Visual Transitivity System in Two ELT Books Series

Visual transitivity system refers to a process which determines how image participants are labeled, how many of them are involved, and what roles they play. The present study aimed to investigate the visual transitivity system by analyzing the images of two ELT books series using the interaction of Halliday s systemic functional linguistics and Kress and Van leeuwen’s social semiotics. The interaction of these two approaches is scrutinized in six sample images extracted from American English file (2014) and Cutting edge (2005) series. As a result, two points emerged: The first point shows the usefulness of these approaches in determining the fact that these images are not neutral. The second point is that many processes (e.g., action, reaction, and symbolic) and (e.g., material, mental, and relational) are required in representing and interpreting images and their processes. The findings of this study suggest that teachers need to consider how visual grammar can contribute to language teaching, also language learners can benefit from it in improving their ability to figure out the hidden processes behind every image.