• newspaper and magazine reports and features
• magazine and billboard ads

• political campaign literature
• textbook illustrations
• travel agents’ literature
• music album covers
• postcards
• paintings in galleries
• pictures on web sites
• comic books

Students can be trained to become critical in their appreciation of visual images. They can be encouraged to do so by brainstorming questions about what aspects of images might be interesting. Such questions could include:

• How are certain groups (men, women, children, teenagers) represented in advertising?
• How are nationalities/ethnic groups represented, if at all?
• How is authority constructed visually, eg by politicians?
• What does a culture consider physically attractive or ugly, in men and women? Is this constant over time?
• What do fashions tell us about the values of the social groups who adopt them?
• Are newspaper photographs a ‘neutral’ illustration of the report they accompany?
• Are pictures used in travel agents’ brochures really representative of the country they are sending people to?
• What kind of information about Britain/the USA/Australia/etc is given in EFL/geography textbooks?
• Can you track the social history of a stereotyped image (eg the kilted Scotsman) over time, using art books, textbooks, postcards, advertising, etc? Did the stereotype always refer to exactly the same cultural group? What values did the stereotype have at different times and for whom? (eg the kilted Scot was originally a highlander, despised as a barbarian by Scottish lowlanders and the English; later he came to represent all Scotsmen and was transformed into an exotic primitive, a comic miser, and a romantic warrior...for different audiences at different times.)

Images, like word, can have a denotation (ie the basic content) and connotations, (ie cultural associations). For example, what would be the cultural associations of images of children in advertising?

One basic question to ask of every image is:

‘Who and where would I have to be, in order to see this?’

The following checklist might be useful when ‘reading’ images. Obviously, different questions will be relevant for different images, and so they have been grouped according to category.

What kind of person/people are shown (policeman, model, etc)

What kind of values do the people shown represent (kindness, physical beauty, individuality, generosity, honesty, efficiency, power, or miserliness, ugliness, corruption, etc)?

Are they looking at each other or not looking at each other? What does this tell you about how they feel about each other? Are they looking at something else, an object or a place? How do they feel about it?

Are they looking at you, the viewer? How are you expected to feel about them? Do you in fact feel this way?

Are they looking at something else, out of the frame of the picture? What might it be? Can you tell? How do the characters feel about this unseen presence?

Are the people in close-up, medium-shot or long-shot? How does their distance from you make them seem to you -- intimate, friendly or distant? Why do you think they have been shown this way?

Are the characters facing you, or angled away from you? How does this affect the way you feel about them? Are they distanced from you or are they inviting you to join them?

Are you looking up at the characters, looking down at them, or are they at eye-level with you? How does this affect the way you feel about them? Do you feel respect for them, superior to them, or are you equals?

How are the people in the image dressed? What does their style of clothing suggest about them -- eg about their age, class, gender, nationality, ethnicity, profession? Are they up-to-date or out-of-fashion? What values do you associate with the people based on their clothing?

Is the person undressed? If so, where are they situated and, by extension, where are you, the viewer, supposed to be? Is the person looking at you or away from you? Are you supposed to look at and admire him/her, pity him/her, or envy him/her, feel desire for him/her? Do you?

What kind of object is shown in the image? What is its function -- illustration, advertisement, diagram? Can you see all of it or just part? Are you looking from above, below or head-on?

Are you supposed to want it, understand it, make your own, etc? Does the image enable you to do this? What kind of person would need to be able to understand, own or explain such an object? In other words, what kind of viewer are you expected to be?

Does the object have a set of associations? What kind of people would own such an object, or wish to own it? Is it considered to be cheap or expensive, tacky or sophisticated? Why? Does it have these associations in your culture? In other cultures?

Does the object have symbolic value? Does it symbolise values like beauty, youth, passion, temptation, knowledge, power? How did it come to have these values? Does the object have this value in your culture now, or in the past? What about in other cultures?

Is there no setting? If not, why do you think you are being invited to focus only on the object or person in the image?

Is the setting identifiable? Is it an urban or a rural setting, a desert or the ocean, public or domestic, etc? Does it look like the kind of place you would wish to be?

Does the setting have any kind of associations -- romantic mountains, urban squalor, garden paradise etc? What kind of people might live, work or visit there?

Corbett, J (2003) An Intercultural Approach to English Language Teaching Multilingual Matters

[One chapter is a more detailed description of ‘visual literacy’; another discusses the influence of literary, media and cultural studies on intercultural language education.]

Danesi, Marcel (1999) Of Cigarettes, High Heels and Other Interesting Things: An Introduction to Semiotics London: MacMillan

Hebdige, D (1979) Subculture: The Meaning of Style London: Methuen

Goodman, S (1996) ‘Visual English’ in D. Graddol and S. Goodman, Redesigning English: New Texts, New Identities London: Routledge

Kress, G and van Leeuwen, T (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design London: Routledge

Mirzoeff, N (1999) An Introduction to Visual Culture London: Routledge