About the AuthorJennifer Heater is an undergraduate at Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, MO. She is working towards her Bachelors in English with a Technical Writing concentration and is minoring in Communications. She anticipates graduating in Spring 2014 and then continuing her education seeking her Masters in Technical Communication. Although Jennifer is fairly new to the Technical Communication field, she is excited about her research and hopes to continue it throughout her Masters. Contents |
TablesTABLE 2: INTERPERSONAL METAFUNCTIONS BASIC FEATURES AND FEATURE PROCESSES
The last metafunction is compositional metafunction. Harrison defines compositional metafunction as answering the question, “How do the representational and interpersonal metafunctions relate to each other and integrate into a meaningful whole” (55). With the increase in the use of multimodal documents and the accelerating advancements in technology, this is a question that we need to always ask ourselves when creating documents. Grammar is used as a set of rules that govern language so that it makes sense to the reader. The composition of an image needs to follow a set of rules as well to make readers break down images instead of viewing an image as a whole. Readers need to recognize that images have elements such as informational value, salience, and framing.  Figure 5: "Spiegel I and II" is an example of compositional metafunction. This image has both representational and interpersonal metafunctions. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolinespics/6059738120/in/set-72157627470667950/)
Information value addresses the rhetorical message by the placement of the objects within the picture. Salience is the ability to catch the reader’s attention. Framing is the lines within the image that develop connection between objects in the image. The system addresses the background including depth and illumination (Harrison 56). All of the metafunctions that Harrison describes tie into Peirce’s rhetorical goals. They both address the importance of how the viewer will perceive the image as a whole when looking at the individual components of the image. Table 3 below outlines the basic systems and elements for compositional metafunctions. Figure 5 is also from the website Flickr taken at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in England. Figure 5 is a conceptual structure with analytical processes. The picture as a whole is a person constructed of the attributes of letters and numbers. The image has far personal distance from a low angle, giving the RP power over the view. This could suggest that the knowledge that a human is superior to other beings. The compositional metafunction tells us that the RP is the nucleus since it is centered and has greater salience due to its size. This is a good example of all three metafunctions working together to give meaning to an image. TABLE 3: COMPOSITIONAL METAFUNCTIONS BASIC SYSTEMS AND ELEMENTS
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