The notion of ‘image’ has been one of the most classic topics in fields like philosophy, social psychology and literature, which generally take a macroscopic perspective. Influenced by social constructionism, image studies have experienced a “discursive turn”, as the construction and communication of image start to attract attention from discourse analysts and pragmatists. Despite an increasing number of image studies conducted through discourse analysis or conversation analysis, related studies are largely partial and subjective due to lack of a pertinent analytical framework. Therefore, on the basis of the existing literature and using a social constructionist approach to image, this study seeks to examine the connotations, types and discursive practices of image construction in a fairly systemic way, hoping to provide an operable analytical framework for future image research.