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Roland Barthes suggests that readers need to have access to a number of
codes in order to be able to decipher the message:
the proairetic code
the hermeneutic code
the semic code
the symbolic code
the referential code
I will in the following consider how these codes are pertinent to visual literacy
and how, if in any way, they become specific in a multimodal text.
The proairetic, or anticipatory code controls understanding of the plot. In
order to comprehend the plot, the reader must have elementary knowledge
of what a narrative is, a text that has temporal and causal components.
In using proairatic decoding, readers interact with texts on the
basis of anticipation and retrospection, as developed in Wolfgang Iser’s
reception theory. The understanding of plot components, such as exposition,
complication, and culmination, will facilitate readers’ anticipation
of a conflict resolution and, in most cases, a happy ending. It will also
enable readers to make inferences from completed events about previously
planted details; or to understand the characters’ actions and intentions.
The most essential code in reading a picturebook is its sequential nature.
This is something that art critics often ignore in their picturebook analyses.
Unlike the verbal text, images are disjunctive, and it must be understood
that there is a temporal and causal relationship between them. In
other words, an event in one image takes place before or after an event in
another image and usually is connected to it by some form of cause-and-
-effect. On the other hand, unlike a verbal text, images have the possibility
of depicting two or more events, suggesting parallel plots that either
take place simultaneously or successively, for instance, in Come Away from
the Water, Shirley, by John Burningham. The readers’ competence will
decide whether they will be able to make the connection between plots
or conclude that they are independent of each other.
The materiality of a picturebook creates further premises. A specific feature
of visual anticipatory code is page-turning, with a conspicuous
detail placed in the bottom right corner of a doublespread and leading
into the next one. Page layout can contribute to plot progression with several
panels on a doublespread. Words and images can enhance and complement
each other: words can lead readers’ attention toward images, for
instance in Curious George, by H.A. Rey, where the words point at images
without actually naming what happens: «First this –/and then this!» The
sequential nature of a picturebook demands following plot development
over several doublespreads. The visual plot can start already on the cover;
it can also be developed on title page and the endpapers, and conclude
on the back cover. In other words, the proairatic visual and multimodal
code offers some further potential as compared to purely verbal.
Images can range within a broad continuum of representation modes,
from photography to abstraction. Visual literacy is here built on the
understanding of the connection between the signifier and the signified,
that is the word and the image. For instance, a wide range of different
images of cats have the same referent, but the viewers are required to
understand that the signifiers, the images, can be of different kinds. They
are further prompted to ascribe higher degree of fact to photographic
and true-to-life images, while abstract or distorted images will be perceived
as fictional.
Images can also be totally devoid of a referent, that is, be empty signifiers.
Picturebooks frequently play with such possibilities, either offering a
non-existing referent, such as the Grinch or a Zizzer-Zazzer-Zuzz in books
by Dr. Seuss, or just ignoring the whole issue. Such books are normally
labelled as nonsense, while they are in fact incredibly useful implements
in visual education.
The hermeneutic code, adhering closely to the proairetic, involves interpretation
on the story level. The specific aspect of interpretation of a multimodal
text is precisely its multimodality, where the overall meaning is
created on at least two levels; moreover, not by the sum, but the interaction
and synergy of these. This is a basic premise of contemporary picturebook
scholarship, so I will not dwell on it further, referring to the
above-mentioned works. The famous hermeneutic circle can be perfectly
elucidated by the process of reading a picturebook, turning from words
to images and back, with a new and deeper understanding with every spiral.
Further, since images are non-linear they allow a truly hermeneutic
activity of starting with the first overall impression, examining the
details, returning to the whole with a more profound understanding,
and so on, infinitely. Thus the understanding of the plot, of what actually
happens in the narrative, is highly dependent on the level of visual
sophistication. The verbal and visual plots can be mutually redundant,
complementary or contradictory; they may even be independent of each
other. There may be several visual plots to one verbal or several verbal
plots to one visual. The verbal plot may be simple, while the visual is complex,
and the other way round. The potentials are endless.
In wordless picturebooks, a type of narrative that has no parallel in the
novel, plots are vague and allow multiple interpretations, even when
images are relatively simple. From a sequence of panels on the same doublespread
or from a sequence of pages and spreads, the plot may seem
more or less clear. For instance, in Jan Ormerod’s Moonlight, the most obvious
plot is a child’s reluctance to go to sleep and the parents’ patience
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