Languages for intercultural communication and education

Checklist: Using Images in the Intercultural Classroom
The sections above illustrate how the rules of ‘visual discourse’ can be
made explicit and then used in the interpretation of visual images. These
rules can be reformulated as a checklist of questions that learners can use to
probe the cultural meanings of visual texts. The checklist below is designed
as a practical guide which teachers and learners can use to ‘interrogate’ an
image. Not all the questions apply to every image; however, the questions
are a good place to start when beginning to understand the images that
permeate our own and other cultures.
A. Images of people
What kind of person/people are shown (policeman, model, child,
etc.)?
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What kind of
values
do the people shown represent (kindness, physical
beauty, honesty, or miserliness, ugliness, corruption, etc)?
B. Who or what are the characters looking at?
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?
C. How close are the characters to you?
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?
D. Fashion and style
How are the people in the image dressed? What does their style of
clothing suggest about them – e.g. about their age, class, gender, nation-
ality, 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 wholly or partially 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?
E. Objects
What kind of object is shown in the image? What is its function – illus-
tration, 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?
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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? Does it have the same associations elsewhere?
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?
F. Settings
Is there no apparent setting (i.e. is the object or person shown against a
dark or indistinct background)? 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?
Is the setting used to illustrate a country or the home of a particular
group of people? Do you think it is an accurate representation of the
homeland, or is it partial? If it is partial, why has this particular image
been selected?
G. Composition
Look at Figure 7.4 earlier in this chapter. It summarises some of the
possible meanings which can be given by
placing
one part of the image
in relation to the others. The main divisions are:
Centre/Margins
: Is there a strong presence in the centre of the picture? If
so, what is its significance and how does it relate to the elements (if any)
at the margins?
Top/Bottom
: The upper part of an image is often used to represent
something that is ideal, heavenly, a state to which we aspire. The lower