The Functional Peculiarities of Image Usage in BBC and CNN News Texts

УДК 070.431.5:77.044[(084)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/2520-6397.2024.2.08

Viktoria HETMAN, Assist.
ORCID ID: 0000-0003-1319-912X
е-mаil: sveren@ukr.net
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv,
Kyiv, Ukraine

The Functional Peculiarities of Image Usage in BBC and CNN News Texts (pdf)

The article highlights the usage of images in BBC and CNN online news. The main communicative functions performed by images are considered to be as follows: image as illustration used to depicture the reality; image as evidence used to prove the facts; image as sensation used to evoke great
surprise, excitement, or interest among a lot of people; image as evaluation used to carry huge emotional appeal; image as icon which functions as symbolic representation of key moments in history, war issues, critical moments embedded in the national psyche; images used to invoke aesthetic appeal.
The text-image relations were also analyzed in the current paper. Based on Martinec & Salway detailed classification of the text-image relations the following relationships types were spotted in the BBC and CNN news discourse – those of equal and unequal image & text status. Equal status presupposes the independent and complementary text & image relations where the latter are joined on an equal footing without one modifying the other. Unequal status indicates text & image subordination that could be
revealed via the presence of textual implicit devices to be decoded by reference to an image. Thus, the relatedness between images and texts is realized by means of componential cohesion, which relates participants, processes and circumstances in images and texts. From the logico-semantic perspective the news text & image relations of extension, enhancement and exemplification may be identified. The
extension relationships are manifested by adding new, related information either to a text or to an image. In enhancement relationships a text or an image qualify each other circumstantially by naming time, place or reason. The exemplification relations are realized by providing some special details to more general information presented either in a text or in an image.

Keywords: online news, images, communicative functions, text-image relations, equal/unequal status.

© Viktoria HETMAN, 2024