Narrative Representations

Kress and van Leeuwen refer to objects or elements as participants, or more precisely, represented participants. They believe "it points to the relational characteristic of 'participant in something' and it draws attention to the fact that there are two types of participant involved in every semiotic act, interactive participants and represented participants. Interactive participants are those who speak and listen or write and read, make images or view them. Whereas represented participants are those who constitute the subject matter of the communication. That is, the people, places, and things represented in and by the speech or writing or image, the participants about whom or which we are speaking or writing or producing images.

There are two ways to identify participants. The first is the way of formal art theory. Participants are called "volumes" or "masses" each with a distinct weight or gravitational pull. Processes are called "vectors" or "tensions" or "dynamic forces". For the purpose of identifying participants, "volumes" are perceived as distinct entities which are salient to different degrees because of their different sizes, shapes, color, etc.

The second way of identifying participants is that of functional semiotic theory. It is oriented towards the semantic functions rather than towards the forms of the participants. It uses terms like "actor," "goal," and "recipient" rather than terms like volume and mass.

Kress and van Leeuwen discuss shapes used in models and other visual communication. In contemporary Western society, squares and rectangles are the elements of mechanical, technological order, of the world of human construction. Squares and rectangles form modules and serve as building blocks which construct our world. Circles, on the other hand, are self-contained and complete in themselves. These shapes are associated with the natural, organic world. Rectangles and squares, however, are associated with the world of technology, the world that we've made and continue to make for ourselves.

Triangles are angular, like squares. However, a triangle when tilted is a participant and a vector because it can convey directionality and point at things. Triangles can be seen as focusing or aiming a message. Triangles are a symbol of generative power and represent action, conflict, and tension.