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Published in the Slovak Republic Media Education (Mediaobrazovanie) Has been issued since 2005 ISSN 1994-4160 E-ISSN 2729-8132 2021. 17(1): 144-152
DOI: 10.13187/me.2021.1.144 www.ejournal53.com
Multimodal Rhetoric of Acute Media Text
Yan Tyazhlov a , * , Dmitry Manokhin a, Evgeny Kozhemyakin a, Dmitry Srybnyy a a Belgorod National Research University, Russian Federation
Abstract
The article considers the peculiarities of interaction of depictive and verbal modes in media texts on acute problems. The choice of the topic is conditioned by the situation that has developed in the media discourse of modern journalism. Visual methods of information transfer are beginning to gain more and more importance. The pictorial components of the message start to enter into a complex relationship with the verbal text, which in journalism contains many rhetorical methods. Due to this, the visual component acquires rhetorical connotations and increasingly shows an independent rhetorical potential. Of greatest interest for the study of multimodal rhetoric is the situation when the literal representation of an object turns out to be difficult and forces one to seek creative solutions, forming the individual potential of discourse. This happens in publications on acute social issues. As theoretical and methodological foundations, the most relevant are the conceptual developments of the classics of semiotics, who in their researches studied structural characteristics of visual codes and the interaction of these codes with the verbal text. Also of great interest are the theories of modern scientists working in the mainstream of discourse analysis and semiotics. The authors of the article follow this trend of a multimodal approach and, while analyzing representative examples, identify rhetorical techniques through which the sender of a multimodal message seeks to attract the attention of the audience and make the statement more convincing.
Keywords: multimodality, media text, semiotics, depictive modus, multimodal message.
1. Introduction
Highly competitive digital environment has made the audience's attention its key resource. The abundance of information leads to both the development of specific forms of media texts that allow structuring the content in more optimal way, and to the continuous upgrade of multimodal rhetorical repertoire, designed to attract, retain the attention of the audience and draw it into the orbit of the media.
Rhetorical techniques deviced to make the statement more expressive and convincing. Linguistics successfully codified trails and rhetorical figures of the "natural" language. Rhetorical techniques similar to verbal ones are not difficult to find in visual messages (Eco, 2006: 229). Detailed studies of the classics of semiotics are devoted to the systematization of visual rhetorical codes using examples of advertising campaigns, cinema, and graphic design (Bart, 2015; Eco, 2006). Obviously, advertising texts are the most attractive area for this kind of analysis due to their brevity, pragmatic
* Corresponding author
E-mail addresses: yandzho@yandex.ru (Y.I. Tyazhlov), manokhin@bsu.edu.ru (D.K. Manokhin), kozhemyakin@bsu.edu.ru (E.A. Kozhemyakin), srybny@bsu.edu.ru (D.S. Srybnyy)
evidence and contextual abstractedness. The possibilities of detecting and cataloging multimodal rhetorical techniques in journalistic media texts seem to be insufficiently studied.
Online platforms naturally allow you to post more non-verbal material (images, animations, videos, augmented reality technologies, etc.). This opportunity has become the norm and has greatly changed the image of journalism. Researchers talk about hypervisualization of the media space (Kozhemyakin, 2018: 86).
At the same time, the majority of Russian studies in the field of journalism remain text-oriented. In the meantime, the semiotic and discourse-analytical methodology provides scientists with a wide range of tools for analyzing the structure of multimodal, polycode media texts inhomogeneous in their symbolic nature. This instrumentarium allows, on the one hand, to take into account the partiality of verbal and non-verbal components, and on the other hand, to consider the media text as a syncretic, multimodal ensemble, in which attributes of different modes are combined into a "semantically coherent whole" (Kress, 2016: 86).
2. Materials and methods
In this article, we effort to discover multimodal rhetorical complexes in journalistic media texts, but the focus of our attention is primarily on the partial role of the image.
The multimodal rhetorical complex is an approved rhetorical formula that can be codified by the author and interpreted by the audience only using two or more modes. We assume that in this way multimodal enthymemes, multimodal rhetorical figures (multimodal antithesis, etc.), multimodal tropes (multimodal metaphor, etc.) can be built. The multimodal rhetorical complex interests us precisely as a partial unity of modes, and not as their crossing ("crossing of registers" according to U. Eco), implying semantic and structural abstractedness of verbal and visual rhetorical techniques, the facultative nature of their multimodal perception.
We concede that inevitable methodological difficulties and even contradictions in deconstructing multimodal rhetorical techniques can be caused by articulation of the partial function of the visual mode. This articulation is conjugated with an inevitable attribute conversion. At the same time, we presume the possibility of an interpretation of the sender's (author's) pragmatics, which is quite relevant for research tasks.
Specific cases of multimodal illustration, in which a literal representation of the object of publication is impossible for ethical reasons, or due to the absence of a denotation, became the representative environ for our analysis. Illustrating these kind of media texts requires more ingenuity from the authors.
Indeed, it is not possible to publish naturalistic images of the genitals; certain difficulties in illustration can cause the themes of abortion, domestic violence or female genital mutilation.
Some of the topics have been removed from the field of media ethics and are regulated by law. Russian legislation imposes restrictions on images of children in the media. An identifiable image of a child can only be published with the written consent of the parents. Compliance monitoring authorities have right to fine for depicting drug use patterns or interpret some illustrations as offending the feelings of pious persons, society and government, promoting homosexuality among under aged, etc.
Additional efforts are required to visualize concepts that do not have a real referent (denotation). For example, the choice of illustrative tools will be limited if it is necessary to portray an assumed or extinct creature, an assumed character. Complex significations will also require additional heuristic efforts. Try to imagine a stylistically equable series of photos illustrating the concept: "The Orthodox millennials as a unity of modern and archaic, rational and irrational."
At the same time, the success and efficiency of work largely depends on how clearly the author articulates the mental model of the media text before he starts the "field conditions" stage. Experts believe that multimedia journalism requires a specific approach for creating a media text. Producer Oksana Silantyeva takes up the position that working out a multimedia story "should not start with writing a text, but with drawing up a project plan. In this regard, it is important to pay attention to two components - denotation and form" (Silantyeva, 2016: 163). The creation of multimedia text is more often described not so much in linguistic terms but using the metalanguage of visual media: directing, shot, view, and focus. These characteristics are carried over to the verbal component as well.
Contextual illustrations not only contain additional information about the object of the publication and provoke an emotional reaction, but also allow you to avoid the monotony of the layout, keep the reader's attention.
At the same time, providing the text with a large amount of illustrative material requires the editorial board to spend additional creative and material resources. This tendency expands the competency of designers, build editors, photographers, artists and requires the development of the congruous competencies of journalists.
Creating a unique illustration item requires a significant amount of time and creative resources, but at the same time it is of the greatest value. Exclusive illustrative publication will be appreciated by the demanding reader, and the creative idiolect of the authors will help to form a unique look of the media.
The use of stock illustrations not only deprives the publication of its uniqueness, but also the stylistic unity. However, in some cases, the competent use of this resource is appropriate and living up. It stands to reason, when we refer to these principles, we mean an editorial staff guided by high journalistic standards.
In the practice of illustration, it is often impossible to deal without user-generated content. It can also include items provided by text acting persons and newsmakers. These can be photographs from a personal archive, children's drawings, photo reports from press services, etc. Often such materials are far from editorial standards and require additional processing.
Along with the obvious advantages and additional opportunities in comparison with print media, online journalism is not without limitations that must be taken into account when illustrating multimedia texts.
Indeed, the aspect ratio and the screen size of a standard laptop make landscape format photographs preferable (length greater than height). The object in the frame should be large enough, but at the same time it should be perceived completely. Scrolling through the photo destroys the composition and makes the perception of the object fragmentary. On the other hand, the landscape format of the illustration (length less than the height) makes it difficult to perceive the image on a smartphone, which, in turn, is the dominant type of device in the consumption of electronic content by the audience. The choice of the aspect ratio of the image depends on the tasks that the authors set themselves: dynamic informing with its casual, impulsive, non-linear acquaintance of the audience with the media text, or, for example, influencing, persuasion, implying a slow, sequential reading, repeated reference to the media text. E.g. the authors of the publication "Hell on Wheels. The pain and hate of the Russian taxi "(online media "Batyenka") in the announcement point to the preferred device for the perception of the media text: "Read the full text here. We strongly recommend reading using a computer" (Ponedelchenko, Yamshchikova, 2016).
3. Discussion
The problem of multimodal rhetoric and argumentation is not new for modern semiotic and communicative studies, and it has been considered for many decades in the context of mainly studying the rhetorical potential of visual elements of mediatized messages. The authors' special attention is drawn to the representational function of the illustration.
Literal illustration is often not possible for a number of reasons: unethical, semantic unary images, replicability. The inflation of illustrations has led to a shortage of images and pushes journalism to generate continuously new and new illustrative techniques that instantly become part of general practice.
This problem became noticeable in the second half of the 20th century. Susan Sontag, in her essay "The Heroism of Vision" (1973-1977), points to the extensiveness inherent in photography and its practice: "the photographic must constantly renew itself through new shocks: narrative or technical." New techniques and plots instantly turn into cliches: "exhaustion occurs both at moral level and at the level of perception" (Sontag, 2013: 134).
In a bid for the attention of the audience, there is a great temptation to use speculative methods, for example, a shocking image with its naturalism. But the shocking image leaves no room for multimodal rhetoric - it is itself, obviously, unequivocally biased. Such images do not enter into a dialogue with the addressee, appealing primarily to emotions, reflexes, and not to reason. Roland Barthes, in his essay Camera lucida, tells about unary images in journalism: "they can shock (literally can be traumatic), but they cannot be disturbing; similar photos are able to "yell", but not hurt "; "Photography is subversive not when it scares, shocks and even scourges,
but when it is in thought" (Bart, 2016: 52-56). This point of view is also close to Susan Sontag, who argues that the nature of photography is such that "the agent that communicates suffering will ultimately neutralize it. The camera miniaturizes the experience, turns the story into a spectacle. Photos incline to sympathy, but they also muffle it, create an emotional distance" (Sontag, 2013: 147). Similar conclusions (in many aspects referring to the conclusions of Bart) are contained in the essay of the philosopher Jacques Ranciere "The Unbearable Image". J. Ranciere doubts the impacting potential of unbearable, accusatory images in journalism, social advertising and documentaries: "There is no particular reason for such an image to make those who look at it realize the reality of imperialism and want to resist it. The usual reaction to such images is to close your eyes or look away." J. Ranciere concludes that the image acquires an influencing force when "it shifts the gaze from a banal indignation to a more restrained feeling with an indefinite effect" (Rancier, 2018: 83-100).
The trends in the development of modern digital online communications make the problem of multimodal rhetoric especially relevant: the authors turn to the analysis of not so much the "mechanical" (structural) summation of rhetorical effects of various semiotic means, but to the analysis of semiotic complexes involved in the constructing of meaning. Courtney Werner notes: "Multimodality is linked with multiliteracies, and theories of multiliteracies suggest that literacy is semiotic and not limited to print-linguistic modes of social meaning making" (Werner, 2017: 717). This quote expresses the general tendency of modern researches of multimodal rhetoric, which is expressed in the refusal of the printed verbal text in the key semantic potential. The visual elements of text are increasingly viewed as having rhetorical and argumentative potential (Flemming, 1996; Roque, 2011).
We also note the cross-disciplinary nature of this trend: the rejection of the linguocentric explanatory model of semiosis of media texts is inherent in research in the field of both rhetoric proper (Birdsell, Groarke, 1996) and semiotics (Hiippala, 2017; Forceville, Kjeldsen, 2018), as well as other scientific fields - for example, in pedagogy and didactics (Sheppard, 2009), organizational theory (Kjeldsen, 2018) and neuroscience (Remley, 2018). It confirms the relevance and universality of addressing the study of multimodal rhetorical models.
The idea of the combined use of various semiotic modes in the production of meanings is central to the collection Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres (2017). The authors consider the media environment as a system of different contexts that determine the content and structure of rhetorical and argumentative models. Print advertising, news photography, political cartoons, documentaries, TV speeches of politicians are considered as genres that determine the nature and specificity of rhetorical complexes and are not solely due to the "hegemony of the verbal."
However, this tendency faces the criticism, the main position of which is the conviction of the logical-rational nature of rhetoric and argumentation, manifested in the use of mainly verbal means by communicators (Johnson, 2003). Visual objects within this tradition are often viewed as nothing more than interference in the processes of meaning formation (Zagar, 2016).
At the same time, the consensus subject in this field of discussion is the coherence of semiotic resources that means involved in the processes of meaning construction. The authors interpret the hierarchy of the elements of semiosis in different ways, but the common place is the recognition of the fact of the complex functioning of semiotic means in the processes of formation and translation of semantic complexes. In this context, we admit the importance of distinguishing between the terms "visual rhetoric" and "multimodal rhetoric". We understand the first as a complex of exclusively visual rhetorical means and techniques, and the second as an ensemble of semiotic means (belonging to at least two different modes) used for rhetorical purposes.
Multimodal rhetoric plays a special role in journalistic communication, since it provides the communicator with a wide range of means of representing and constructing social objects. The rhetorical complex is often viewed as a kind of material correlate of objective social processes and situations. This aspect is one of the central in the studies performed in the mainstream of multimodal social semiotics (Domingo et al., 2014; Kress, 2010; Sagak, 2019) and multimodal critical discourse analysis (Machin, 2013; Roderick, 2018; Bateman, 2019). Further in this paper we plan to develop some of the provisions of this theory, turning not so much to the search for semiotic correlates of social objects, but to a multimodal code for representing acute social problems. This will allow us to find ways to unite two semiotic traditions: classical structural semiotics and modern socio-semiotic studies.
4. Results
The multimedia project of journalist O. Alferova "I've had enough" (Alferova, 2017) was one of the first projects in Russia to address the problem of domestic violence. The objectives of the project are varied - drawing attention to the problem, explanation, persuasion, emotional impact. The project involves a thoughtful acquaintance with the content, repeated reference to the link.
The photo on the main page serves as a darkened background on which the heading complex and hypertext heading modules are located.
The photo is compositionally divided into three blocks (screen, frame) replacing each other in the process of scrolling.
The upper (first) third of the photograph, together with the text, is a multimodal ensemble of the title complex. The portrait of a young woman (we remind you that on the site the photo will be perceived in parts - screens) is a sign with two meanings: literal (perceptual) and symbolic.
The first literal articulated meaning of the image is "a young woman with a neutral face expression." The literal meaning is largely in line with how the image could describe artificial intelligence. For example, the example photo describes the image analysis service from Microsoft "Computer Vision": "a person standing in front of a mirror posing for the camera". The service determines the gender and age of the model: "age": 22,"gender":"Female"".
Obviously, when it comes to the perception of an image by a person, even a literal description of the image can become significantly complicated. For example, we can indicate the attractiveness of the model. At the same time, the image can also contain connotations that are difficult to articulate, but which are capable of pushing the addressee to choose certain lexicodes that narrow the field of interpretation of an image that is polysemic in nature.
So, we can assume (it is rather difficult to confirm this without special studies) that the MAFA effect is manifested in the model's appearance - the preference of the middle type of face (Langlois, Roggman, 1990). The researchers also argue that the ratio of the face and body in the frame also affects the perception of a person's image. The super-close-up (the face occupies most of the image) emphasizes the intellect, character and other personal qualities of the model, and the waist plan draws more attention to the external data (Archer et al., 1983).
As for the attractiveness of the model, there are regularities of perception. Images of attractive people are perceived more positively than unattractive ones. Attractive people are credited with positive qualities that they may not possess: intelligence, loyalty, honesty, innocence, etc. It's no secret that lookism is a standard practice in media and advertising.
Non-articulated connotations can potentially constitute an alphabet of code elements and be articulated (not always) by the sender, but to a lesser extent by the addressee. For example, the filmmakers deliberately use code elements, predicting this or that effect, but the viewer perceives the film indiscriminately, as a "waking dream" in the words of S. Kracauer (Kracauer, 1974: 223). At the same time, a film critic (a competent viewer) can not only enjoy the film as a story, but also appreciate the originality of the use of code elements.
The second, symbolic meaning of the part of the image under consideration is determined by the title and the introductory text "young woman - victim of domestic violence". Under the influence of the verbal mode, emotions can be read on the neutral expression of a young woman's face: sadness, thoughtfulness, confusion. It should be noted that the introductory text does not indicate that, according to statistics, the majority of victims of domestic violence are women. This connotative meaning of the multimodal heading complex is acquired as a result of the mutual influence of visual and linguistic modes "the victims of domestic violence are women".
The middle third of the photograph serves solely as a background, against which the frames of hypertextual headings are located: "Personal stories", "Law and statistics". Hypertext heading frames (background images + handwritten font) mimic the notes that family members leave to each other. At the same time, their grouping according to the principle of similarity determines the hierarchy and indicates the formal content characteristics of publications.
The lower third of the image contains two significant elements: "feet in slippers", "dozing white cat". Looking at all three parts of the image more closely, we can find other images: a door, a mirror, a small icon, a coffee table with many objects on it. All this points to the naturalness, non-decorativeness, habitability, routine of space - at home. At the same time, the potentially archetype of the house is undoubtedly not identified with images of violence. But the verbally expressed theme determines the reading of the whole image. The counterpoint of visual and textual modes is intended to cause a mismatch in emotional reactions in the addressee and thus a feeling
of uncontrollable anxiety, which corresponds to the task of expressing the concept of "domestic violence". Some of the effects of horror films are often based on this counterpoint (Tyazhlov, 2016).
Often literal imagery of highly social topics can be repulsive or even shocking. Nevertheless, such topics should be illustrated. Problems that have not received an unambiguous assessment in society require special delicacy in illustration.
According to the non-governmental research organization Levada Center, in 2017, 35 % of Russians were categorically against abortion (Berishvili, 2018). And this figure is constantly changing under the influence of various factors. The media play a key role in the public discussion of the problem, and the illustrative series can make the media text striving for neutrality ideologically loaded. Literal explicit (abortion process) or index (abortion consequences) portrayal of abortion appears to be unambiguously negative. But even non-literal (symbolic) illustration in this case is able to determine the attitude towards the verbal content.
So the news "In Russia the number of abortions has decreased by 13 %" on the RIA Novosti website is illustrated in a way, the usual-symbolic meaning of which can be articulated as "birth" and "motherhood". The photographic image is designed to determine a positive assessment of progress in the government's fight against abortion and discredit abortion as a phenomenon (In Russia..., 2017).
Careless use of illustrations can introduce non-programmable and unwanted connotations in the media text. And the lower the level of semantic abstraction of the image, the more literal and unambiguous the image, the less it depends on the verbal mode and requires more responsibility and delicacy in use. And this applies not only to photography.
For example the regional website "BelPress" has prepared an infographic for the Day of National Unity "Top-10 peoples and nationalities of the Belgorod region" (Bessonova, 2017).
The persons in national costumes by their size and position on the diagram (from largest to smallest) are designed to clearly demonstrate the quantitative and percentage ratio of "peoples peacefully neighboring in the Belgorod region." But the arrangement of the figures of the "Belarusians" does not correspond to the general logic of the diagram. The figures are not located in their place, between the "Azerbaijanis" and "Tatars", but next to the figures of the national majority - the "Russians". The authors' logic is obvious - the unification of the Slavic peoples ("Russians", "Ukrainians", "Belarusians") into a separate cluster. In our opinion, this somewhat contradicts the very idea of infographics and may offend the feelings of representatives of other national minorities. We are sure that the authors of the infographics did not set such a task for themselves.
Photos that allow identifying the personality of the hero of the publication also require increased attention when illustrating complex acute social topics. Even if the hero of the publication did not refuse to pose and gave his consent to the distribution of photographs, it is necessary to realize that the publication of images can cause certain negative consequences that he himself does not foresee: harassment, ostracism, flaming, trolling, etc. For example, in 2019, a case of harassment by fellow villagers of 12-year-old T. Perchikova was widely known after the publication of a publication about her on the Radio Liberty website (Kravtsova, 2019).
The online magazine Takie Dela often publishes complex personal stories. Their social acuteness does not allow showing the faces of heroes, many of whom are trying to start a new life. These are stories of HIV-infected, drug addicts, mothers trying to abandon a child, etc. The non-fiction, the reality of these stories is often confirmed by high-quality photographs, which at the same time do not allow the characters to be recognized. In such cases, illustrative photographic material should retain its documentary connection with the verbal component, drama, but not violate the anonymity of the heroes - to show, personalize the hero, but not allow his identity to be identified. Photographers use a wide range of tools to simultaneously show the hero and hide his identity: contour; insufficient lighting; the hero's face outside the sharply depicted area; fragmentation of the image (part of the body); obstacles in the foreground that hide the hero's face; a distant shot that does not allow you to see facial features, etc. At the same time, in each case, the photographer strives for the stylistic independence of each series of photographs and the connotative load of each individual photograph.
The hero of the publication "Dislike" found herself in a difficult life situation and after a car accident decided to send her one and a half year old daughter to an orphanage. The staff of the Women's Crisis Center helped her to abandon this decision and start a new life. All the photographs illustrating the publication (photographer A. Marchenkova) focus on the heroine's
fair-haired hair, which was caked with blood after the accident, but which she did not allow to be cut: "Alena did not allow her to be cut. Slowly unraveling them, sitting in a hospital bed. It took a month and a half. They managed to untangle their hair, but life got even more tangled" (Maklakova, Marchenkova, 2018). Thus, the verbal mode loads the illustrative series united by one object with additional symbolic meaning. In turn, the visual mode (5 photographs are equally spaced in the text) strengthens and extends the intention of the local verbal metaphor throughout the publication.
The indexality of photography is its basic affordance, which predetermines the pragmatism of its use in the media and its perception by the viewer. Susan Sontag describes this property of photography in the essay "The World of Images": "A photograph is not only an image (as opposed to a painting), an interpretation of reality; he is also a footprint directly imprinted on reality - like a footprint or a death mask" (Sontag, 2013: 201).
Often, the goal of acute social publications is persuasion, revision of traditional or dominant ideological schemes. Of course, the effectiveness of such publications depends not only on the ideological information content of the verbal component, but also on the visual range.
In April 2018, one of the most authoritative online publications for women in Russia, Wonderzine, published the material "Stretch marks: Lines on the body that do not need to be fought" (Lukinskaya, 2018). O. Lukinskaya urges women not to attach special importance to stretch marks, and even more so not to consider the lines on the body a disadvantage: 88 % of people have them, they do not pose a danger and do not cause pain. An industry has emerged around stretch marks that sells products and procedures for their removal, and corresponding advertising and retouching on photos in glossy publications hints that stretch marks are bad, this is a defect that a woman must get rid of at all costs. The journalist seeks to destroy the harmful stereotype and proposes a new ideological scheme: she consistently explains where stretch marks come from, how to fight them and how to love the natural lines on your body.
The propaganda of a new value model requires not only the heuristic rhetoric of the verbal mode, but also illustrations that do not cater to the contested ideological scheme and do not correspond to the methods that legitimize it. It would seem that the most obvious choice for illustrating this text is the denotation: "attractive, confident half-naked woman who does not hide stretch marks", but a similar illustrative model is used to legitimize a contested stereotype, as, for example, in this catalog of cosmetics (https://yadi.sk/dZo7g3hrP-XnSe5w). The only difference is that the photo in the catalog is heavily retouched.
Perhaps that is why the authors of the publication do not use this common rhetorical figure at the level of visual modus. As illustrative material, specially cropped photographs from the stock.adobe.com photo bank at the request "stretch marks" are used. As a result, stretch marks patterned leather fragments resemble abstract canvases or marble textures. Both are used for decoration and do not cause rejection. Thus, the authors ask themselves: why can't we accept and love the natural beauty of our own body? This visual solution is directly related to the text fragment in which the author analyzes the image of stretch marks in classical and modern painting: "In contemporary art, the situation is changing: stretch marks are painted in different colors or covered with glitter, turning them into an art object - in Sarah Shaquille's projects they resemble stripes on a tiger skin"(Lukinskaya, 2018).
5. Conclusion
The analyzed representative examples of multimodal acute social publications demonstrate how non-literal illustration of the text affects the change in the ratio of visual and verbal modes of communication. Semantic-pragmatic limitation (impossibility of direct visual representation of an object on ethical, lawful and purely semiotic grounds) acts as an obstacle, overcoming which the sender of the message is forced to develop non-trivial ways of depicting and methods of imageword correlation, which leads to the formation of a heuristic discourse loaded with figurative meanings. Here it is appropriate to draw a parallel with the well-known situation in cinema. In the discourse of cinema, censorship often played the role of a provoking factor, causing the need to switch from referential to emotive and aesthetic functions of the message, which contributed to the formation of rhetorical techniques. A similar situation is observed in our case. The peculiarity lies in the fact that in journalistic publications, the role of the verbal text, as a rule, is dominant and determines the methods of interpretation of the pictorial row proper, which performs the function of literal illustration of the text. In the case of non-literal illustration, which is the subject of our
interest, the relationship between the image and the word becomes double-edged and more varied in form. Moreover, it is important to note that for the restructuring of these relations, both semantic (indexality of the photographic image) and formal-stylistic (image size, edging, lighting, shooting point, composition) characteristics of the image are involved, which enter with the word into relations of complementarity, mutual influence, contrast and forming themes most tropes and rhetorical figures. Through this a formed message is based on the partial unity of the verbal and pictorial methods of transmitting information. This allows us to say that media texts on acute social issues are a multimodal ensemble representing a complex integral message in a rhetorical form.
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