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i

Introduction
to Multimodal
Analysis

9781350069145_pi-234.indd i 04-Sep-19 14:45:09

ii

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM BLOOMSBURY

Multimodal Discourse, by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen

The Bloomsbury Companion to Contemporary Peircean Semiotics,
edited by Tony Jappy
The Visual Narrative Reader, edited by Neil Cohn
Understanding Media Semiotics, by Marcel Danesi

9781350069145_pi-234.indd ii 04-Sep-19 14:45:11

iii

Introduction
to Multimodal
Analysis
Second Edition

Per Ledin and David Machin

9781350069145_pi-234.indd iii 04-Sep-19 14:45:11

iv

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK
1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA

BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks

of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

First published in Great Britain 2007

This edition published 2020

Copyright © Per Ledin and David Machin, 2020

David Machin and Per Ledin have asserted their right under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Authors of this work.

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inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can
accept no responsibility for any such changes.

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9781350069145_pi-234.indd iv 04-Sep-19 14:45:11

v

Contents

List of Images viii

Preface to the Second Edition xi

Introduction 1
What is the specific approach taken in this book? 5
The social uses of design features 7
Outline of the chapters 10

1 What is multimodal analysis? 13

The idea of choice in communication 13
Semiotic choice 15
Materials and affordances 16
Discourse 18
Discourses and social practices 20
The shift to multimodal communication 21
Technologization 21
Integrated design 22
A new commodified communication setting moral
standards 24
Coding of semiotic resources 31
Identifying codes 33

2 Pictures and images 37

A semiotic approach: Denotation and connotation 38
Carriers of connotation 42
Representing participants 48
Actions in images 55
vi

vi Contents

3 Modality: Experiencing the world through

images 61
The origins of modality as a linguistic concept 63
Modality markers and scales 66
Kinds of visual modality 74
Perspective in images 80
Engagement and frontal perspective 81
Non-frontal perspective 82
Angles 83
Distance 84

4 The meaning of colour in visual design 87

Patterns in colour as a semiotic resource 88
Colour as a semiotic system 89
The value of colours 96
Semiotics of colour 98
The dimensions of colour 98

5 The meaning of typography 111

Typeface and design 114
Typography as a semiotic system 117
Inventory of typographic meaning potential 124

6 Textures and materiality 139

Texture as a semiotic system 140
The dimensions of texture 149
Materials 157

7 Composition and page layout 167

Some basic principles of salience 170
Framing 178
Images and composition: Coordination and
hierarchies 186
vii

Contents vii

8 Diagrams and flow charts 193

Classification 197
Composition and orientation 205
Composition and grouping 208
Causality 210
Temporality 212

Bibliography 219
Image Index 225
Index 235
viii

Images

0.1 Fairtrade coffee packaging 2

1.1 Plastic surgery website 14
1.2 Interior of Heritage Bicycles Café 17
1.3 Bounce healthy snack package and product 23
1.4 Diagrams used by Swedish School Inspectorate
to compare good and bad preschools 27
2.1 Unikum Quality Development in preschool 40
2.2 Gears flow chart template 45
2.3 Jurnalul National (Romanian Newspaper) 53
2.4 Pyramid to show strategic plan for university 54
3.1 Viva La Papa chips 64
3.2 Modality scale for articulation of detail 66
3.3 IKEA catalogue 67
3.4 Toothpaste tube. Riddells Creek Organic 68
3.5 (a, b and c) Modalities of representations of
heart 76
3.6 Closer magazine, Issue 699, 2016 79
4.1 Sustainability Scorecard 2011/12 94
4.2 Starbucks café 96
4.3 Starbucks colour palette 102
ix

Images ix

5.1 The line in Figure 5.1 seems passive and

timeless compared with that in Figure 5.2 112
5.2 Whereas the one in Figure 5.2 seems proud and
strong 113
5.3 The thicker line in Figure 5.3 might seem proud
but also more solid and immovable 113
5.4 The one in Figure 5.4 in comparison seems
dynamic and changing 113
5.5 The line in Figure 5.5 seems severe and
unwelcoming 114
5.6 The line in Figure 5.6, in comparison, seems
softer, warm or gentle 114
5.7 Rambo film poster 118
5.8 Cinderella film poster 119
5.9 Children’s sports camp website 123
5.10 Bargain Booze storefront 128
5.11 Sandro storefront 128
5.12 Fit Kitchen food package 133
6.1 High street gym, Nordic Wellness 141
6.2 CrossFit ‘box’ 141
6.3 Natural and industrial textures in the interior of
the café 146
6.4 Textures used in integrated design with ‘lived’
surfaces to evoke a past 147
6.5 Interior of Atrium building with clean industrial
‘core’ look 148
6.6 (a) and (b) Baby rattles 150
x

x Images

6.7 GNC drinks bottles 152

6.8 Fairview cheese package 155
7.1 BNP poster 168
7.2 L’Oréal advertisement 172
7.3 (a) Organic Protein™ Plant Based Protein
Powder. (b) SYNTHA-6® ISOLATE protein
powder 173
7.4 Oxfam poster 175
7.5 Wax kit packaging, Sally Hansen 183
7.6 Page spread of ‘Vision 2016’ 187
7.7 University web page for quality
development 190
8.1 Different diagrams representing the same
organization 194
8.2 Preschool chart showing how play can be
broken down and evaluated 197
8.3 Pathway flow chart for Fairtrade shopping 204
8.4 Diagram showing output for a school, Lillåns
Södra Skola 213
8.5 Template for SMART goals 213
8.6 Strategic diagram for Newcastle University 215
xi

Preface to the Second

Edition

It is over a decade since the first edition of Introduction to Multimodal Analysis

was published. Feedback from those who used the book told us that it was
user-friendly and great for teaching. It took some of the groundbreaking
tools and theories developed by Kress and van Leeuwen and presented in
easy access form as a step to reading the original material.
There were several motivations for writing the second edition. At a basic
level, the examples used in the book and the points of reference used in the
commentary and analysis date over ten years. It needed updating.
Multimodality has also moved on a lot over a decade. The work of Kress
and van Leeuwen, particularly their classic book Reading Images published
in 1996, had a huge impact on the study of visual communication. It showed
that we could break down visual communication into its components to
allow more detailed forms of analysis, to see how it hangs together and works.
But critical reflection on this model was only really beginning at the time of
writing and it remains the base reference for many teachers and researchers,
particularly in linguistics. Yet over the past decade, multimodality has
developed into a range of subfields each with its own priorities, model and
forms of data. And communication has changed a lot over this time. Not
only has it become more multimodal, but also these modes have been used
in very specifically new ways. Communication has become much more
heavily codified and systematically deployed. My own work and research
using multimodality has also changed and grown. And over the last five
years this has been done working as a co-author with Per. It made sense that
writing this book was now our joint project.
So this book has a new section on theory and what multimodality is to
account for these changes and to show what kind of multimodality this book
is. Some of the older chapters remain, such as on images, modality, colour,
typeface and composition. They have fresh examples. They retain the same
basic toolkit approach as before. But they are slightly modified to reflect

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xii

xii Preface to the Second Edition

developments in theory and shifts in communication. And new chapters

have been added on texture and materials and on diagrams. These have been
added due to what we perceive as useful developments in multimodality and
also through the need to provide tools which allow us to work on the ways
that communication now takes place.
We hope that the analytical tool kits in this book can be an inspiration
to explore the fascinating visual world which we have made, and which we
inhabit, and a take a critical perspective on it. They are designed to help
facilitate research which allows students to investigate and take a stance
on all kinds of multimodal communication. In doing so the tool kits will
need to be combined in different ways. What we encounter as data for an
analysis, such as a medical web site, the design of a café or the promotion of
ecological food, employ all sorts of semiotic resources that are combined for
certain purposes in certain contexts and for certain interests. Looking into
the multimodal communication going on is, we hope to make clear, exciting.

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1

Introduction

When you see a particular product on a supermarket shelf, sat among a

range of others, you will find information on that packaging that tells you
what it contains, such as coffee, tea, biscuits and toothpaste. But that package
will also communicate ideas and values about the product which can suggest
that the product is ‘fun’, ‘fresh’, ‘traditional’, suitable for men or women,
‘sensual’, ‘healthy’ and so on. This is communicated not only in the language
on the package but also through how the package looks, its shape, its texture,
the use of typeface and colour. Such ideas and values may in fact have very
little to do with the actual qualities of the product but are associations which
are loaded onto the product through design. A ‘traditional’ loaf of bread
may likely have been made in a factory through industrial processes. But the
look and feel of the packaging may communicate otherwise. Such design
choices will have been carefully made and tested on focus groups. So specific
people from an identified market segment will be asked if the carton for a
new brand of yoghurt suggests ‘health’ and ‘vitality’. Should they not do so
correctly, the product would be much less likely to end up in a shopping
basket. This book is about how ideas like this are communicated on and
through visual design.
In this book we also want to encourage a critical awareness as to how
seemingly innocent designs want to persuade us that we have certain needs,
that we can change ourselves and the planet by consumption, for example.
In the case of the coffee package in Figure 0.1, we can see how design choices
have been made to tell specific consumers something about the associations,
the ideas and values of a Fairtrade product. So here a particular kind of
image, font and colour has been chosen to allow the consumer to make this
distinction very quickly.
Were we to ask most people what they thought of such a design, they
may come up with terms such as ‘rustic’, ‘honest’ or ‘stylish’. If pressed, they

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2

2 Introduction to Multimodal Analysis

Figure 0.1 Fairtrade coffee packaging. Level Ground Trading.

may say that the designs use a friendly, positive, personalized approach to
presenting the people the product claims to help. They might say the colours
are ‘softer’ or ‘simple’. So buying the product would mean that we take a
stance, perhaps to fight inequalities or to contribute to sustainability, that we
stand up for environmental concerns and make this planet better. Or at least
the design communicates this.
But what is it in the designs which allows the product to communicate
ideas and values such as ‘rustic’ or ‘simple’ or even ‘saving the planet’? How
does a designer do this? What choices do they make? If we asked the same
question about any form of visual design such as an advert, web page or
personally designed social media feed, a person may use words like ‘serious’,
‘bold’, ‘romantic’ or ‘moody’. But what is it that communicates such things
and can we point to these, describe and analyse them? The aim of this book
is to provide a set of tools to help us answer this question.
In fact, when we use terms like ‘rustic’, ‘soft’ or ‘lively’ to describe a design,
we are not describing the composition itself but rather the effect created by
the elements and features in the design and how they have been arranged.
And by doing so we overlook how such meanings are produced. Many
of us have a quite undeveloped ability to describe and understand what
we see in visual design. And this is interesting given the amount of time,
money and expertise which goes into producing designs which have such
effect. And since the availability of cheap software from the end of the last
century, visual design has become a much more routine part of all media
and documents we encounter each day and at much more sophisticated
levels.

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3

Introduction 3

Visual designers themselves often refer to design decisions as aesthetic

choices. They talk about having a ‘feel’ for designs. But when we look at
groups of products or adverts of websites which deal with the same
or different topics, we find patterns in the similarities and differences.
Designers can rely on viewers or consumers who will come and pick up and
examine a product package to understand certain design choices. In the case
of the coffee package in Figure 0.1, they will immediately recognize ideas
and values of Fairtrade in the design in a way that would not work if a blank
package simply carried the words ‘This is Fairtrade’. And across the media
and communications industries, there has been an incredible increase in
understanding of this process. This means that designers can communicate
ideas and values in design much more precisely.
For websites or any content which is driven by advertising, this shift
in design culture is particularly important. For example, a news site will
carefully think through visual design, in fact even building its entire identity
as an outlet from this point, to address a specific market segment which it
can then deliver to advertisers. This means that when such readers come
onto their pages they feel correctly engaged not only by the content but also
by how it is presented. In other words, the meaning of what is read should
not be seen as independent from the design. Design is not mere dressing
but part of the meaning of how the content is experienced. Design here
will mean the choices in colours and fonts. It will mean making choices in
the kinds of images that are used and how they are used, integrated with
text, graphics, lists and data. It will mean how these are assembled together,
aligned and placed in space.
Designers of contemporary newspapers have told the authors that the aim
was to create a more feminine and less formal manner of address to readers
which suggested ‘engagement’ rather than ‘information’. Readers were to
be ‘addressed’ as well ‘informed’. Such a form of address was accomplished
through very specific uses of typeface, spacing, alignment, use of ‘engaging’
images and graphics. This attention to design and what it can be used to tell
us about our identities and those who produce the design can be seen on
university websites, or even the routine documents which now pass through
our places of work.
But for the most part accounts of such process, by visual designers
and by the people they address, are done through adjectives and aesthetic
terms. While we are aware of the effect on us when we are addressed,
whether it is a university web page, a news website or packet of coffee,
we tend to not have the tools to be able to identify how these work. And

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4

4 Introduction to Multimodal Analysis

this is the topic of this book. This means asking, for example, what are the
characteristics of a design that looks ‘honest’? But more specifically it asks
what characteristics of typefaces, colours or textures can be used to build
up a design whole which can communicate ‘honesty’, or ‘romantic’, ‘fun’
or ‘serious’. And how can we document and understand the importance
of the way that such elements are positioned in relation to each other in
designs?
In the case of the Fairtrade package, as with other food packaging,
decisions have been made as regards how much of the person we see and
how detailed this image appears. Does this play a role in the way that the
images relate to the sections containing text and information below and the
brand to the top right? Throughout the chapters in this book we provide
toolkits which allow us to take a systematic approach to all these questions.
Rather than explaining designs in terms of adjectives, we can describe what
it is in them that allows these meanings to be produced.
Of course when we see web pages, documents or coffee packages we do
not attend to things like typefaces, colours or the nature of the images in
themselves. These are encountered as parts of material objects and come
in typical configurations of features and qualities. And we have been
tutored throughout our lives to understand the kinds of meanings carried
by such typical material forms. When entering a supermarket or opening
a web page, we already have a sense of what will be communicated and
in what way. We ‘know’ that the resources harnessed for designs tend to
come in established configurations and do not need to work this out from
the colour or font or images in each individual case. And the material
wholes we encounter are already established parts of ways of doing things
in society, such as selling and buying food, and of attracting students to
study at a university.
Such things will come with established associations and be oriented to
specific kinds of social relations between people. In this case the finer level
design features should be seen as ways of allowing that material whole to
successfully communicate specific ideas and values in the context of that
particular form of communication. We look along the supermarket shelf at
the coffee. We immediately recognize the Fairtrade brands communicating
ethical shopping and ideas about honesty and authenticity. And we recognize
other coffee products using different designs to communicate other kinds of
associations – for example, of Italian chic, using elegant fonts, saturated gold
and blue colours and a shiny surface.

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5

Introduction 5

What is the specific approach taken

in this book?
Introduction to Multimodal Analysis takes a social semiotic approach to
communication. This is an approach which allows us to break visual designs
down into their basic components and understand how these work together.
It is one which emphasizes how we tend to share resources for communication
in societies. This is in the form of the meaning of words and grammar and
also in the case of visual design. This is why the designer can try to predict
what kinds of designs will be understood by shoppers as ‘authentic’ or
‘honest’. Although just as wrong choices and misunderstandings can be a
quality of language, so can be the case in visual design. And given that we
can all now design documents, web pages and social media accounts with
cheap and easy-to-use software, we may find more unevenness in the use of
semiotic resources.
Multimodal analysis is different to former kinds of semiotics such as
that of Roland Barthes (1977) which tended to look at individual signs
and their simple, more direct meanings in terms of what they connote
or signify – for example, the colour red could be said to connote danger.
A multimodal approach would be interested in the way that signs are
used in combination, adding up to a whole. Red can mean different
things when combined with other kinds of semiotic resources to make
more subtle and complex meanings. In this sense the meaning of signs is
treated as a potential rather than as something fixed. So the meaning of the
sign is realized in context through its combination with other elements.
A bright red used on a Fairtrade coffee package would be unlikely to
mean ‘danger’, as we see in Figure 0.1. Multimodal analysis would also
want to ask more carefully what kind of shade, purity or concentration
of red we were dealing with. And it would want to observe how and
why that red had been deployed in the particular design. For example,
was it used to create coherence across the design to link an element in
an image to a logo? Such an approach would be not only mindful of the
different meaning potentials carried by red but also open to how this
interacted with the meaning potentials of all other elements. Here context
is important. Context concerns how these features and qualities are used
in combination, and how they are harnessed in specific domains and serve
the interest of some, but not other, groups.

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6

6 Introduction to Multimodal Analysis

Multimodality was a term which emerged particularly from the work of

Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996, 2001). These scholars were highly influenced
by both linguistics and earlier forms of semiotics. Through this combination
they were able to offer something that promised to be highly distinctive.
And since this time multimodality has grown massively into a field in its
own right.
Kress and Van Leeuwen’s work has been particularly influential in
language-based disciplines where the study of the visual has been largely
neglected. In the field of linguistics the focus of meaning making has, of
course, been language. So, for example, the study of an advertisement
might reveal the use of linguistic devices such as directives (commands)
and neologisms (rhyming), which are used to sell products. But of course,
advertisements, with the exception of radio, tend to also carry some kind
of visual communication. Here meaning is created by the way the language
interacts with the visual elements, as we see in Figure 0.1. In such a case
it would appear crazy to hope to capture the way that the advertisement
worked by language analysis alone. Kress and Van Leeuwen were concerned
to stress the importance of moving away from what they called a monomodal
approach, that is, carrying out analysis solely on the basis of the mode of
language. This was, of course, a challenge to how academic work tends to
get done where departments tend to specialize in different modes, such as
linguistics, photography, music, film studies and art.
To many outside of language-based disciplines, this recommendation
to consider the visual in our analysis may seem rather odd. In fields
such as media and communication, cultural studies, art history, film or
photographic studies, the visual has long been considered to be the central
focus for study, and many excellent books brim with ideas and methods for
its analysis. And perhaps one criticism that could be levelled at those based
in linguistics who work with multimodality is that they tend not to engage
with such literature.
But what multimodality brings that is different, and highly useful for all
researchers of the visual, is the idea that all forms of communication need
to be approached with the same attention to detail as has been established
in linguistics. While linguists are often unaware of much academic work in
the visual, the opposite lack of engagement in linguistics, in more systematic
procedures for analysing language, is true of many media, cultural studies
and film researchers. Those who work with more structured and systematic
approaches to language may feel that much of the work they produce is
rather impressionistic and carried out without any real toolkit.

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7

Introduction 7

Just as linguistics offers a more or less precise, systematic methodology

for describing and analysing language, Kress and Van Leeuwen, and the
multimodal scholars inspired by their work, seek to develop the same kind
of systematic toolkit for analysing visual communication. This would equip
the researcher with greater powers to describe and document what we
see rather than simply referring to the effects of visual elements through
adjectives like ‘authentic’ or ‘rustic’.
In their earlier work Kress and Van Leeuwen were of the view that models
and concepts from linguistics could be easily transported to be used in
visual analysis. They used terms like ‘visual syntax’ and ‘visual grammar’
and looked for things like the visual equivalent of verbs. For example, a
photograph or drawing of a woman hitting a man would be said to be the
visual version of the sentence ‘the woman hits the man’. But these authors
quickly moved away from this idea. Yet other kinds of concepts, drawn from
models of language, have proved durable. We look at these in Chapter 1 and
use them to build toolkits throughout the book, placing these in what we
view as a model which represents the direction multimodality has developed
since Kress and Van Leeuwen’s earlier work.

The social uses of design features

Multimodality has developed into many sub-fields (see Jewitt et al., 2016),
and some of these have remained more committed to the idea of modelling
a grammar of visual communication in the fashion of linguistics. This
book does not provide a detailed account of these different fields but it is
helpful to understand one thing that lies at the basis of multimodal analysis:
Hallidayan linguistics.
Multimodality is greatly influenced by the work of Halliday (1978, 1985)
who was interested in the social use of language. This differed from other
theories of language which were focused on accounting for a more rigid,
or formal, grammar. Instead Halliday approached language as a system of
choices, or alternatives. So it is not so much something fixed in grammar, but
more fluid and used by people creatively in contexts, like a set of tools. And
there was emphasis on how language is shaped through its cultural, historical
and social uses. In this sense it not only is about neutral communication but
also carries the meanings and values of societies in particular moments in
time. We can see how this idea could apply to the way we have been talking
about visual communication earlier in this introduction, where the visual

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8

8 Introduction to Multimodal Analysis

designer of the coffee packages makes choices as regards colour, typeface and
type of image in order to meet their communicative aim in this particular
context. Such choices have meaning due to their potential in a particular
social and cultural moment. A monochrome picture of a peasant may have
the potential to mean ‘authentic’, ‘honest’, ‘hard working’, in twenty-first-
century northern Europe. But this may not have been the case 100 years ago,
or in other parts of the world in the present. So Halliday’s linguistics has a
highly social and functional side to it.
Halliday’s linguistics also has a highly systemic side to it. He sees language
as an overall system of choices which comprise the tools we apply in contexts
according to our needs. And this larger system is made up of layers of smaller
subsystems which build into the whole. The smaller subsystems are things
like verbs, or words for indicating levels of certainty such as ‘It is the case’ or
‘It may be the case’. Those in linguistics who work with Halliday’s ideas seek to
create entire models of these systems which they call ‘systemic networks’. This
drive for identifying systems in communication can be seen in the work of
scholars who are more interested in modelling underlying grammar forms of
communication such as visual design than looking at how it is used in specific
instances of communication, driven by specific interests and in specific times
and places, for answering research questions, as we are in this book.
These systemic-oriented multimodal scholars are also highly influenced
by Halliday’s notions of ‘language metafunctions’. These are simply the three
functions on which language is based. So, language has to communicate
ideas (the ideational metafunction), it has to signal our relationships to
ideas and persons (the interpersonal metafunction) and marshal these into a
structured whole (the textual metafunction) (Halliday and Hasan, 1989). For
the systemic-oriented multimodal researcher the idea is that the analyst looks
for the underlying grammatical systems which realize these metafunctions.
The main drive here is to model the systems of visual communication.
However, for some, these notions of systems and metafunctions simply
become problematic when applied to other forms of communication beyond
language (Ledin and Machin, 2018). While ambitious readers of this book
may want to explore these differences in approaches to multimodality, what
is necessary at this point is simply to grasp the subtle difference in emphasis
between wanting to map systems and wanting to look at the social uses of
communication.
The work of Kress and Van Leeuwen has also been heavily driven by the
social part of Halliday. Here visual communication can tell us something
about the contexts where it was produced, about social relations, about

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Introduction 9

ideology and the kinds of motivated ideas that are being shared. In the
example of our coffee packaging in Figure 0.1, we can see that the smiling
peasants here have been stylized so that they fuse nicely into the design as a
whole, aligning with the kinds of ‘creative’ fonts and modernistic flat panels
of colour. Fairtrade products are seen by some to be rather odd in some ways
(Cliath, 2007; Low and Davenport, 2005). Here, structural, global economic
inequalities, built into a system of international regulation that favours
corporations and powerful economies, can be addressed by middle-class
consumers, through an act of shopping. The peasant appears as appreciative,
attractive, out of context from their actual situation of labour and part of a
chic modernist design. In this case the semiotic choices must be understood
in this particular socio-historical moment. And when these four packages
sit on the shelf, the peasants from different parts of the world, from Peru
and Tanzania, all strike similar poses and are placed and framed in the same
way on the package. Despite their massively unique positions in the global
economies and colonial history, their difference is hidden in this design.
A single distant ethnic other identity is presented for the consumer where
difference is marked only by type of hat.
This social part of the work of Kress and Van Leeuwen was also influenced
by the work of the Marxist linguist Voloshinov (1986), which stressed that
language must never be studied in abstract or in an unhistorical manner
and that it has a material basis. Signs or multimodal texts are part of the
material (and social) world. The meaning of words is part of a struggle over
definition of reality where the powerful in society will seek control over
this process. Signs are never fixed but have affordances which are always
realized in communicative interactions, which will carry traces of the power
relations underlying them. The same idea, as we see in the case of the coffee
packaging, can be applied to choices in visual communication.
We return to some of these concepts in the following chapter, but here it
is important to note that the kind of multimodality presented in this book
is very much a social one. As you will see, there is an element of ‘system’
involved in that we are interested in documenting and presenting available
choices for creating visual communication, which in turn provide us with
the tools to carry out much more detailed analysis. But here we present these
rather as ‘inventories’ than as any form of system. And it will be clear that this
is in the first place a social form of analysis. We present these inventories so
that we can draw out the meanings and ideologies in the instances of visual
communication that we seek to analyse. In the next chapter we provide a
clear account of how we must understand these inventories of choices as

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10 Introduction to Multimodal Analysis

part of whole instance of communication that are already embedded in parts

of everyday life and how it is meaningful to us, rather than as more abstract
systems. The Fairtrade packages seen in Figure 0.1 are not encountered by
the shopper through individual choices rooted in broader abstract systems
of grammar but as material objects already meaningful in the world as part
of moral statements against corporate exploitation and cynicism and as part
of particular expressions of taste and agency.

Outline of the chapters

Chapter 1: This chapter deals with the theoretical basis of the book. It
explains how we must view communication as based on choices deployed in
contexts for specific communicative purposes. But such choices are part of
routinized patterns and configurations which are already fused into patterns
of behaviour and social organization. In other words, multimodal text
analysis must include awareness of contexts and typical patterns of use. We
explain also how there have been huge shifts in the nature of communication
that we must grasp in order to understand contemporary designs. At heart
this is about the increase in control and attention to the detail in semiotic
materials and choices. This relates to the drive to control communication
and also to regulate and treat all things as commodities, even ideas and
feelings. And we see a new form of design emerging as a result, one which
relies less on running text and more on symbolism.
Chapter 2: This chapter deals with iconography. Here we look in greater
detail at different kinds of visual elements that can transport meaning, at the
‘hidden meanings’ of pictures and images. We must familiarize ourselves,
when looking at compositions, with the process of identifying these in order
to understand the kinds of discourses that they connote. We look at objects,
settings, persons and photogenia.
Chapter 3: This chapter deals with modality. Modality relates to how
we are positioned to experience the world as it is represented in visual
communication. It is a concept that can be used to think about how real, or
not, a representation claims to be. In a visual composition we can ask which
elements are real, which are less than real and which are more than real. This
analysis can reveal how certain things can be concealed or even enhanced in
a composition. We look at different types of modality. A flow chart claims a
different kind of truth than a photograph, for example. We end the chapter
looking at how images can position the viewer.

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Introduction 11

Chapter 4: This chapter is about colour. Most of us are used to thinking

about the way that individual colours have particular meaning – red for danger
and so on. Interior design programmes tell us that blues can be cold, purples
are sensual and yellow is happy. But such observations are impressionistic and
not systematic. Also there is far more to colour than hue. Colours can seem flat
and be of equal intensity across a single surface, as we might find in cartoons.
Or we may see all the subtle nuances of colour that we find when light and
shadow play on objects in the real world. These and many other qualities have
meaning potential. In this chapter we present an inventory of colour. We also
look at the different kinds of communicative work that colours can do.
Chapter 5: This chapter deals with the meaning of typography. It provides
an inventory of the meaning potential of different kinds of letter shapes and
dimensions. Again this draws on metaphorical association. Typographic
form can also be used to fulfil different kinds of communicative function.
Chapter 6: This chapter deals with textures and materials. Designers now
attend much more to textures, such as in food packaging, interior design
and transport. Textures are also now used in a way that more carefully links
with the use of other semiotic resources such as colour. Here we show that
textures can be broken down into a set of qualities that allow us to more
carefully document and analyse how they can be used to communicate. The
meaning of textures is deeply related to materials. The chapter ends with a
look at how we can ascribe some common meanings to different materials.
Chapter 7: This chapter deals with visual composition. Semiotic materials
tend to be used in different kinds of typical configurations. So they must be
analysed as part of these configurations and in contexts. Nevertheless, we
show in this chapter that there are some patterns in composition which we can
observe running across such configurations. Here we look at creating salience,
at the use of borders and framings as part of processes of separation, linking and
classification. We also look at text alignment and the placing of images in design.
Chapter 8: In this chapter we look at diagrams. Here we are interested
in how graphic shapes can be used to classify and to represent processes,
persons and social and work relationships. We look at how this is a case of
what we call ‘integrated design’, where what people do and why may not be
clearly represented in running text but may be symbolized at different levels.
This may be a useful tool for those who wish to shape how certain process or
power relationships are represented. Such diagrams, simply produced using
software, now appear in many forms of routine everyday communication.
Here we explain how to break them down and understand how they create
meaning.

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13

1
What is multimodal analysis?

This chapter presents the basic theoretical framework for the chapters that
follow. Here we explain the nature of the approach and tools this book
presents. What we present is a theory of visual communication which is
linked to how society and power operate. It is about the way that visual
materials come to house our ideas and values and shape and structure how
we act and interact. We also place this into some of the shifts that have taken
place in visual communication, particularly in the second decade of the
twenty-first century. This is part of the key to revealing how the elements
and features of visual communication have become used in new and more
integrated configurations.

The idea of choice in communication

As we began to explain in the introduction to this book, the approach we
use is inspired by a theory of communication in linguistics pioneered by
Halliday (1978). Halliday himself called this a ‘social semiotic’ theory of
communication. You may have come across the term ‘semiotics’ (Barthes,
1977) in other forms of visual analysis where it has been used to look at
things like symbolism in advertisements. So we might look at the webpage
for the plastic surgery company seen in Figure 1.1 and say that the body we
see as the main element on the page connotes sleek, glowing, beauty. Barthes
was interested in the way that such connotations could then be associated
with the product or service being advertised. In this case plastic surgery is
not about medical procedures, grasping at lost youth, body management
or alteration. The surgery itself is omitted and the fantasy of the outcome
foregrounded. The semiotics of Barthes may also then look at the meanings
of other elements on the design, such as the abstract drawing of the figure to

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14 Introduction to Multimodal Analysis

Figure 1.1 Plastic surgery website, California Surgical institute (http://www.

californiasurgicalinstitute.com/).

the top left, connoting something artistic, or ‘fine art’. But these are just two
parts of the whole design.
Social semiotics is different from this however, as it wants a more
systematic form of analysis. We need to look at the whole of the
composition. And this is very much influenced by the tradition of
linguistics where we do not try to grasp the meaning of a sentence only
by attending to the connotations of one single word in it. We would need
to understand how it was part of a whole, how its meaning was realized
through its placement with other words and tenses and where it was
positioned in that sentence.
In the case of the plastic surgery webpage in Figure 1.1, it is clear that
the fonts are important. They are formed by quite fine lines emphasizing
lightness rather than wider lines to suggest weight and substantiality. They
appear rather tall and elegant rather than short and squat. The colours
emphasize brightness rather than darkness. There is a lot of empty space
on the page, suggesting ease and room to breathe and simply the luxury of
space. A state-run hospital may place less emphasis on space and luxury.
While many state-run hospitals are also now heavily branded, foregrounded
in some images may be machines used for medical procedures and more
use of space to show these in order to indicate ‘resources’. The private clinic
here does not represent these at all, but rather luxury, ease, lightness and
optimism. The plastic surgery clinic also uses a particular kind of level of
realism in its representation of the body and of the setting, which is an
empty space.

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15

What is Multimodal Analysis? 15

Semiotic choices
The notion of choice is important in how a social semiotic approach
deals with what is taking place here. The designer of the webpage (seen in
Figure 1.1) had a choice as regards the thickness of the typeface, the kinds
of colours (tones, saturation and purity levels), levels of brightness, where
to put the borders on the page, how thick and what shape they should be
and where to locate the cut-lines and the words. Such choices have been
made here with a sense of the way that people will understand such a
combination in this particular socio-historical present and in regard to
what would be the target group of the clinic.
Social semiotics is a theory of language and communication based on
the idea of choices between available options. So in order to carry our an
analysis of the plastic surgery clinic webpage we would be interested in
describing the choices and meaning potentials of semiotic resources such
as fonts, colours and uses of borders. We could, for example, ask if the
font was curved, angular, narrow or wide. Or what meanings dilute rather
than saturated colours create. Choosing the thinner typefaces or the dilute
colours on the webpage in Figure 1.1 can provide messages about a kind of
experience of plastic surgery – certainly not one that foregrounds surgical
instruments, cutting of actual flesh, removal of unwanted body parts.
By a ‘system of choices’ we mean that in, for example, language, when,
as speakers, we want to describe a person, thing, place or idea, we have a
range of options we can choose from. Our choice will depend on our needs
in any particular context. For example, if we describe a person there are
choices relating not only to size and shape but also to things like religion and
ethnicity. Such words, in one sense, do not really ‘describe’ that person in any
neutral sense but allow us to use culturally evolved terms to ‘evoke’ things
about them from a particular point of view. And, of course, the choices we
make will reflect what we want to achieve in that context – such as persuade
someone to like or dislike a person.
In Halliday’s social semiotic model of language, which was a huge inspiration
for multimodality, the analyst would be interested in making an inventory of
the kinds of choices available to speakers. So, for example, we could create an
inventory of the choices available for indicating levels of certainty.

I am doing that
I will do that

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16 Introduction to Multimodal Analysis

I must do that
I may do that
I would do that
I could do that

Making such an inventory, and understanding the meaning potential for

each, allows us to better look for the instances of choices made in, say,
speech or a text. If a politician comments that ‘we must act for the good of
the nation’, it is not the same level of commitment as saying ‘we will act for
the good of the nation’. As such, politicians often hedge their promises and
commitments carefully.
This notion of choice was taken up in multimodality to enable a more
systematic and predictive form of analysis. This approach based on creating
inventories of choices was different than some earlier forms of visual
analysis that had been based more on open forms of analysis of individual
elements in visual communication. In media and communication
and cultural studies, there had been great reliance on the approach of
Roland Barthes (1977), for example, which we began to discuss in the
introduction, who looked at things like the meaning of individual elements
in advertisements rather than working from an inventory of meaning
potentials. In multimodality, we would be interested in all of the design
choices found on an advertisement. This would include fonts, colours,
the layout of the design, its shape and texture. For example, Van Leeuwen
(2005) has shown that fonts can be described as regards a limited range of
qualities such as curvature versus angularity, narrow versus wide, heavy
versus light. Each quality can communicate quite specific ideas. Lighter
and more vertically oriented fonts might be used to communicate a diet
food, for example.

Materials and affordances

In multimodality, as well as an interest in the smaller level choices, such
as fonts, there is also an interest in the form of communication that we
think of as the ‘semiotic materials’ (Ledin and Machin, 2018). When we
encounter and interact with instances of communication, such as the plastic
surgery website, or say the café interior pictured in Figure 1.2, we certainly
do not attend to them as regards the individual smaller choices described
above, even though these may be part of our experience of them. Rather, we

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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
“Before I leave thee, hast thou no word to say to me?”
“I ask nothing of thee, but I give thee a piece of advice. As long as
thou livest, give not occasion to be ashamed of thy name, which
signifies The Blameless. Beware also never to give the ring from thy
finger, without saying first, ‘In the name of the God of all mercy.’”
Solomon exclaimed, “Lord! Thy kingdom exceeds and excels mine!”
and he bade farewell to the queen of the ants.[667]
After Solomon had visited Damascus, he returned another way, so
as not to disturb the ants in their pious contemplation. As he
returned, he heard a cry on the wind, “O God of Abraham, release
me from life!” Solomon hastened in the direction of the voice, and
found a very aged man, who said he was more than three hundred
years old, and that he had asked God to suffer him to live, till there
arose a mighty prophet in the land.
“I am that prophet,” said Solomon. Then the Angel of Death caught
away the old man’s soul.
Solomon exclaimed, “Thou must have been beside me, to have
acted with such speed, thou Angel of Death.”
But the angel answered, “Great is thy mistake. Know that I stand on
the shoulders of an angel, whose head reaches ten thousand years’
journey above the seventh heaven, and whose feet are five hundred
years’ journey beneath the earth. He it is who tells me when I am to
fetch a soul. His eyes are ever fixed on the tree Sidrat Almuntaha,
which bears as many leaves as there are living men in the world;
when a man is born, a new leaf buds out; when a man is about to
die, the leaf fades, and, at his death, falls off; and, when the leaf
withers, I fly to fetch the soul, the name of which is inscribed upon
the leaf.”
“And what doest thou then?”
“Gabriel accompanies me, as often as one of the believers dies; his
soul is wrapped in a green silk cloth, and is breathed into a green
bird, which feeds in Paradise till the end of time. But the soul of the
sinner is carried by me in a tarred cloth to the gates of hell, where it
wanders in misery till the last day.”
Then Solomon washed the body of the dead man, buried him, and
prayed for his soul, that it might be eased of the pains it would have
to undergo during its purgation by the angels Ankir and Munkir.[668]
This journey had so exhausted Solomon, that on his return to
Jerusalem he ordered the Jinns to weave him stout silk carpets on
which he and all his servants, his throne, tables, and kitchen could
be accommodated. When he wanted to go a journey, he ordered the
winds to blow, and raise the carpet with all that was on it, and waft it
whither he desired to travel.
One night, Abraham appeared to the king in a dream, and said to
him: “God has given thee wisdom and power above every other child
of man; He has given thee dominion over the earth and over the
winds; He has suffered thee to build a house to His honour; thou
hast power to speed on the backs of Jinns or on the wings of the
winds where thou listest; now employ the gift of God, and visit the
city of Jathrib (Medina), which will one day give shelter to the
greatest of prophets; also the city Mecca, in which he will be born,
and the temple which I and my son Ishmael—peace be with him!—
rebuilt after the flood.”
Next morning Solomon announced his intention to make a
pilgrimage to Mecca, and bade every Israelite join in the expedition.
The number of pilgrims was so great, that Solomon was obliged to
have a new carpet woven by the Jinns of such vast size that it could
serve the whole caravan, with the camels and oxen and sheep they
destined for sacrifice. When ready to start, Solomon bade the Jinns
and demons fly before the carpet; his confidence in their integrity
was so small, that he would not trust them out of his sight: for this
reason also he drank invariably out of crystal goblets, that even
when drinking he might keep his eyes upon them. The birds he
ordered to fly in ranks above the carpet, to give shadow to the
pilgrims with their wings.
When all was in readiness, and men, Jinns, beasts, and birds were
assembled together, Solomon ordered the winds to descend and
bear the carpet, with all upon it, into the air, and waft it to Medina.
When they approached this town, Solomon made a sign, and the
birds depressed their wings, and the winds abated, and the carpet
sank lightly to the earth. But he suffered no man to step off the
carpet, as Medina was then in the hands of idolaters. He alone went
to the spot where afterwards Mohammed was to erect the first
mosque—it was then a cemetery—and there he offered up his noon-
day prayer. Then he returned to the carpet; at a sign the birds spread
their wings, the winds gathered force and lifted the carpet, and the
whole caravan sailed through the air to Mecca, which was then
under the power of the Djorhamides, who were worshippers of the
One God, and preserved the Kaaba from desecration by idols.
Solomon, with all his company, entered the city, went in procession
round the temple, performed the requisite ceremonies, and offered
the sacrifices brought for the purpose from Jerusalem. Then he
preached a long sermon in the Kaaba, in which he prophesied the
birth of Mohammed and the future glory of Mecca.
After three days, Solomon desired to return to Jerusalem, and he
remounted his throne on the carpet, and all the pilgrims resumed
their places. When the birds spread their wings, and the carpet was
again in motion, the king perceived one ray of sun which pierced the
canopy of birds, and this proved to him that one of the birds had
deserted its place.
He called to the eagle, and bade it go through the roll-call of the
birds, and ascertain which was absent.
The eagle obeyed, and found that the peewit was missing. Solomon
was inflamed with anger, especially as he needed the peewit during
his journey over the desert, to discover for him the hidden wells and
fountains.
“Soar aloft!” exclaimed Solomon to the eagle, “and seek me this
runaway, that I may strip him of his feathers and send him naked
forth into the sun, to become the prey of the insects.”
The eagle mounted aloft, till the earth was beneath him like a
revolving bowl, and he looked in all directions, and at length he spied
the peewit coming from the south. The eagle would have grasped
him in his talons, but the little bird implored him, by Solomon, to
spare him till he had related his history to the king.
“Trust not in the protection of Solomon,” said the eagle; “thy mother
shall bewail thee.” Then the eagle brought the culprit before the king,
whose countenance was inflamed with anger, and who, with a frown,
signed the runagate to be brought before his throne.[669]
The peewit trembled in every limb, and, in token of submission, let
wings and tail droop to the ground. As Solomon’s face still expressed
great anger, the bird exclaimed, “O king and prophet of God!
remember that thou also shalt stand before the judgment-throne of
God!”
“How canst thou excuse thine absence without my consent?” asked
the king.
“Sire, I bring thee news of a land and a queen of which thou hast not
even heard the name—the land of Sheba, and the queen, Balkis.”
“These names are indeed strange to me. Who told thee of them?”
“A lapwing of that country whom I met in my course, to whom I spoke
of thy majesty, and the greatness of thy dominion, and wisdom, and
power. Then he was astonished, and he related to me that thy name
was unknown in his native land; and he spake to me of his home and
the wonders that are there, and he persuaded me to accompany him
thither. And on the way he related to me the history of the Queen of
Sheba, who commands an army generalled by twelve thousand
officers.”
Solomon bade the eagle release the peewit, and bade him relate
what he had heard of Sheba and its queen.
 5. THE HISTORY OF THE QUEEN OF SHEBA.

“Sheba,” said the peewit, “is the name of the king who founded the
kingdom; it is also the name of the capital. Sheba was a worshipper
of the sun, Eblis having drawn him from the true God, who sends
rain from heaven, and covers the earth with plenty, and who reads
the thoughts of men’s hearts.
“A succession of kings followed Sheba: the last of the dynasty was
Scharabel, a tyrant of such dissolute habits that every husband and
father feared him. He had a vizir of such singular beauty that the
daughters of the Jinns took pleasure in contemplating him, and
frequently transformed themselves into gazelles that they might trot
alongside of him as he walked, and gaze with admiration on his
exquisite beauty. One of these Jinn damsels, Umeira by name,
conceived for the vizir a violent passion, and forgetting the great
distance which separates the race of the Jinns from that of mortals,
she appeared to him one day as he was hunting, and offered him her
hand, on condition that he should fly with her into her own land, and
that he should never ask her origin. The vizir, dazzled by the
marvellous beauty of Umeira, gladly yielded, and she transported
him to an island in the midst of the ocean, where she married him. At
the end of nine months she gave birth to a daughter, whom she
named Balkis. The vizir, all this while, was ignorant of the nature of
his bride, and one day forgot himself so far as to ask her to what
race she belonged. No sooner had he asked the fatal question, than,
with a wail of sorrow, she vanished for ever from his sight.
“The vizir now left the island, and, regaining his native country,
retired with his babe to a valley far from the capital, and there lived in
seclusion.
“As Balkis grew up, her beauty became more striking, and was of
such a superhuman nature, that her father became uneasy lest the
fame of it should reach the dissolute monster then seated on the
throne of Sheba, and lest his daughter should be ravished from his
arms. He therefore redoubled his precautions to guard Balkis,
keeping her much at home, and only allowing her to appear veiled in
public. But these precautions were vain. Scharabel was in the habit
of travelling about his empire in disguise, and making himself, by this
means, personally acquainted with the condition of his estates.
“On one of these expeditions he appeared, dressed in rags, as a
mendicant, at the door of the ex-vizir, and obtained a glimpse of
Balkis, then thirteen years old, lovely as a houri; she stepped out to
give the beggar alms. At the same moment, the father hurried out
towards his daughter. The eyes of the two men met; a mutual
recognition ensued. The vizir fell at the feet of his king, and
entreated pardon, telling him all that had happened; and Scharabel,
who had fallen in love at first glance with Balkis, readily pardoned
him, restored him to his place as grand vizir, and lodged him in a
magnificent palace near Sheba.
“Installed there, the vizir was full of disquiet. His daughter observing
this, inquired the cause, and received from her father the answer that
he dreaded lest the tyrant should carry her off to his harem; ‘and,’
said the unhappy man, ‘I had rather see thee dead, Balkis, than in
the power of this licentious monster.’
“‘Do not fear for me, my father,’ replied Balkis; ‘what thou dreadest
shall not take place. Appear cheerful before the king. If he wishes to
marry me, then ask him to give me a splendid wedding.’
“A few days after, Scharabel sent to ask the hand of Balkis. The
virgin replied that it should be his if he would solemnize the marriage
with great pomp. To this the king agreed, and a magnificent banquet
was prepared.
“After dinner, the vizir and all the company retired, leaving Balkis
alone with the king. There were, however, four female slaves
present, one singing, another harping, a third dancing, and a fourth
pouring out wine for the king. Balkis took the goblet, and plied her
royal bridegroom well, till he fell drunk upon the floor, and then, with
a dagger, she stabbed him to the heart.
“She at once communicated with her father, and bade him send
orders throughout the town that all the citizens were to bring their
daughters before the king, that he might add the comely ones to his
already extensive list of wives and concubines. He obeyed her, and
the commotion in the town was prodigious. Parents gathered their
friends, those who were officers in the army agitated amongst their
soldiers, and the whole town rose up in revolt, and rushed furiously
to the palace, determined on the death of the tyrant.
“Then Balkis cut off the head of the king, and showed it to the
excited multitude from a window. A cry of joy rang through Sheba.
The palace gates were thrown open, and Balkis was unanimously
elected queen in the room of the murdered tyrant.
“From that hour she has governed Sheba with prudence, and has
made the country prosperous. She sits to hear suits, and gives
judgment on a throne of gold, robed in splendour. All prospers under
her wise administration: but, alas! like her predecessors, she too is a
worshipper of the sun.”
When Solomon heard the story of the peewit, he wrote a letter and
sealed it with his ring, gave it to the bird, and bade him carry it
immediately to the Queen of Sheba.
The peewit flew like an arrow, and on the morrow appeared before
Balkis, and gave her the missive. The queen broke the seal and
read: “Solomon, son of David, and servant of the Most High God, to
Balkis, queen of Sheba, sendeth greeting. In the name of the
merciful and gracious God, peace be to those who walk in His ways.
Do what I bid thee: submit immediately to my sceptre.”[670]
The queen, startled at the abrupt and peremptory command, read
the letter to her council, and asked their advice.
They urged her to follow her own devices, and promised to agree to
whatever she thought fit. She then said: “You know what disasters
follow on war. The letter of Solomon is threatening; I will send him a
messenger, and propitiate him with gifts. If he accepts them, he is
not above other kings; if he rejects them, he is a prophet, and we
must yield to his sway.”
She then dressed five hundred boys as girls, and five hundred girls
she equipped in boys’ clothes. She collected, for presents, a
thousand carpets of gold and silver tissue, a crown adorned with
pearls and diamonds, and a great quantity of perfumes.
She also placed a pearl, a diamond cut through in zigzags, and a
crystal goblet, in a box, and gave it to her chief ambassador.
Finally, she wrote a letter to Solomon, telling him that, if he was a
prophet, he would be able to distinguish boys from girls in the train of
the ambassadors, that he would be able to guess the contents of the
box, pierce the pearl, thread the diamond, and fill the goblet with
water which came neither from earth nor heaven. The chief nobles of
Sheba were sent to bear the letter. Before they left, she said to them:
“If Solomon receives you with arrogance, fear nothing; pride is a sure
token of weakness. If he receives you graciously, be careful—he is a
prophet.” The peewit, who had watched all these proceedings, and
listened to the message and advice, now flew to Solomon and told
him all.
The great king immediately ordered his Jinns to spread his carpet
seven leagues long, leading from his throne towards Sheba. He then
surrounded himself with gold and gems, and gathered all his
courtiers and officers together, and prepared for the audience.
When the ambassadors of Sheba set their feet on the carpet—the
end of which was beyond the range of vision—they were full of
astonishment. This astonishment increased, and became terror,
when they passed between ranks of demons, and Jinns, and nobles,
and princes, and soldiers, extending for many miles.
When the leaders of the embassy reached the foot of the throne,
Solomon received them with a gracious smile. Then they presented
the letter of the queen. Solomon, without opening it, told them its
contents, for it had been read by the peewit. They offered the box,
and he said that in it were a pearl, a diamond, and a goblet. He next
ordered his servants to bring silver ewers before the train of the
ambassadors, that they might wash their hands after their journey.
Solomon watched intently, and he picked out the boys from the girls
at once; for the boys dipped their hands only in the water, whilst the
girls tucked up their sleeves to their shoulders and washed arms as
well as hands.
Then the box was opened and the pearl produced. Solomon
unclasped his pouch and drew forth Schamir, applied it to the pearl,
and a hole was drilled through it immediately. Next he took the
diamond. The hole pierced in it wound about, and a thread inserted
in one end would not pass through to the other end. Solomon took a
piece of silk, called to him a worm, put one end of the thread in its
mouth and inserted it in the diamond. The worm crawled down the
winding passage, and appeared at the other opening with the silk. In
gratitude to the little creature, Solomon gave it for its food for ever
the mulberry-tree. Then he took the crystal goblet. He summoned to
him a huge negro slave, bade him mount a wild horse and gallop it
about the plain till it streamed with sweat. Then, with ease, the
monarch filled the chalice with water that came neither from earth
nor heaven.
Solomon, having accomplished these tasks, said to the
ambassadors: “Take back your presents, I do not want them. Tell the
queen what you have seen, and bid her submit to my rule.”
When Balkis had heard the report of her servants, she saw that it
was in vain for her to resist.
“Solomon,” said she, “is a great prophet, and I must myself do him
homage.”
She accordingly hasted to prepare for her journey, and marched to
King Solomon at the head of her twelve thousand generals, and all
the armies they commanded. When she was a league from
Solomon, the king hit upon a scheme. He called to him a demon,
and bade him transport immediately from Sheba the throne of the
queen and set it beside his own. The Jinn replied that he would bring
it before noon, but the king could not wait, for the queen would soon
be there; then Asaph, his vizir, said, “Raise thine eyes, sire, to
heaven, and before thou canst lower them the throne of Balkis will
be here.”
Asaph knew the ineffable name of God, and therefore was able to do
what he said.
Solomon looked up, and before he looked down Asaph had brought
the throne.
As soon as Balkis appeared, Solomon asked her if she recognized
the seat. She replied, “It is mine, if it is that which it was.” A reply
which, we are told, charmed Solomon.
Now the Jinns were envious of Balkis, and they sought to turn away
the heart of Solomon from her; so they told him that she had hairy
legs.[671]
Solomon, accordingly, was particularly curious to inspect her legs.
He therefore directed the Jinns to lay down in front of the throne a
pavement of crystal one hundred cubits square. Upon this pavement
he ordered them to pour water, so that it might appear to be water.
In order to approach Solomon, Queen Balkis raised her petticoats,
lest they should be wet in passing through what she supposed to be
water of considerable depth. The first step, however, convinced her
that the bottom was nearer the surface than she anticipated, and so
she dropped her petticoats, but not before the great king had seen
that the Jinns had maligned her, and that the only blemish to her legs
was three goat’s hairs; and these he was enabled to remove by a
composition of arsenic and lime, which was the first depilatory
preparation ever employed. This was one of the five arts introduced
by Solomon into the world. The others were, the art of taking warm
baths, the art of piercing pearls, the art of diving, and the art of
melting copper.
The queen stepped gracefully towards the king, and bowing, offered
him two wreaths of flowers, whereof one was natural, the other
artificial, asking him which he preferred. The sagacious Solomon
seemed perplexed; he who had written treatises on the herbs, “from
the cedar to the hyssop,” was nearly outwitted. A swarm of bees was
fluttering outside a window. Solomon ordered the window to be
opened, and the insects flew in, and settled immediately on the
wreath of natural flowers, not one approaching the artificial wreath.
“I will have the wreath the bees have chosen,” said the king,
triumphantly.
Solomon took Balkis to be his wife, and she worshipped the true
God. She gave him all her realm, but he returned it to her; and when
she went into her own land, she bore with her the fruit of her union
with Solomon, and in the course of time bore a son, who is the
ancestor of the kings of Abyssinia.[672]
 6. SOLOMON’S ADVENTURE WITH THE APES.

On one of his journeys, Solomon passed through a valley which was

inhabited by apes which dressed themselves like men, and lived in
houses, and ate their food in a way wholly superior to other apes.
Solomon descended from his carpet and marched at the head of his
soldiers into the valley. The apes assembled to resist him, but one of
their elders stepped into the midst of them and said, “Let us rather
submit and lay down our arms, for he who comes against us is a
holy prophet.”
Then three apes were chosen ambassadors, and were sent to
Solomon with overtures of peace.
Solomon asked them to what race they belonged.
The envoys replied, “We are of human origin, and of the race of
Israel, and we are descended from those who, in spite of all
warnings, have violated the Sabbath, and who have therefore, in
punishment, been transformed by God into monkeys.”
Solomon had compassion on the apes, and he gave them a letter on
parchment, assuring to them undisturbed possession of their valley
against all assault by men.
And in after days, in the time of the Calif Omar, some of his troops
invaded this valley, and, with great amazement, beheld the apes
stone a female which had been taken in adultery. And when they
would conquer the valley, an aged ape came before them bearing a
parchment letter. This they were unable to read; so they sent it to the
Calif Omar, who was also unable to decipher the writing; but a Jew
at his court read it, and it was an assurance given to the apes
against invasion by King Solomon.
Therefore Omar sent orders that they were to be left unmolested,
and returned to them their parchment.[673]
 7. SOLOMON MARRIES THE DAUGHTER OF
PHARAOH.

The throne of Solomon had four feet. It was of red ruby, and of the
ruby were made four lions. None but Solomon could sit upon the
throne. When Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem and sought to
ascend the throne, the lions rose and struck at him, and broke his
legs. He was given remedies, and his legs were reset. No one after
that ventured to sit on the throne.[674]
Djarada was the daughter of King Nubara, of an island in the Indian
Sea, according to the Arabs; of King Pharaoh of Egypt, say the
Jews.
Solomon marched against the king, on his carpet, with as many
soldiers as it would accommodate; defeated him, and slew him with
his own hand. In the palace of King Nubara Solomon found the
Princess Djarada, who was more beautiful than all the ladies in
Solomon’s harem, surpassing even the beautiful Balkis.
Solomon made her mount the carpet, and he forced her, by threats
of death, to share his faith and his couch. But Djarada saw in
Solomon only the murderer of her father, and she recoiled from his
embrace with loathing, and spent her nights and days in tears and
sighs. Solomon hoped that time would heal these wounds and
reconcile her to her fate; but as, after the expiration of a year, her
sorrow showed no signs of abating, he asked her what he could do
which might give her comfort. She replied that at home was a statue
of her father, and that she desired greatly to have it in her chamber
as a reminder of him whom she had lost. Solomon, moved with
compassion, sent a Jinn for the statue, and it was set up in the
apartment of Djarada. Djarada immediately prostrated herself before
it, and offered incense and worship to the image; and this continued
for forty days.
Then Asaph heard of it, and he ascended the pulpit in the temple
and preached before the king and all the people. He declared how
holy and pure had been the ancient prophets from Adam to David,
how they had been preserved clean from all idolatry. Then he turned
to Solomon, and praised his wisdom and piety during the first years
of his reign; but he regretted that his latter conduct had not been as
full of integrity as at first.
When Solomon heard this, he called Asaph to him, and asked him
wherefore he had rebuked him thus before all the people. Asaph
answered, “Thou hast suffered thy passions to blind thee, so that
idolatry is practised in thy palace.”
Solomon hastened to the room of Djarada, and found her in prayer
before the image of her departed father. Then he cried out, “We are
the servants of God, and to Him shall we return.” Then he broke the
image and punished Djarada.
After that he put on him garments which had been woven and sewn
by virgins, strewed ashes on his head, and went into the wilderness
to bewail his sin. God forgave him, after that he had fasted and wept
for forty days.[675]
Another sin that Solomon committed was this. He was very fond of
horses. One day, when the hour of prayer approached, the horses of
Saul were brought before him; and when nine hundred had passed,
Solomon looked up and saw that the hour of prayer was passed, and
he had forgotten to give glory to God. Then said Solomon, “I have
cared for the things of this world, instead of thinking of my Lord;” and
he said, “Bring back the horses;” and when they were brought back,
he cut their throats.[676]
Some commentators on the Koran object that this was an act of
injustice, for Solomon had sinned, not the horses; and they explain
away the passage by saying that he dedicated the horses to God,
and that he did not kill them.[677]
 8. HOW SOLOMON LOST AND RECOVERED HIS
RING.

One day that Solomon retired to perform the necessary functions of

nature, he placed his ring in the hand of Djarada; for on such
occasions he was wont to remove the ring from his finger. For the
first time he forgot the advice of the queen of the ants, and gave no
praise to God as he committed the signet to other hands.
Sachr, the mighty Jinn,[678] took advantage of this act of
forgetfulness, and, assuming the form of Solomon, came to the
Egyptian princess and asked her for the ring. She, nothing doubting,
restored it to him; and Sachr went to the hall of audience, and
ascended the throne.
When Solomon returned, he asked Djarada for the signet.
“I have already given it thee,” said she; and then, contemplating him
with attention, she exclaimed, “This is not the king! Solomon is in the
judgment-hall; thou art an impostor, an evil spirit who has assumed
his shape for evil purposes.”
Then Solomon was driven, at her cry, from the palace, and every
one treated him as a fool or rogue. He begged from door to door,
saying, “I, Solomon, was king in Jerusalem!” but the people mocked
him. For three years he was an outcast, because he had
transgressed three precepts of the Law—“The king set over thee ...
shall not multiply horses to himself ... neither shall he multiply wives
to himself; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and
gold.”[679] And this is what befell him in that time. He went into the
land of the Ammonites, and there he fell into great want; but the
master cook of the king’s house took him to serve as scullion in the
kitchen. After he had served for some time, he one day cooked some
meats for the king; and when the king tasted the meats Solomon had
baked, he was well pleased, and sent for Solomon and asked him if
he would be his head cook.
Then Solomon consented, and the king of the Ammonites dismissed
the master cook, and placed Solomon in his room, and Solomon
excelled greatly in cooking, and pleased the king more and more
with the variety and excellence of his dishes every day.
Now it fell out that Naama, daughter of the king, saw Solomon from
day to day, and she conceived an ardent passion for him, and she
went to her mother and said, “I shall die of love, unless I am given
the head cook to husband.”
The queen was astonished and ashamed, and said, “There are kings
and princes and nobles in Ammon; take to you which you will.” But
Naama answered, “I will have none save the head cook.”
Then the queen went and told the king, and he was exceeding wrath,
and would have slain both Solomon and Naama; but when the first
fury of his anger was cooled down, he bade one of his servants take
them, both Solomon and Naama, and conduct them into the desert,
and there leave them to perish.[680] The command of the king was
executed, and Solomon and Naama were left in the wilderness
without food. Then they wandered on till they came to the borders of
the sea, and Solomon found some fishers, and he laboured for them,
and every day they gave him, in payment for his services, two fish.
Thus passed the time, till one day Solomon’s wife, Naama, on
cleaning one of the fishes, found in its belly a ring, and she brought it
to her husband; and, behold! it was his signet which he had put in
the hands of Djarada, and which had been taken from her by
subtlety by the evil spirit. And this was how he recovered it: on the
ring was engraved the Incommunicable Name, and this the Jinn
could not endure; therefore he could not wear the signet, and he had
cast it into the sea, where the fish had swallowed it.
Now when Solomon recovered his ring, he was filled with joy, and
the light returned to his eyes; he went back to Jerusalem with great
haste, and all the people recognized him, and bowed before him;
and when the Evil Spirit saw Solomon, and that he had the signet
upon his hand, he uttered a loud cry and fled. Solomon refused to
see again Djarada, the author of his misfortune; but he visited Queen
Balkis every month, till the day of her death.[681]
When Balkis died, he had her body conveyed to Tadmor in the
desert, the city she had built; but her grave was known to none till
the reign of the Calif Walid, when, in consequence of a heavy rain,
the walls of Tadmor fell. Then was found an iron sarcophagus which
was sixty ells long and forty ells wide, which bore this inscription:
—“Here lies the pious Balkis, queen of Sheba, wife of the prophet
Solomon, son of David. She was converted to the true faith in the
thirteenth year of the reign of Solomon; she married him in the
fourteenth, and died in the three-and-twentieth year of his reign.”
The son of the Calif raised the lid of the coffin, and beheld a woman,
as fresh as if she had only been lately buried.
He announced the fact to his father, and asked what should be done
with the sarcophagus. Walid ordered him to leave it where it had
been found, and to pile blocks of marble over it, so that it might not
again be disturbed by the hand of man.[682]
Solomon, when he was again on the throne, placed a crown on the
head of Naama, and seated her beside him, and sent for the king of
Ammon. And when the king came, he was filled with astonishment,
and wondered how his daughter had escaped from the desert and
had found favour with the greatest of monarchs. Then said Solomon,
“See! I was thy head-cook, and this is thy daughter; bid her come to
thee and kiss thee.” Then the king of Ammon kissed his daughter,
and returned, glad of heart, to his own land.[683]
 9. THE DEATH OF SOLOMON.

When Solomon had recovered his throne, he reigned twenty years.

His whole reign was forty years, and he lived in all fifty-five years.[684]
He spent these years in prosecuting the building of the temple.
Towards the end of his life he often visited the temple, and remained
there one or two months plunged in prayer, without leaving it. He
took his nourishment in the temple. He even remained a year thus;
and when he was standing, with bowed head, in a humble attitude
before God, no one ventured to approach him, man or Jinn; if a Jinn
drew near, fire fell from heaven and consumed him.
In the garden of Solomon grew every day an unknown tree. Solomon
asked it, “What is thy name, and what are thy virtues?” And the tree
answered him, “I am called such and such, and I serve such a
purpose, either by my fruits, or by my shadow, or by my fragrance.”
Then Solomon transplanted it elsewhere; and if it were a tree with
medicinal properties, he wrote in books the kinds of remedies for
which it served. One day Solomon saw in his garden a new tree, and
he asked it, “What is thy name, and what purpose dost thou serve?”
The tree replied, “I serve for the destruction of the temple. Make of
me a staff, whereon to lean.”
Solomon said, “None can destroy the temple as long as I am alive.”
Then he understood that the tree warned him that he must shortly
die. He pulled up the tree, and of it he made a staff, and, when he
prayed, he leaned on this staff to keep himself upright.
Solomon knew that the temple was not completed, and that if he
died, and the Jinns knew of it, they would leave off building;
therefore he prayed, “O Lord! grant that the event of my death may
be hidden from the Jinns, that they may finish this temple.”
God heard his prayer, that the temple might be completed, and that
the Jinns might be humbled. Solomon died in the temple, standing,
leaning on his staff, with his head bowed in adoration. And his soul
was taken so gently from him by the Angel of Death, that the body
remained standing; and so it remained for a whole year, and those
who saw him thought he was absorbed in prayer, and they ventured
not to approach.
The Jinns worked night and day till the temple was finished. Now,
God had ordered, the same day that the soul left Solomon, a little
white ant, which devours wood, to come up out of the earth under
the staff, and to gnaw the inside of the staff. She ate a little every
day; and as the staff was very strong and stout, she had not finished
it till the end of the year. Then, when the temple was finished, at the
same time the staff was eaten up, and it crumbled under the weight
of Solomon, and the body fell. Thus the Jinns knew that Solomon
was dead. Now, wherever the white ant eats wood, the void is filled
up with clay and water by the Jinns; and this they will continue to do
till the day of the Resurrection, in gratitude to the little ant which
announced to them the death of him who held them in bondage. If
the clay and the water are not inserted by the Jinns, whence can
they come?
The sages assembled and enclosed an ant in a box, with a piece of
wood, for a night and a day; then they compared the amount
devoured in that time with the length of the staff, and thus they
ascertained how long a time Solomon had been dead.[685]
 XXXIX.
ELIJAH.

When the prophet Elijah appeared, idolatry was general. God sent
him to Balbek (Heliopolis), to persuade the inhabitants to renounce
the worship of Baal, from whom the city took its name. Some say
that Baal was the name of a woman, beautiful of countenance. The
Israelites also adored Baal; Elijah preached against idolatry; and
Ahab at first believed in him, and rejected Baal, but after a while
relapsed. Then Elijah prayed, and God sent a famine on the land for
three years, and many men died. None had bread save Elijah, and
when any smelt the odour of bread, they said, “Elijah hath passed
this way!”
One day Elijah came to the house of an old woman who had a son
named Elisha. Both complained of hunger. Elijah gave them bread. It
is said, likewise, that Elisha was paralytic, and that at the prayer of
Elijah he was healed.
When the famine had lasted three years, Elijah went, accompanied
by Elisha, before King Ahab, and he said:—“For three years you
have been without bread; let your god Baal, if he can, satisfy your
hunger. If he cannot, I will pray to Jehovah, and He will deliver you
out of your distress, if you will consent to worship Him.”
Ahab consented. Then Elijah ordered the idol of Baal to be taken out
of the city, and the worshippers of Baal invoked the god, but their
prayers remained unanswered. Then Elijah prayed, and immediately
rain fell, and the earth brought forth green herb and corn.
Nevertheless, shortly after, the people returned to idolatry, and Elijah
was weary of his life; he consecrated Elisha to succeed him, and he