Visual Discourses of Disability: Interpreting Press Images of Disability from a Discourse-Semiotic Perspective

This book shows how the visual elements within news images of disability orchestrate and evoke social meanings about disability and of persons with disability. It creates a Visual Discourses of Disability (ViDD) framework to delineate what and how the visualization of disability communicates ideas and attitudes and how elements in an image are configured to frame the perspective of disability. These configurations can be placed on a continuum, from perspectivizing to personizing. In addition, the cumulative attitudinal meanings in a news image can be placed on another continuum from enabling to disabling. Both can be combined as opposing axes to demonstrate the social implications of empowering, advocating, handicapping and othering. Combining critical discourse and social semiotic approaches in analyzing news images, situated in the field of Critical Disability Studies, it shows how the framework can be used to address concerns of media stereotyping and social issues of discrimination and prejudices against people with disability through visual depictions. It will be relevant for readers in the areas of visual communication, social semiotics, critical discourse studies, communication, (photo)journalism, sociology, anthropology, media studies and (critical) disability studies. Specifically, it would benefit media practitioners, educators, organizations and relevant authorities as the proposed framework can serve as a tool in making informed choices in capturing, selecting and publishing images of disability.