ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some elements of a general and rigorous theory of pictorial framing as it will be used to explore the relations between discourse and social/political action in the rest of this book. This theory is enriched by insights from frame semantics, conceptual blending model, moral politics theory, relevance theory, and categorisation theory. This chapter thus discusses in which ways context plays a role in the interpretation of images generally, and pictorial frames occurring in them specifically. Accordingly, the connections with the principle of relevance, which emphasises the roles of communicator and addressee in the negotiation of messages and hence of frame-blends, are expanded. In fact, Charles Fillmore himself does mention the notions of relevance, context, and discourse, but he, like others, neither elaborates on them, nor methodically presents their relations to frames. As such, this chapter is also intended to be of intrinsic interest to students of verbal and cognitive frames.
