consistent with the discourses of destination branding, which seek to associate the destination with a set of values (Francesconi 2011, p. 342). Yet these values are not easily communicated in the visual semiotic modes by portraying concrete entities, which has lead to the introduction of ‘conceptual’ photographs to the tourist brochures (see Section 3.3.3).

Although I do not explicitly analyse the content of the photographs, the possi-ble shift in the use of the photographs should be kept in mind when studying the structure of the tourist brochures. The possible shift warrants particular attention on how the photographs are incorporated into the overall multimodal structure.

In order to proceed, I shall now continue the discussion from the perspective of structure, beginning with the photographs that are accompanied by captions.

Following Kv˚ale (2010), the concept of an image-text-complex shall act as the point of departure for the analysis of photographs and text-flow (see Section 3.5.3).

The reason to consider the image-text-complex is the high semiotic potential of its structure. What I mean by this potential may be exemplified by Figure 7.7, which shows an image-text-complex with a restatement relation with two nuclei: a photograph (s-4.28) and a caption. The caption consists of two RST segments (s-4.29-30) that are joined by the rhetorical relation of elaboration.

In this case, the discourse semantics of the image-text-complex are seemingly straightforward: the close proximity of the text and image signals that they should be interpreted together (see also the example in Figure 3.11 in Section 3.5.3).

This interpretation is further reinforced by the hierarchical structure, as the entire image-text complex is formed by the child nodes of the same parent node in the layout structure, as indicated by the bounding box around Figure 7.7.

The structural simplicity of the image-text-complex may be deceiving, because its meaning potential lies in the discourse semantics of the image-text-complex.

Recall that the discourse semantics also guide the interpretation of the entire pages, which follow the logic determined by the active semiotic mode (see Section 8.4.1). Structurally, the image-text-complex is often just one part of the page and its discourse semantics provide the key to interpreting the structure of the image-text-complex.

It is possible, however, to insert different semiotic resources into the structure provided by the image-text-complex, which opens up a wealth of semiotic possibil-ities. This structure is precisely where the semiotic potential of the participating semiotic modes can manifest itself in phenomena such as multimodal metaphor (Forceville 1996; O’Halloran 1999a; Van Mulken et al. 2010), cohesion and in-tersemiosis (Royce 1998, 2007; O’Halloran 2008b; Liu and O’Halloran 2009). To exemplify, the work of Caple (2009a) on “image nuclear news stories” shows how complex intersemiotic meanings are embedded into a simple multimodal structure

— a structure that closely resembles an image-text-complex. A further example can be found in Knox’s (2007) study of “newsbites” on newspaper websites.

side-2-column-4-box-1 built in Turku in 1931-33 and took part in World War Two.

s-2.252: Visitors are allowed on board.

s-2.253: Open 10 May --- 31 August daily 11am-5 pm.

Figure 7.8: An image-text complex in SSH 1986

The widespread use of the image-text-complex also warrants attention to its use in the annotated corpus. Figure 7.8 shows another type of an image-text-complex in the tourist brochures, which I hereby term an illustrated description.

As the bounding box indicates, all the rhetorical segments exist under the same node in the layout hierarchy. In terms of structure and its discourse semantic inter-pretation, the captioned photograph in Figure 7.7 and the illustrated description in Figure 7.8 both rely on spatial proximity in the layout to signal that they are rhetorically connected.

However, the rhetorical configuration of the illustrated description in Figure 7.8 is different than that of the photograph and its caption in Figure 7.7. A

restatement relation holds between the header (s-2.248) and the photograph (s-2.249), which together act as atitlespan for the description. This description, in turn, consists of the nucleus (s-2.250) and its satellites (s-2.251-3), which provide additional detail and information on how to access the described location.

Unlike the captioned photograph in Figure 7.7, the illustrated description does not explicitly establish a relation between the photograph and a specific RST segment in the description. In many cases, the proximity and presence of a header and an image are considered sufficient to establish a rhetorical relation between the participating segments. It may be argued that this is supported by the staging of the tourist brochure as a genre: together, the header and the photograph fulfil the stage of identification (see Section 4.3.1). This interpretation is also reinforced by the discourse semantic structure of the image-text-complex.

Why, then, the tourist brochures do not always choose to emphasise and explic-itly signal the rhetorical structure, particularly in the case of image-text relations?

In the search for an answer, it is important to keep in mind the economy of space on the page. In the tourist brochures, the semiotic space is a valuable commod-ity, because the brochures need to be small-sized for easy distribution. As I have pointed out in Hiippala (2013), changes in the rhetorical structure also affect the layout and vice versa, for example, in deciding whether to provide captions to ac-company the photographs. The captions take up layout space, and in some cases, the efficient use of layout space may override the need for signalling rhetorical relations. This sets the stage for further discussion, which focuses on conceptual photography, that is, generic photographs without captions.