The effect of visual salience on speakers’ choices is explored by contrasting the effects of both visual and linguistic manipulations on picture descriptions and eye movements. Two-character pictures were employed, which can be described in one of two complementary ways (e.g., a cop chasing a robber can be described either from a chasing or from a fleeing perspective), and employing simple actives or other alternative syntactic structures (e.g., “a robber is being chased by a cop”). The pictures were preceded by a verb priming one of the two viewpoints and/or a preview of one of the two characters. The results display that the visual manipulation impacts looks to the characters regardless of which viewpoint had been linguistically primed, but it only impacts verbal descriptions in the absence of a linguistic prime. Linguistically priming one of the viewpoints, in contrast, has a trustworthy effect on both looks to the characters and verbal descriptions. These results propose that visual salience does not impact linguistic choices directly.