This article argues that ideology plays a decisive factor in the encoding and decoding of meaning within visual rhetoric. While systemic functional linguistics (SFL) has made some efforts to understand the determining role ideology plays in the construction of meaning in language, this conceptual model has not yet been applied to the visual rhetoric of images. Analyzing images in terms of ideology provides a number of theoretical challenges. While language use in the written and spoken word is predicated on the context of situation in which language is embedded, visual rhetoric such as memes all share the same context—the virtual world—requiring visual rhetoricians to move beyond the image and into the context of culture, which systemic linguists label genre. However, even within the context of Internet culture, memes often share similar genres while construing vastly different ideologies and subjectivities. In this article I will apply SFL’s multi-stratal concept of language to visual texts. I will then use this theoretical framework to map the semantic components of ideology arising through the dialectical relations between text and social context. In particular, the framework will be applied to a popular set of memes conveying a liberal humanist ideology, which I argue, following Basil Bernstein, develops out of a peculiar contradiction within the social structure of the new middle class, leading to potentially misguided forms of social advocacy. The article will provide researchers with a critical tool for mapping visual ideologies, as well as predicting ideological realizations through the encoding and decoding of visual rhetoric.
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Hasan, R. (2016). Context in the system and process of language (Vol. 4, The collected works of Ruqaiya Hasan) (J. Webster, Ed.). Sheffield, South Yorkshire: Equinox Publishing Ltd.