visual metalinguistics

Jon Callow (2003) Talking About Visual Texts With Students, Reading OnLine, http://www.readingonline.org/articles/callow/
This paper is an interesting hands-on presentation of children’s visual projects using power point and hyperlink. It is an Australian paper, assessing Year 6 students. Jon Callow discusses the naturalistic research assessing the child’s understanding of the grammar of visual literacy and their understanding of the social, cultural and contextural issues in their presentations. He tries to raise the issues of a metalanguage and pedagogy to scaffold learning in this new literacy.
Students developed an innate ability to create meaning via text, image, colour, salience and layout design. And he raises the issue of the “grammar of visual design”
“Represent actions, objects, and settings
Create interactive or interpersonal meanings between the viewer and what is viewed by the use of features such as color, angles, shot distance, and type of media employed (e.g., photos, clip art, diagrams, etc.)
Present layout choices that indicate the value of or emphasis on particular elements within an image, such as the salience (attention-gaining aspect) of a particular object or piece of text “
The paper raises lots of questions about future metalanguage for other media and modes. It also explains why our ability to assess visual design is so difficult, as we lack to structure and analysis for it
Joyce