Yesterday, prof. Theo Van Leeuwen visited the Lessius University College in Antwerp and gave a guest lecture about visual language. Like in some of his books, which he wrote with dr. G. Kress (e.g. 'reading images'), he discussed the grammar of images and the connotations one can make when seeing some visual semiotics. A person who looks you in the eyes has a much stronger connotation that someone who's turning his or her back to you. Images that express a movement (e.g. English people with guns attacking some aboriginals on an Australian Island) are much more powerful than a visual enumeration of different weapons.Regarding my research about the formal features of online news media and the effect on the cognitive information-processing, this sounds very interesting. Could it be possible that a heavy hyperlinked text is perceived to be 'stronger' or 'more striking than a low hyperlinked text? Does a news site with much interactivity elicits another connotation than a site with no interactivity? Could we even say that the features of interactivity, hypertextuality and of course multimediality can be seen as visual language? And do these 'virtual images' influence the cognitive efforts in the same way regular images do? To be continued ...
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