A Visual Analysis of Three Historical Photos Using SFL Model

摘要

This paper is an attempt at using 'social semiotic visual analysis' based on SFL to explore three historical visual images taken by Sun Mingjing in 1938, Zigong, Sichuan. The reason for the choice is that all of the three are eye-catching and have been causing different responses. The main sources for this analysis are from O'Toole's model (1994) on images and Kress and van Leeuwen's work on reading images (1996), based on the metafunctonal concepts of Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory (1994). A brief introduction to the theoretical basis is followed by a detailed analysis of three salt worker visual texts in terms of a few parameters. The three pictures are of workers pedaling brine, the weighing of salt and the digging of a salt well.