ABSTRACT
The study of pictorial framing is again a useful instrument to help develop a theory of images and word and picture texts, and of how these communicate. The modern world, as Charles Forceville claims, makes an increasing use of visual modes of conveying information, but theorising how this is achieved is still in its infancy. The model of pictorial framing offers an angle on the analysis of the rhetorical strategies used in word and image texts in more general terms.
Chapters 3 through 5 have started us off on this search, but one needs to take it further with respect to a far broader range of materials/frames so as to start characterising just which possibilities arise, where they arise, and how one can tell. Using the corpora of multimodal op-eds pertaining to the ongoing Eurozone crisis (2010–), this chapter sets out an extended repertoire of text-image relations already going considerably beyond the proposals made by Chapter 5. Moreover, it confirms that the English-language media are attempting to undermine the Euro and to foment the crisis. Specifically, the US and UK discourses on the crisis represent a panorama of moral frames, metaphors, categorisations. These are normal in discussions of any important topic, but here are one-sided. Such communicative devices have the influence of moving the understanding of the public in an anti-Euro direction. Importantly, they activate conservative values such as moral strength, direct causation, etc., and thereby are intended to attract the political middle, such as swing voters and moderates.
