Mary Macken-Horarik uses the Daily Telegraph’s coverage of the infamous “Children overboard” scandal to argue that the “multi modal metalanguage” (p251 of reader) of news items needs new analytical strategies in order to understand the composite nature of visual and lexical texts in relation to public discourse. Rather than seeing both as separate entities on the same page, Macken-Horarik explores ways in which applied linguists can interpret the “socially constitutive” (ibid) nature surrounding the discourses that are used to “re-present” (p252) current affairs and alter our perception of them.
Macken-Horarik first establishes the symbiotic relationship between visual texts and verbal texts. Newspapers use these elements in tandem to “re-present” (ibid) and create the news. Drawing inspiration from linguist Michael Halliday and his development of systemic functional linguistics, Macken-Horarik uses one of the three major “metafunctions” (ibid) from the SFL grammar to explore the depiction and representation of asylum seekers. “Ideational meaning” (ibid), concerns representing the people involved in a text and their actions.
Macken-Horarick furthermore mentions the work of Van Leeuwen (2000) alongside with his essential tools/dimensions of representation (genericisation-specification, categorisation and role allocation). These paradigms are described in detail to aid the reader in the understanding of the choices news reporters and photographers make to create a certain discourse.
Firstly, by referring to the “social actors” (p253) individually or collectively, one can appreciate how distantly describing participants (e.g: boat people) has the potential to be dehumanising. This can also generate a stark contrast of care compared to those who are referred to by exact titles and names (e.g: Immigration Minister, Phillip Ruddock). Images, Macken-Horarik additionally notes, can achieve this same vague/specific referencing effect through photographic techniques and out of focus frames.
However, this cannot be achieved by itself. The second dimension of representation, categorisation, can be identified upon examining how the functions of social actors are described. Functionalism, achieved through nominalisation and the use of compound nouns, seeks to legitamise the antagonism towards asylum seekers by listing official occupations (“naval rescuers etc.) By slotting all boat people into the same category and implying they are all the sort to throw their children overboard, the newsmakers are embedding functionalism inside categorisation. Consider the following example of classifying the participants (the boat people) by their actions (or functions) – “people (categorisation) who treat children in this way (function)…”. (p256)
Newsmakers can additionally use images to reinforce the lexical aspects of texts by the same means – functionalising their favoured social actors by showing them in action rescuing the categorised ‘boat people’, thus creating the socially constitutive nature of discourse created in their texts.
The third aspect of representation, role allocating, is used to depict the activeness of participants to attach “social value” (p256) to these roles. This is achieved by reconfiguring the roles and relations between the participants through the syntactic choices of describing what is done to whom, and by whom. Visual depictions of a sailor rescuing the “children overboard”, are furthermore backed up by descriptive captions, reinforcing the positive versus negative role allocation achieved in the verbiage. Describing the actions of the asylum seekers through terms such as “heading for Australian territory” and “throwing their children into the sea”, contrasts and legitamises public moral outrage as the navy are forced to “rescue”, “save” and “cloth and feed” those whose boat they have “intercepted”. The “people smugglers” are thus assigned the role of “malevolent patients” (p257) who are subject to the “benevolent actions” of the Australia’s emergency services.
Macken-Horarick concludes her argument for the adaptation of textual interpretive strategies by stressing the need to interpret how racial discourse is generated. In a way, the media is using these tools of “genericisation-specification”, “categorisation”, “functionalism” and “negative/positive role allocation” to brainwash the public from a seemingly passive stance. The reporters begin to tell their own version of events by taking actions out of context to serve the editorial stance of a particular news organisation and/or stake-holders. This ensures a certain viewpoint is expressed, however subtly that may be.
Macken-Horarick, M. “The children overboard affair” Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 26.2 (2003) 1-16.
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