An Inquiry into the Nature of Uncle Joe’s Representation and Meaning

Robert Muffoletto

The image -- still or moving, two or three dimensional, with or without accompanying sound, realistic to abstract -- brings to our experiences a sense of place and time. How we come to know the world, and ourselves in it, is in a great way determined by our experiences through various forms of visual representation. The realistic image, for example, is the result of a technology of representation that serves to reify a complex set of relationships. The reified image is understood as a mirror of reality, as an objectification of a technology. It is an object with its subjective self forgotten or not revealed, with its maker forgotten. There is, for example, a difference between thinking that the image to the right is Uncle Joe with his parents, as opposed to it being a photograph of Uncle Joe. To understand the nature of representation is to see it as part of a social process. To reflect on the image is to ask questions of it: Why were you made? Who made you? Why do you show me what you do? Who benefits from your existence? What is the meaning of this? Is there another way of representing what you re-present? (Barthes, 1964) To ask these questions of an image, to consider the social-constructivist nature of the experience, is to take a reflective and critical perspective over a passive and common-sense one (Nichols, 1981).

Being “visually literate” means more than having the ability to produce/encode and read/decode constructed visual experiences; it suggests that one is aware of one’s self and representations, in both space and time, situated within a social, cultural, historical, and political framework (Weeden, 1987). From this perspective, visual literacy is a political process that provokes questions over answers. To be visually literate, then, is to be actively engaged in asking questions and seeking answers about the multiple meanings of a visual experience.

This way of thinking about visual literacy applies to all literacies. Literate individuals and communities are aware of and reflective about conditions through which they construct reality. Reality is not something out there to be experienced; it is a historical construction that is complex, multidimensional, and social (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). And, of course, the only reality we have is that which exists in our own minds -- there is no way to prove, in an empirical or positivist manner, that the world is as we think it is.

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The Image as Text

Images -- representations -- are not “natural,” in that they do not exist in nature (Bronowski, 1978). We see what our eye and brain let us see; we experience what has been constructed for us through biological and social limitations. From a classroom perspective, textbooks, films, computer programs -- and even the room itself -- are not natural objects, but are designed, produced, and consumed within a subjective world. For example, the display of gender roles in instructional materials has its roots in a historical, ideological framework -- that is, the instructional materials contain constructed stories. Materials produced for science, mathematics, and other content area instruction in the past few decades have included a different treatment of girls and women than we witnessed previously. The stories (whether presented in visual images or text) now told in classrooms position girls in a different relationship to boys. No longer will teachers, parents, or students allow girls to be represented in minor roles or as subservient to boys. From this perspective, gender roles and the stories told about them are social constructions, not “truths.”

Like texts, visual representations (visual texts) are the result of ideologically formed intentional acts. The image, then, as the result of an intentional act (either internal or external) is better understood as a text to be read, a constructed message. The (visual) text, as a representation that stands in place of an object or concept, requires a social codification -- the construction of meaning through a system of codes used by the author and reconstructed by the reader. In this manner, the experience or meaning is constructed between the text and reader (who is also a historical social construction) (Tompkins, 1976). Seeing the image as a constructed text to be read by others is important (Berger, 1972). Not seeing it as such is to experience it as ahistorical and nonsocial, to remove it from the social, cultural, and political domain, to present it as “truth.” Teachers who realize that stories in instructional materials, whether presented in text or images, are not truths, see these stories as benefiting some and not others. Back to menu

Icons, Signs, and Symbols

I find semiotics -- the study of signs -- useful for understanding the social and historical construction of meaning. Semiotics places the sign as a representation of the thing it replaces. Thus, the picture of Uncle Joe to the right is not Uncle Joe, but stands in place of him.

Semiotics positions the notion of the representation from three perspectives: icons, signs, and symbols. Briefly, an icon is a representation with a strong perceptual relationship between itself and the object it stands for (Barthes, 1964). As an icon, then, the picture of Joe holds a strong resemblance to him as a boy. The recorded sound of a car horn, sounds like a car horn. Icons, as representations, look, sound, and “feel like” what they stand in place of.

Signs are conventions, agreed upon abstractions that we associate with some thing or concept. For example, the letters on a computer screen mean nothing by themselves; we need to organize and assign meaning to them. The letters c-o-w for a reader of English refer to a particular animal. For readers of Italian, c-o-w may have no meaning, but v-a-c-c-a will convey the same particular animal. Similarly, traffic signs with arrows curving in particular directions refer to concepts and objects in conventionalized abstracted forms. The point is that the representation for the same object varies -- sometimes by language, sometimes by culture or historical period.

Symbols, as Langer (1976) suggests, are instruments of thought. They work differently from icons and signs in that they refer to what I would call conceptual frameworks, rather than corresponding directly to objects and concepts. For example, a flag (or an image of one) may represent a country, but it may also symbolize a social and political arrangement. A star, or image of such a star, may refer to a religion, but it also symbolizes all that the religion stands for (Wollen, 1969).

What is interesting is the fluid representational nature of icons, signs, and symbols. At one moment, a picture of Uncle Joe is an icon; at another moment, it may become a symbol, a broader and more complex idea that the viewer associates with the image. From this perspective, icons, signs, and symbols are encoded to function at different levels of meaning or significance. Meaning, from a semiotic perspective, is assigned to the image by individuals, who are members of historical social communities (Fish, 1980). When one considers the diversity of classrooms from gender, racial, cultural, and economic perspectives, it is clear that students will create multiple meanings of representations. Through a process of revealing and exchange of these meanings, students and teachers may move to a better understanding of one another and the world that has been created for them.

But keep in mind that for a representation to mean anything to its author or reader, it must be codified: it must be understood that this means that. For example, a viewer's understanding of an image of a black leather jacket with an eagle on its back may derive from a set of codes or meanings of a particular social group and a particular historic period. The meaning of the black leather jacket has evolved out of historical, social moments. Meaning is not about itself as an object (unless we see it turning back upon itself), but as socially constructed subjects in relationship to other subjects and moments. (The term “subject” here evolves out of feminist practices and theories related to the formation of self and meaningful objects; see Weeden, 1987.) The correspondence between signs is set within a social, cultural, historical, and political framework or system. Signs, to mean anything at all, are actually part of a system of signs, a code.

Here I am suggesting that images -- whether photographs, paintings, films, videos, intentional markings, etc. -- are composed of many signs, organized into socially and historically constructed systems of meaning. It is the organization of these signs, placed in relationship to other signs within the frame of the image, that begins to guide the reader of the text in her or his quest for meaning.

Consider again a picture of Uncle Joe. Now place a leather jacket on him. Does the meaning of the image change? Where, in your mind’s eye, was Uncle Joe when the photograph was taken? If he is standing next to a large motorcycle, in front of an old building, does the meaning of the image change? Now place him in a different context: Uncle Joe is at a movie set when the picture is taken. Does the meaning change for you? As the reader of the text decodes the encoded picture (which, one assumes, was intended to have meaning) it takes on meaning. Consider for a moment the reader who looks at an abstract painting and thinks to himself, “I have no idea what this means!” The reader in this case assumes that there is something meaningful to be read. The reader, depending on the social context, may feel lacking because he does not have access to the codes of representation presented in the painting. The reader’s partner then walks up and says, “Wonderful!” This event then becomes a political moment, during which one reader has access to meanings that the other does not. If those meanings are valued by the dominant culture, then the other reader is seen as deficient, and is excluded from a way of knowing.

There are many examples of such political moments within the daily practice of teachers and the administration of schools. For example, in career education, young adolescent students may be exposed to images/texts that display different career options and what it means to work in those careers. Students may be taught through representations -- images and texts -- how to act as workers: being on time, focusing on the task, taking orders from supervisors, being a team player, being productive, and so on. My point is that the stories told through the curriculum, the images/texts, are political moments, constructing ways of knowing and seeing. The image as icon, sign, or symbol refers to selected and constructed ways of knowing. But how often does career education provide opportunities for students to learn about their rights as employees and the responsibilities of management, what to do if they are placed in unhealthy or unsafe working areas, or how to respond to harassment? I doubt that many programs position career education from the workers’ perspective. Since one purpose of schooling seems to be to feed the labor pool from which business and industry draw, teaching students about the world of work from the workers’ perspective may be seen as unproductive.

When considering literacy education, we can ask similar questions: Whose literature is taught in our schools? Whose stories are valued? Whose life should be emulated? What ideological position is language arts education based upon? Whose language is valued and whose is not? These, of course, are questions concerning whose knowledge of what arrives at the classroom door. Teachers are restricted in their inquiry into the nature of representation and knowledge by the end-of-year test. The test, a controlling device that dictates what knowledge is important and how students should learn about that knowledge, constructs for the student and the teacher a relationship between school knowledge and lived knowledge.

I am suggesting here that children's access to the meanings of visual, spoken, or written texts in the classroom is a political issue (Ellsworth & Whatley, 1990). Having the skills to decode, having a larger contextual framework to refer to, and having access to ideas and ways of understanding allow different meanings and understanding to emerge, which then give birth to others. No one can deny that schools are a political battleground, but historically, teachers have not understood teaching as a political activity. The curriculum and its delivery was always presented as neutral, and not the result of cultural struggles (Apple, 1996).

As the technologies of representation proliferate in our schools, teachers need to better understand themselves as political agents, delivering a perspective that constructs each child’s place and future. Since the mid-1960s, educational policy makers have attempted to make the curriculum “teacher proof.” Educational television is a case in point. Besides delivering the same curriculum in the same manner to each student, the controlled teaching environment removes the teacher from addressing multiple meaning or wandering from the prescribed curriculum. It is also demonstrated in programmed instruction, with its attempt to lock access to computer program content, and now, in standardized end-of-year testing. There is an official curriculum that the institution wants delivered to its students. Teachers need to be aware of their loss of power and their control over the learning experiences of their students.

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Reading Images

Earlier, I referred to “reading” an image as the construction of meaning by a reader. Reading implies an intention to construct meaning. From a modernist perspective, the meaning of the experienced text resides within the text itself, placed there by its producer or author. The role of the reader in the author-text-reader relationship is to find this meaning -- the “truth” -- within the text, to comprehend the text as its creator intended. When we ask our students, “What does this picture mean?” we are asking from a modernist perspective (Holub, 1984). We are assuming that meaning lies within the text being experienced, and that the reader/viewer’s role is to find it.

From a postmodernist perspective, the meaning of the text is a result of the interaction between the text and the reader. Meaning, then, is constructed by the author and the reader. From this perspective, there is no meaning in the text except that which the reader constructs (at this point, the author becomes a reader of her own text). Furthermore, the author of any text is at one moment a builder of the text to be experienced and at the next moment a reader of the text just built. For example, as I write this text, as I make a photograph or drawing, I am at one moment the author and at the next a reader, continually in the process of revising, of making decisions about expressing what I mean. Having students reflect on their creative process as producers and readers, borrowing from existing codes and meanings, brings to the forefront the subjective nature of literacy in all its forms. Promotion of critical, reflective thinking requires both the teacher and the student to understand the production and reading processes, the roles involved in those processes, and the need to value the processes. As a result, teachers and students have to entertain and value diverse perspectives, even if they are not reflected on the end-of-year test. Back to menu

Constructing Meaning as Politics and Pedagogy

Returning to my comments on the construction of meaning (encoding of text) and reading for meaning (decoding of text) as a political activity, we need to consider the notion of interpretive communities (Fish, 1980). We are all members of various interpretive communities. We are teachers, parents, citizens; we belong to a social and economic class, and we have various histories and experiences that have formed who we are within each of those interpretive communities. As members of communities, we bring to our understanding the meanings from within each community’s framework. Each of us understands the world as a result of those constructed positions. At one moment, for example, we are parents -- we understand schools, work, and our children from that perspective. At the next moment, we are teachers, bringing to our interpretations and meaning construction the values and understandings of an educational perspective.

We and our students bring our social, cultural, and historical frameworks to the reading of any text. We give meaning to a text through our interactions with it and our use of our own cultural and historical framework. Students come to our classrooms with their own histories and ways of understanding the world they live in. When they address a text -- visual, written, or oral -- they interpret, giving meaning to their experience through their own cultural framework.

Traditionally, teachers have been held responsible for their students’ ability to reproduce the “official” meanings of school texts (Apple, 1993). The broad standards and end-of-year standardized tests so prevalent today have underscored this role. Students’ oppositional readings of text have been marginalized or discouraged through this process. Diversity of meanings is traditionally devalued; the stories of others are too rarely told in the classroom. What happens, then, to the understandings that are held by your students? How does a student from a poor community, for example, relate to and interpret textbook images and stories about a middle-class world he does not participate in? How does he make sense of it? What happens to his community’s understanding of the text? How do girls and boys in classrooms make sense out of the stories told? How are your students’ stories about their world valued and understood? What stories are told about other lands and people? How do these stories relate to the lived experiences of your students outside the classroom? From what interpretive position do teachers and students make sense of their school’s curriculum? Who benefits from children learning and believing these stories?

In the end, it is my position that visual literacy is concerned with the construction of meaning, the construction of sense, the telling of stories by authors and readers. As educators, we need to be concerned with the official stories being told to our students, and what we do with their own stories.

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Democratic Schools and Visual Literacy

The position I have taken argues that meaning is a historical social product. Images are stories, which are constructed through codified systems of representation. Existing somewhere between the constructed image and the historical and social reality of the reader is the meaning of the image-text. Reflective visual literacy, as a construct for understanding and producing visual texts, empowers the reader as well as the author in understanding the power of the image as a social artifact. This power is played out in classrooms that teach the “official” knowledge of the institution. The official stories that are delivered through the curriculum (hidden or overt) benefit certain social and economic conditions.

Democratic schools are concerned with issues and practices related to gender, race, and social and economic class. Schools that pursue democratic principles engage teachers, students, parents, and the community in the operations of the school, the curriculum presented, and issues related to social justice and responsibility. From this perspective, schools engage learners in the cultural knowledge base of their communities, while mediating the standardized knowledge presented through state curricular frameworks (Apple & Beane, 1995).

Understanding the process by which images become images that represent or refer to various meanings is useless if teachers do not incorporate the notion of multiple perspectives into their daily pedagogy. Empowering students to express their own voices, their own perceptions of the world, and to understand the process of representation that allows them to do so, begins to redefine classroom practice and the curriculum. Through classroom projects that engage students in making photographic images of their community and collecting their community’ stories, students may begin to understand the diversity and complex relationships related to the construction of meaning and the development of their own voices and their own stories.

Photo essays, historical explorations, and self-reflections not only engage the student in her social and historical world, but place her in context and contact with others. For example, students and teachers, working together with community members to create a photographic collection accompanied by personal reflective text and other objects, might focus on the history of labor in their community. Through the collection of historical and contemporary images, reflective interviews and other texts, and objects, students go beyond a mere awareness of the history of labor -- they begin to see labor in the context of real people’s lives. The project could be expanded to include workers of both sexes and all ages, races, and economic status, with the goal of gaining a better understanding of labor in a particular culture or community -- why and how people do the type of work they do, and the dreams and wants of the people portrayed. The project could end with a public exhibition of the photographs with their stories, live storytellers, music, and panel discussions on current issues and experiences of workers.

Through this process, students and teachers (as well as community members) address the form and process of visual and auditory literacy, exhibitions and displays, and the organization and selection of materials. Students ask real questions and engage in real discussions with real people. The photograph of Uncle Joe now becomes one related to the world of labor, interwoven into the fabric of the community.

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Final Thoughts and Future Directions

In the project described above, the texts were multimediated, the coding was complex, the issues were real; truth about labor in the community did not exist, except in the diverse lived experiences of all the participants. The pivotal point here is that the students in this example ask the questions and reflect on the answers they discover as a result of their experiences, rather than receiving answers others may want them to have.

In this essay I have attempted to construct what I consider the foundation of a reflective visual literacy, one that values diversity of understanding and expression that engages the construction and deconstruction of any text as a social product. As the technology of representation proliferates and, as a result, our understandings of “reality” change, we need to consider such new literacies (if, indeed they are new, and not simply traditional literacies in different clothing) in light of questions of meaning construction and power. Research needs to be conducted not only on the effectiveness of message construction but on who constructs the message and for what reason, with what benefit. In the end, we need to consider the role of visual literacy, as any other literacy, in light of democratic practices and social justice. After all, that is what is important to Uncle Joe and the rest of us, is it not?

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References

Apple, M. (1993). Official knowledge: Democratic education in a conservative age. London: Routledge.
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Apple, M. (1996). Cultural politics and politics. New York: Teachers College Press.
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Apple, M., & Beane, J. (1995). Democratic schools. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
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Barthes, R. (1964). Elements of semiology. New York: Hill and Wang.
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Berger, J. (1972). Ways of seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation.
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Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. New York: Anchor.
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Bronowski, J. (1978). The orgins of knowledge and imagination. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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Ellsworth E., & Whatley, M. (1990). The ideology of images in educational media: Hidden curriculums in the classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.
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Fish, S. (1980). Is there a text in this class: The authority of interpretive communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Freire, P. (1971). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herber and Herber.
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Holub, R. (1984). Reception theory: A critical introduction. New York: Methuen.
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Langer, S. (1976). Philosophy in a new key: A study of symbolism of reason, rite, and art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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Nichols, B. (1981). Ideology and the image: Social representation in the cinema and other media. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
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Tompkins, J. (1976). Reader-response criticism: From formalism to post-structuralism. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press.
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Weeden, C. (1987). Feminist practice & poststructuralist theory. New York: Blackwell.
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Wollen, P. (1969). Signs and meaning in the cinema. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
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About the Author

Robert Muffoletto is an associate professor of educational technology in the College of Education, Appalachian State University. He is a Fulbright scholar, a past president of the International Visual Literacy Association, and editor of a book series for Hampton Press. His publications have appeared in numerous journals and books. His next book, Technology and Education: Reflective Practices, will be published in 2001 by Hampton Press. He can be reached at muffoletto@appstate.edu.

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Citation: Muffoletto, R. (2001, March). An inquiry into the nature of Uncle Joe’s representation and meaning. Reading Online, 4(8). Available: http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/lit_index.asp?HREF=/newliteracies/muffoletto/index.html

Reading Online, www.readingonline.org
Posted March 2001
© 2001 International Reading Association, Inc.   ISSN 1096-1232