ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the meaning-making potential of layout in the novel and presents and discusses a methodological framework for doing so. The chapter first explains and critiques the compositional principles of Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996) grammar of visual design (i.e. information value, salience and framing) and combines these tools with Bateman’s (2008) concepts of base unit and layout unit for analytical precision. This is followed by analysis of text units of varying length (i.e. paragraph, section, page and chapter), other types of text block (e.g. footnotes, letters, iconic arrangement of characters to form visual images), different uses of spacing (letter spacing, line spacing and blank space), as well as of the meaning-making that comes about through the linking of elements in the layout of the novel. The analysis shows that salience, framing and linking can be applied productively in the analysis of layout in the novel, while the applicability of information value in that context is more limited. The chapter furthermore introduces visual negation as an analytically productive concept. The novels examined include Paul Auster’s Oracle Night (2004), Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005b), J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a Bad Year (2007) and Steven Hall’s The Raw Shark Texts (2007).
