The visual metadiscourse of the inserts of an English Dictionary

Abstract

In this article, we investigate the function of colors and images as metadiscursive elements in the composition of the inserts of the Illustrated Basic Dictionary of American English (2010), which is part of the Collins Cobuild series. The study is based on the categories proposed by Kumpf (2000) for the analysis of the visual metadiscourse and the theory of multimodality by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006). We conclude that the visual resources used for the elaboration of the inserts in this dictionary play the role of organizing the contents, guiding the users, attracting their attention and establishing direct communication between the reader and the author.