Book review: Essentials of Visual Interpretation

The rapid development of technology is leading to a great change in human society. People view the complex world, obtain all kinds of information and interpret the scenes through varied media. As an expert process, visual interpretation helps people perceive and analyse the essence of vision (Carbonera, 2015). Essentials of Visual Interpretation by Rachel R Reynolds and Greg Niedt is a new work in this emerging field, examining how to talk and write about visual media based on critical thoughts, how to keep pace with a changeable visual environment and upgraded media, and how people’s self-understanding and production of culture are influenced by advanced technology. With abundant knowledge, theories and examples in visual communication reflecting the diachronic change, ranging from cave paintings to memes, from ancient pictographs to smartphones, this new volume is potentially a helpful guidebook for many instructors and students. In this review, we will briefly summarize the book’s content and characteristics, and provide suggestions on how it can be used effectively in understanding visual meaning on an academic, pedagogical and even day-to-day basis.

This textbook is structured in nine chapters with a short epilogue, covering the development, process, methods and functions of visual interpretation from cognitive, cultural, medial and multimodal perspectives. Each individual chapter, consisting of extensively relevant units, presents readers with key terminologies and concepts associated with visual analysis.

One distinct characteristic of this volume is its topical structure. Although the theme is based around visual interpretation, each chapter focuses on different aspects, including its biological and cognitive foundation (Chapter 2), cultural (Chapters 3 and 8) and religious ideologies (Chapter 3), medial (Chapter 4) and technological (Chapter 9) factors, multimodal (Chapter 5) and remediational (Chapter 6) contexts, persuasive function (Chapter 7) and its futurology (Chapter 9). In this way, culture, technology and multimodality are repeatedly discussed in several chapters, since visual interpretation always happens within specific political, institutional, cultural and technological contexts (Chouliaraki et al., 2019). More thoroughly integrated, the chapters frequently correlate with each other via hyperlinks in the e-version. Constructing texts around their theme is an effective pedagogical method, which not only reminds instructors of the importance of guiding students in reviewing and interpreting, but also facilitates learners to memorize core ideas by repeating main concepts throughout the book.

Another notable feature of this book is its tactical study aids, which present three kinds of additional learning tool kits, i.e. pre-learning questions, while-learning boxes and post-learning exercises and exploration. In the introductory section of each chapter, the authors usually pose questions around the topic. By asking questions as a lead-in beforehand, the instructors can arouse students’ curiosity towards the issue, train them to view the world from different angles and to think more deeply and critique what they come across in their daily lives. Additionally, there are some boxes of texts embedded in each chapter, usually contributing supplementary examples and further explanations of a particular realm related or mentioned above, making it comprehensive and interesting. Furthermore, each chapter provides ‘Exercises’ and ‘For Further Exploration’ to enhance students’ apprehension with online-supported materials including multimedia activities. These last two sections are far more practical for learners compared with textbooks of similar kinds. Individual or group exercises in these chapters are quite appealing and operational, such as face memory tests (p. 47), collecting information on the fonts around you (p. 71), creating memes through an online meme generator (p. 141), and so on. Such exercises are highly associated with daily experience, guiding students to explore things around them and apply theories they learn in order to solve problems. The last section ‘For Further Exploration’ is also fairly reader-friendly. Apart from listing references, it also involves a two-to-three-line brief introduction, helping readers quickly decide which alternative resources to choose. Through these pedagogical aids, students will gain an extended insight into visual meaning, making them well prepared for their future academic pursuit in related areas.

Finally, the volume’s layout makes it distinguishable from other textbooks. Each chapter is designed with striking headings, subheadings and key terms in various fonts and sizes alongside a great number of expected pictures and samples. This approach, as a trigger and example, can encourage students to find more instances in daily life and interpret them systematically.

Despite the fact that the book is quite resourceful and instructive for practitioners in the teaching process, it is not so friendly for young researchers. Academically, more newly-released achievements and diversified references, including journal articles and proceedings, might be expected in both the ‘List of References’ and ‘For Further Exploration’ sections for better knowledge about the status quo. Moreover, future research trends in visual interpretation are also needed in the epilogue due to its lack of substantial matter. If those aspects could be considered in its next edition, the book will definitely broaden its readership. In order to be more reader-friendly, the authors could also perfect its presentation. One issue that the book has not touched upon is its structure. Although there is an introduction for each chapter, there is not one for the whole book. Readers may not easily categorize chapters into more general themes, resulting in relatively loose connections and vague logic. A concise prologue, also echoing the epilogue with a brief but synthesized summary, could be provided to help readers get the gist within minutes. Another issue that needs mentioning is its colour representation. Given the purpose of the book to enable a more authentic vision and interest readers in visual interpretation, there should have been more colour images and layouts.

To summarize, lively and accessibly written chapters in Essentials of Visual Interpretation offer a solid foundation in the tools and ideas of visual meaning. It would be a great option as a primer for students studying growing disciplines such as Cross-Cultural Communication, Digital Humanities, Semiotics, Media Studies, Visual Anthropology, etc. It is worthy of consideration by instructors and students with diverse teaching preferences and cross-curricular learning needs. It is hoped that this book, in its breadth as well as its occasional close-ups on phenomena such as memes, multimodality, cognition and vision, and other sections, will help readers develop a useful and fun visual and verbal repertoire for exploring meaning-making through images (p. xiv).

XI WANG Centre for Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Research/School of English Studies/Language Testing Innovative Research Team, Xi’an International Studies University, PR China [email: [e-mail]] JIAXIN ZUO School of English Studies, Xi’an International Studies University, PR China [email: [e-mail]]