Can Images Be Texts? Visual Literacy, Culture and Thinking in Educational Contexts

This paper discusses the concept of visual literacy and the problems inherent in regarding images as 'texts'. In large part contemporary understanding of visual literacy has emerged through the work of Kress (2003) and Kress and van Leeuwen (2006). These theorists have helped form a system of visual grammar and syntax that can be used to decipher meaning in imagery. While this creates further insight into the ways in which visual communication works, it rarely reveals 'the whole picture'. In this paper it is suggested that a dichotomy exists between a systemic functional approach to reading images as 'text' in English education and what could be described as an aesthetic approach in art education.