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Icons As Ideology: A Media Construction, Judith (Judie) Cross

Judith (Judie) L Cross

Despite mass-produce images being predominantly two dimensional, readers usually perceive them three dimensionally. The direction, position and movement of visual elements, such as gaze, within image texts cue this perception, signifying particular relations within space-time. Readers often interpret these relations subconsciously, or at least without serious reflection on how particular image relations affect modality and meaning. Kress and van Leeuwen (1990, 1996) have initiated many readers of images into the significance of four directions in physical space, but the following paper focuses on the significance of the other two: background/foreground or in/out. I analyse a specific genre of visual text, …