The Viewing and Presenting strands in English in the New Zealand Curriculum, page 40, refer to "reading visual and dramatic texts, including static and moving images" and "using static and moving images". Static images are literally visual images that do not move. They include greeting cards, posters, slides, photographs, paintings, compact disc covers, comics, cartoons, charts, collages, models, dioramas, newspapers, and print advertisements. Static images also include tableaux or silently sculptured images in drama, where students may create an image, as if in a freeze-frame, of arms, heads, legs, and trunks.
Many of these static images communicate by combining visual elements with words. Although this interrelationship is very important, we can separate out the non-verbal features of static images and explore the language and meaning of all the visual as well as the verbal elements present in many different forms of communication.
Exploring language content page
Exploring Language is reproduced by permission of the publishers Learning Media Limited on behalf of Ministry of Education, P O Box 3293, Wellington, New Zealand, © Crown, 1996.
Published on: 25 Feb 2009
