Text and Image

Text and image are used together in an increasingly flexible fashion and many disciplines and areas of study are now attempting to understand how these combinations work.This introductory textbook explores and analyses the various approaches to multimodality and offers a broad, interdisciplinary survey of all aspects of the text-image relation. It leads students into detailed discussion concerning a number of approaches that are used. It also brings out their strengths and weaknesses using illustrative example analyses and raises explicit research questions to reinforce learning. Throughout the book, John Bateman looks at a wide range of perspectives: socio-semiotics, visual communication, psycholinguistic approaches to discourse, rhetorical approaches to advertising and visual persuasion, and cognitive metaphor theory. Applications of the styles of analyses presented are discussed for a variety of materials, including advertisements, picture books, comics and textbooks. Requiring no prior knowledge of the area, this is an accessible text for all students studying text and image or multimodality within English Language and Linguistics, Media and Communication Studies, Visual and Design Studies.

'Anyone with an interest in the semiotic properties of texts and images, and the multiplication of meaning that may result from their combination, will be utterly absorbed by this gem of a book. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and using many compelling examples, Bateman manages to convey complex ideas in a highly engaging and accessible style. Text and Image will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars in several academic disciplines, as well as offering important insights to practitioners in all areas of cultural production where words and images are used.' - Dr. Elisabeth El Refaie, Cardiff University, UK '2D word and image texts are undoubtedly central to theorizing multimodal discourse. Ideologically unaligned, John Bateman’s only concern is the discovery of patterned, and therefore teachable, meaning-making mechanisms in such texts. Critically discussing, evaluating, and synthesizing sources from whatever models and frameworks he deems pertinent, the author explores a wide range of genres, including picturebooks, advertisements, and comics. At long last we have it: an excellent textbook that sketches the contours of multimodality as a serious scholarly discipline.' - Charles Forceville, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands'This book offers a very detailed description of the specific properties of various visual artefacts, and a very detailed introduction to and discussion of different approaches to the investigation of those visual artefacts...What is more, the book presents important innovative frameworks from different perspectives, which is of significant value for scholars, teachers and students who are interested in multimodality, media and design studies.' - Suijun Wen, Guangdong University of Finance

John A. Bateman is Professor of Appliable English Linguistics at the University of Bremen, Germany and has been teaching courses with significant multimodal components for many years. His publications include Multimodality and Genre (2008), and Multimodal Film Analysis (with Karl-Heinrich Schmidt, 2012)