Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Outline

Title
Abstract
Key Takeaways
Figures
Analysis I
Analysis II
Introduction: Metaphor and Political Discourse
Analysis
Conclusion and Discussion
Conclusions
Photos and Her Broad Social Background
Summary
Theme Analysis
Methodology
Discussion
Some Examples from the Case Studies
Introduction
Conclusion
References
All Topics
Art
General Arts and Humanities

“Reflections on the creative use of traffic signs’ ‘micro-language’”

Profile image of Charles ForcevilleCharles Forceville

2019, In: András Benedek and Kristóf Nyíri (eds.), Image and Metaphor in the New Century (Perspectives on Visual Learning vol. 3) -- pp. 103-113 [draft version]

Abstract

To help visual studies (and multimodal studies with a visual component) mature into a serious humanities discipline, it is crucial to be able to unveil patterns in the way visuals can communicate. Finding patterns requires first of all that it should be possible to identify recurring “building blocks” in visuals. Only if any recurring elements are found, it is sensible to ask whether any “rules” or “conventions” exist that prescribe how these elements can interact to create meaning – and how they cannot. In this chapter it is argued that since traffic signs constitute coded information, it is possible to use and adapt traffic signs' templates as a kind of visual "speech acts" to convey novel meanings, whose interpretation is steered and constrained by this speech act character. … Read more

Key takeaways
sparkles

AI

  1. Traffic signs can be adapted as visual speech acts to convey novel meanings.
  2. Visual metaphors and their structures enable communication of complex ideas in various media.
  3. The absence of elements in memorials, like names, shapes viewer perception and understanding of history.
  4. Cinematic techniques can reflect philosophical concepts, enriching the interpretation of visual narratives.
  5. The normalization of genocide is depicted through science fiction, revealing societal tendencies towards violence.
Figures (55)
Figure 4: The town of Eger. Www ssts seta tw aad aaa oo YUtwiv aaa) rai tiiwvow a a co aa £4ivVvriw OM a J? At this point the advertisement continues with a couple of im- ages depicting Hungarian landscapes. The initial scene depicts the Buda Castle and the Danube (located in Budapest), followed by an image of the first abbey constructed in Hungary, that of Tihany, and Lake Balaton (in the background). These landscapes are relatively easily recognizable by a vast majority of Hungarians and conjure up the HUNGARY frame, whereby SALIENT MEMBERS OF THE CATEGORY (LOCATIONS IN HUNGARY) STAND FOR THE CATEGORY (HUNGARY). The last image in the succession of Hungarian landscapes, is, how- ever, not as easily identifiable, and is definitely not a major tourist hotspot in the country (at least not for foreigners). The image shows a
Figure 4: The town of Eger. Www ssts seta tw aad aaa oo YUtwiv aaa) rai tiiwvow a a co aa £4ivVvriw OM a J? At this point the advertisement continues with a couple of im- ages depicting Hungarian landscapes. The initial scene depicts the Buda Castle and the Danube (located in Budapest), followed by an image of the first abbey constructed in Hungary, that of Tihany, and Lake Balaton (in the background). These landscapes are relatively easily recognizable by a vast majority of Hungarians and conjure up the HUNGARY frame, whereby SALIENT MEMBERS OF THE CATEGORY (LOCATIONS IN HUNGARY) STAND FOR THE CATEGORY (HUNGARY). The last image in the succession of Hungarian landscapes, is, how- ever, not as easily identifiable, and is definitely not a major tourist hotspot in the country (at least not for foreigners). The image shows a
Figure 1: A bunned chair from Homorédalmas, 1863.'*
Figure 1: A bunned chair from Homorédalmas, 1863.'*
Figure 3: The statue of a gun in the front of United Nations Headquarters.
Figure 3: The statue of a gun in the front of United Nations Headquarters.
For centuries, artists have used visual metaphors to subtly commu- nicate the subject of their works. For example, rather than paint Jesus Christ walking through Renaissance Florence, many 16th-century Ital- ian artists would use symbols that represented Christ, like a lamb or dove. These symbols were metaphors of Christ’s presence that audi- ences of the time would have understood. Other examples of visual metaphors can be even more subtle. Check out the 1765 painting A Philosopher Lecturing at the Orrery by Joseph Wright of Derby (Fig- ure 6). An orrery was an 18th-century interactive model of the solar system.
For centuries, artists have used visual metaphors to subtly commu- nicate the subject of their works. For example, rather than paint Jesus Christ walking through Renaissance Florence, many 16th-century Ital- ian artists would use symbols that represented Christ, like a lamb or dove. These symbols were metaphors of Christ’s presence that audi- ences of the time would have understood. Other examples of visual metaphors can be even more subtle. Check out the 1765 painting A Philosopher Lecturing at the Orrery by Joseph Wright of Derby (Fig- ure 6). An orrery was an 18th-century interactive model of the solar system.
Figure 11: Advertisement for Bergedorfer Beer.
Figure 11: Advertisement for Bergedorfer Beer.
gance of the sport gesture is like a brushstroke on a canvas, while the second metaphor probably encourages us to imagine an artist as rich and famous as a football player. The two interpretations are totally different, because the metaphors are totally different.
gance of the sport gesture is like a brushstroke on a canvas, while the second metaphor probably encourages us to imagine an artist as rich and famous as a football player. The two interpretations are totally different, because the metaphors are totally different.
So, if mental imagery is so pervasive, then it is also funda- mental in perceiving, appreciating and interpreting pictures, as well
So, if mental imagery is so pervasive, then it is also funda- mental in perceiving, appreciating and interpreting pictures, as well
'© Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (1939), Boulder: Westview Press, 19 pp. 86-91. '’ Nanay, Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception, p. 87.
'© Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconology (1939), Boulder: Westview Press, 19 pp. 86-91. '’ Nanay, Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception, p. 87.
Because of the highly coded “speech act’ the traffic sign tem- plates present, it is possible to deploy them for humorous purposes, or even to persuade viewers to adopt ideas, or undertake actions, that are not related to behaviour in traffic. In Forceville and Kjeldsen (op. cit.) we discussed some examples of both. An example of a “traffic sign” in which a rhetorical point is made is Figure 3. We are all familiar with Figure 2, an “instructive” sign indicating a footpath. Figure 3, by varying on Figure 2, makes the point that it is odd that that the adult and child on the official sign by default seem to be male, exposing this gender bias by depicting the two humans as fe- male. Even though this traffic sign probably was an embellished ac- tual sign in the real world (rather than a photoshopped version of a picture of such a sign), from a rhetorical perspective its precise loca- tion does not matter much anymore: unlike in Figure 2a, one can re- locate the sign to make a more general point: “it is wrong to (stand- ardly) use the male variety of the species as the default to depict 999 ‘people’.
Because of the highly coded “speech act’ the traffic sign tem- plates present, it is possible to deploy them for humorous purposes, or even to persuade viewers to adopt ideas, or undertake actions, that are not related to behaviour in traffic. In Forceville and Kjeldsen (op. cit.) we discussed some examples of both. An example of a “traffic sign” in which a rhetorical point is made is Figure 3. We are all familiar with Figure 2, an “instructive” sign indicating a footpath. Figure 3, by varying on Figure 2, makes the point that it is odd that that the adult and child on the official sign by default seem to be male, exposing this gender bias by depicting the two humans as fe- male. Even though this traffic sign probably was an embellished ac- tual sign in the real world (rather than a photoshopped version of a picture of such a sign), from a rhetorical perspective its precise loca- tion does not matter much anymore: unlike in Figure 2a, one can re- locate the sign to make a more general point: “it is wrong to (stand- ardly) use the male variety of the species as the default to depict 999 ‘people’.
Figure Ila: Street art by Clet Abraham."°
Figure Ila: Street art by Clet Abraham."°
Figure 1: Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima is a photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945, which depicts United States Marines raising a U.S. flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
Figure 1: Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima is a photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal on February 23, 1945, which depicts United States Marines raising a U.S. flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
wonderfully suggestive.* It points to an important connection that is either missing or passed over quickly in discussions of vectors: directionality and the viewer’s conceptualization of depicted time. Simply put, because narratives typically feature a beginning, middle, and end, a narrative image encourages the viewer to contextualize the depicted moment by imagining the events that have lead up to it and those that will follow it. A horizontal vector, in turn, can function as a temporal locus within the image, inviting the viewer to plot those imagined narrative moments along its axis. Consider, for example, the narrative image in Figure 3. One of four pendentives on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, it portrays a singular moment from the biblical story of David and Goliath. Even those unfamiliar with the plot can quickly intuit the ongoing action: momentarily, David will use the sword to sever Goliath’s head. Note that Michelangelo has placed the sword at the left side of the image,
wonderfully suggestive.* It points to an important connection that is either missing or passed over quickly in discussions of vectors: directionality and the viewer’s conceptualization of depicted time. Simply put, because narratives typically feature a beginning, middle, and end, a narrative image encourages the viewer to contextualize the depicted moment by imagining the events that have lead up to it and those that will follow it. A horizontal vector, in turn, can function as a temporal locus within the image, inviting the viewer to plot those imagined narrative moments along its axis. Consider, for example, the narrative image in Figure 3. One of four pendentives on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, it portrays a singular moment from the biblical story of David and Goliath. Even those unfamiliar with the plot can quickly intuit the ongoing action: momentarily, David will use the sword to sever Goliath’s head. Note that Michelangelo has placed the sword at the left side of the image,
cases, the vectors encourage a perception of rightward movement into a future moment of combat.
cases, the vectors encourage a perception of rightward movement into a future moment of combat.
workers’ leisure time. I found a photography of Kiraly’s which may have been taken on the occasion of such a trip to a holiday resort building in Agard near the Lake Velence (Figure 5).
workers’ leisure time. I found a photography of Kiraly’s which may have been taken on the occasion of such a trip to a holiday resort building in Agard near the Lake Velence (Figure 5).
Figure 1: City council of Madrid © Juanjo Martin, El Mundo.
Figure 1: City council of Madrid © Juanjo Martin, El Mundo.

Related papers

Darras, B. (2005) Semiotic of visual signs and information design
Bernard DARRAS

Information Design International Conference Proceedings, 2005

The following study is part of a more general project, called " Images Analyses " , which includes a web site and a collection of books developed and edited by the Images and Cognitions Research Centre (University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne). This semiotic study has two main purposes: the first objective is the systematic study of international visual communication signs; the second is methodological and tries to show the complementary efficiency of various semiotic methods: reductionism, on the one hand and interactionism, on the other. The signs taken into consideration for this analysis are pictograms of men and women commonly used to indicate human actions and to identify public spaces characterised by gender distinction. The study begins by exploring an international collection of these male and female signs and by analyzing the constants and variables belonging to the system that they constitute. The study continues with a cognitive semiotic approach exploring the processes of information maximisation and ambiguity minimisation. Subsequently, a poietic semiotic approach attempts to extract a model of the influences of the various sign systems that are active during the information design process (cooperation and inter-semiotic competition). A pragmatic semiotic approach allows us to place the signs in their environments according to the actions that take place there. It focuses in particular on analysing signs referring to children and disabled people. The study is completed by a social and semiotic critique intended to show the contribution of these signs to the social and cultural construction of male and female identities and social roles. Initial issues This study about pictograms representing human beings has initially been inspired by the book by Alain Etchegoyen: Eloge de la Féminité (Praise of the Femininity) and notably by this sentence: '[…] everything that is common is of species; everything that is different is of sex.' (Etchegoyen, 1997, p. 119) Of all differences, that of sexual morphology constitute the maximum differences between human beings, but because of the social rules that govern the exhibition and dissimulation of the various parts of the body, rules that are integrated under the different forms of decency and modesty, it is precisely these attributes that cannot be publicly exhibited and seen. The main issue of this article can be formulated as follows: how can sex, a sign that cannot be shown, manage to make itself seen? We will try to answer this question by discussing, both in a successive and complementary manner, the organization of existing signs, then we will study the signs in their cognitive, creative, pragmatic and social operating modes. Figure 1 1 Version française augmentée in : Darras, B. (2008). Sémiotiques des signes visuels et du design de l'information. In Bernard Darras (Dir.) , Images et sémiotique 2. Paris, Publications de la Sorbonne.

View PDFchevron_right
With, On and Against Street Signs. on Art Made out of Street Signs.pdf
María Isabel Carrasco Castro

Street Art & Urban Creativity, 2018

In The Practice of Everyday Life (1980), Michel de Certeau suggests the idea of a city in which there are, on one side, strategies of information, surveillance, control and infrastructure design laid out by the system and, on the other one, tactics defining the how-to-do of the users with regards to that system, that is, the operations by which they adapt them to align their own interests and needs. The texts allows us to examine the interventions of urban artists as a tactic characterized, as defined by De Certeau, as the harnessing of the system's resources (making do). This is more specifically translated into adaptability, development on a space they do not own, identification and utilization of the occasion (time) and the inventiveness of diverting time and resources (shortcut and la perruque). In this work, we will take traffic signs of restriction and prohibition as one of the urban components that highlight the normativization of public spaces through the direct message of "NO" (not doing). Many artists have, in previous years, developed an interest in the artistic and symbolic possibilities of these signs and have developed works (tactics) as their response to them. Dan Witz (Chicago, 1957), Clet (Bretagne, 1966), Brad Dowey (Louisville, 1980) or DosJotas (Madrid, 1982) are good examples of this. Key words: De Certeau, strategies, tactics, street signs, Dan Witz, Clet, Brad Dowley, DosJotas

View PDFchevron_right
Text and image in traffic signs
Magdalena Bartlomiejczyk

Linguistica Silesiana, 2013

View PDFchevron_right
Signs in cities: the discursive production and commodification of urban spaces
Uta Papen

The analysis of signs in cities is known as research into ‘linguistic landscapes’. Following Jaworski and Thurlow (2010), this paper focuses on ‘semiotic’ not linguistic landscapes. I argue that visual images and visual aspects of writing such as font or colour are essential for the meanings conveyed on signs. As an example, I examine the semiotic landscape of parts of Prenzlauer Berg, a neighbourhood of the former East Berlin. Neglected in the 1980s, after reunification, this originally working class area became middle-class and trendy, popular for its shops, cafes and arts culture. Using multimodal and ethnographic methods, my paper reveals the important role commercial signs and street art play in the discursive re-construction of this gentrified neighbourhood. Both contribute to the area’s commercialization and aestheticization. My paper also illustrates how semiotic landscapes contribute to place-making and the commodification of urban spaces. The combination of multimodal analysis with interviews with sign authors allowed for insights into the reasons specific semiotic choices were made, adding to our understanding of discourse production by revealing intended meanings which were not identifiable based on text analysis alone.

View PDFchevron_right
Images Making Sign. Ways and Practices of Diagrammatic Representation in the Informational Images • Carte semiotiche 2014 Call for Papers
Valentina Manchia

Carte semiotiche, 2014

Pictures at the microscope, flow charts, technical illustrations, maps, diagrams. All these visual objects are more and more present in both the media scene and the everyday life, due to the need to master, from a cognitive and visual point of view, the complexity of the contemporary world, overwhelmed by data and information. Different visual objects that find a common point in their being “informational images” – as Elkins defined them –, images that convey information and represent concepts and relations. Contributions can develop the topic of diagrammatic representation with respect to different visual objects (scientific and artistic images, data and information visualizations, digital images) and different approaches (semiotics of arts, culture, and scientific text; anthropology and image theory; art history and art theory; history and sociology of science; communication and information design; media studies). The aim is to foster the dialogue among different disciplines and analytical perspectives on the modes of signification of such visual objects. Papers in English, French, and Italian. Length: max. 40.000 characters (8000 words) Deadline for contribution: 20 June 2014 End of reviewing process: 30 July 2014 Expected date of release: October 2014 The Editorial Board invites you to send an abstract with a proposal of contribution of 2000 characters (400 words) in English, French, Italian (please a short bibliography attached) by 10 January 2014 to the following addresses: - valentina.manchia@gmail.com (Valentina Manchia, issue editor) - cartesemiotiche@gmail.com

View PDFchevron_right
Where Codes Meet: On the Literary Uses of Iconic Signs
Grzegorz Grochowski

Teksty Drugie, 2015

View PDFchevron_right
The language of visual theatre: sign and context in Josef Svoboda, Meredith Monk, and Robert Wilson
Dean Wilcox

1994

This work is about ways of seeing. More precisely, it is about different ways of perceiving the world through the medium of theatre. Seeing theatre is the distinction between participating in the world as an object in space, and perceiving something at a distance. I have chosen as the focal point of this discussion three stage artists whose work is essentially nonverbal. The Czech scene designer Josef Svoboda, most noted for his work with light and multimedia; Meredith Monk, a choreographer, composer, filmmaker, and stage director who transcends the boundaries of these individual categories; and Robert Wilson, the postmodern director extraordinaire. What the work of each of these three have in common is the creation of a complex theatrical language of visual expression. The nucleus of this analysis is the crucial distinction between the way in which the field of vision is structured and how it relates to the operation of spoken and written language. This work is not devoted to compiling exhaustive biographical information, nor a comprehensive overview of the careers of Svoboda, Monk and Wilson. Rather, it is set up to focus on specific examples drawn from their practical work to illuminate certain techniques that characterize a visual stage language. While the use of the term "sign" in the title implies a semiotic basis, this analysis owes as much to phenomenology, deconstruction, cognitive psychology, and the exploration of memory as it does to theatre history, film theory, architecture and art criticism. In short, this investigation draws on observations and conclusions from a broad spectrum of disciplines to lay the groundwork for a discussion of visual perception. In presenting this dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctoral degree at the University of Washington, I agree that the Library shall make its copies freely available for inspection. I further agree that extensive copying of this dissertation is allowable only for scholarly purposes, consistent with "fair use" as prescribed in the U.S. Copyright Law. Requests for copying or reproduction of this dissertation may be referred to University Microfilms, 1490 Eisenhower Place, P.O. Box 975, Ann Arbor, MI 48106, to whom the author has granted "the right to reproduce and sell (a) copies of the manuscript in microform and/or (b) printed copies of the manuscript made from microform." Chapter One: An Approach to Visual Semiotics: It is at this intersection of concepts and percepts that the temporality of our dynamic world is located. Spoken and written languages 1 extend over time, as does vision, but have the ability to fix our shifting reality. As the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty has pointed out, "We never cease living in the world of perception, but we go beyond it in critical thought -almost to the point of forgetting the contribution of perception to our idea of truth." 2 There is a tension that exists between these two worlds. Verbal language is a classification tool, used to segment and categorize the waves of perception that bombard us in our daily lives. We apply names to things and classify them under specific linguistic headings. Table, chair, dog, cat, springtime, joy... denote certain fixed categories, or concepts, that help order our seemingly disordered environment. They are labels used to qualify an ever changing world of perception. A rock may look like a fairly stable entity, but does it look the same in moonlight as it does at noon? These verbal tags merely classify like objects, and must be transcended to capture the uniqueness of perception. While it may be possible to describe the appearance of the object under different circumstances, no amount of verbal information will replace simply looking at it. Verbal language is predicated on the fact that it is composed of units of meaning that are discrete in their usage. If each of the words that I have put 1 While there are certain differences in their usage, one being sound oriented, the other sight oriented, both are governed by a similar set of rules. For the purpose of this visually oriented discussion I will hereafter refer to both systems under the general term "verbal language."

View PDFchevron_right
Redundancies of traffic signs: an exploratory study
Michał Dudek

Semiotica 2022, no. 247: 283-317. ISSN 1613-3692

"Against the background of studies on redundancy in law that completely omit the visual element in law and of studies on traffic signs that are laconic about their redundancies, the present study proposes more focused investigation into the redundancies of traffic signs. After presentation of the broader context of existing studies on traffic signs and on redundancy in law, and following a discussion of the direct inspiration for embarking upon research into this topic, the article moves to present and discuss six proposed types of redundancies of signs. Utilizing Franciszek Studnicki’s distinction between sign-types and sign-realizations, and given that traffic signs exist in various complicated relationships with each other, with written formulations in legal texts, and with the environments in which they are placed, the study comments on six types of redundancy: (1) sign-type–basic task(s) of road traffic law; (2) of sign-type’s elements; (3) sign-type–sign-type; (4) sign-type–legal text; (5) sign-realization–sign-realization; and (6) sign-realization–environment. Analysis of each type is supported through examples, various subdivisions, and additional lines of inquiry. The study has value for both strictly theoretical and more practical enterprises related both to traffic signs themselves and to the wider realm of visualization of norms."

View PDFchevron_right
The affordances and constraints of situation and genre
Jens E. Kjeldsen

International Review of Pragmatics, 2018

Visuals are generally considered to be rich in information, but also to be open to many different interpretations. As a consequence, many argumentation scholars doubt that visuals can constitute argumentation (e.g. Fleming, 1996; Johnson, 2003, 2010; Patterson, 2010). In this paper, we argue that the rhetorical and argumentative potential of visuals and multimodal texts is strengthened if they belong to recognizable genres, genres being governed by discourse-internal factors as well as situational/pragmatic understanding. The genre of traffic signs can draw on specific genre conventions thanks to these signs' highly coded nature. As a consequence, traffic signs constitute an exemplary category to make the point that visuals and multimodal texts can function rhetorically or even argumentatively. We support our claim by first analysing a number of unusual instances of the genre and then discussing a few visual and multimodal signs whose argumentative potential no longer depends on specific traffic-related circumstances but crucially depends on the pretence that they are traffic signs. * We are indebted to the guest editors of this special issue, Assimakis Tseronis and Chiara Pollaroli, as well as to two anonymous reviewers, for their comments on earlier versions of this paper and for alerting us to pertinent sources. visual and multimodal rhetoric in unusual traffic signs

View PDFchevron_right
Electronic Traffic Signs: Reflecting Upon Its Transition
Antonio Lucas

Libro de Actas CIT2016. XII Congreso de Ingeniería del Transporte, 2016

In our days we face a fundamental issue concerning road signs. We may display contents in vertical and horizontal format (static signs, variable message signs, road markings), either on a post, a gantry or a dashboard. And we foresee a coming age where the excellent matrix resolution of painted signs will be truly approached by the resolution of full matrix displays. But we also risk a babel context threatening the universal approach encouraged by international catalogues as the 1968 Convention (ECE/TRANS/196, 2007). And the fundamental risk comes from our decisions regarding how the transition from the contents and formats displayed on static message signs to the ones displayed on electronic signs (in gantries or dashboards) should be. Our work explores this issue specifically, considering the transition from Advance Direction Signs (static message signs, class G, 1 in the 1968 Convention) to what could be termed Advance Location Signs (signs concerning the location of variable eve...

View PDFchevron_right

References (35)

  1. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, Paris: Gallimard, 1945.
  2. Jonathan Cole, Shaun Gallagher and David McNeill, "Gesture Following Dif- ferentiation: A Phenomenologically Informed Experimental Study", Phenomeno- logy and the Cognitive Sciences, vol. 1, no. 1 (2002), pp. 49-67.
  3. Dedre Gentner and Phillip Wolff, "Metaphor and Knowledge Change", in Eric Dietrich and Arthur Markman Lawrence (eds.), Cognitive Dynamics: Conceptual Change in Humans and Machines, Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Associates, 2000.
  4. Bipin Indurkhya, Metaphor and Cognition: An Interactionist Approach, Sprin- ger Science & Business Media, 2013.
  5. 9 Stephanie Geise and Christian Baden, "Putting the Image Back into the Frame: Modeling the Linkage between Visual Communication and Frame-Processing Theory", Communication Theory, vol. 25, no. 1 (2015), pp. 46-69.
  6. Stuart Hall, "Encoding/decoding", in Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (ed.), Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972- 1979, London: Routledge, 1980, pp. 128-138.
  7. Hall, op. cit.
  8. Maria Elizabeth Grabe and Erik P. Bucy, "Image Bite Analysis of Political Visuals: Understanding the Visual Framing Process in Election News", in Erik P. Bucy & R. Lance Holbert (eds.), Sourcebook for Political Communication Re- search: Methods, Measures, and Analytical Techniques, New York: Routledge, 2011, pp. 209-237.
  9. Laurence Williams, Phil Macnaghten, Richard Davies, and Sarah Curtis, "Framing 'Fracking': Exploring Public Perceptions of Hydraulic Fracturing in the United Kingdom", Public Understanding of Science, vol. 26, no. 1 (2017), pp. 89-104.
  10. Richard Buttny and Andrea M. Feldpausch-Parker, "Communicating Hydro- fracking", Environmental Communication, vol. 10, no. 3 (2016), pp. 289-291.
  11. Delia Dumitrescu and Erik P. Bucy, "How Images of War Victims Affect Pub- lic Opinion and Political Participation", paper presented to the Midwest Political Science Association, Political Psychology Division, Chicago, IL, April 2017.
  12. Doris A. Graber, "Say It with Pictures", The ANNALS of the American Acad- emy of Political and Social Science, vol. 546, no. 1 (1996), pp. 85-96.
  13. Laura M. Arpan, Kaysee Baker, Youngwon Lee, Taejin Jung, Lori Lorusso, and Jason Smith, "News Coverage of Social Protests and the Effects of Photographs and Prior Attitudes", Mass Communication and Society, vol. 9, no. 1 (2006), pp. 1-20. Right: Ideological Narratives and Moral Foundations", Psychological Inquiry, vol. 20, nos. 2-3, (2009), pp. 110-119.
  14. Nancy Eisenberg, Natalie D. Eggum, and Laura Di Giunta, "Empathy-Related Responding: Associations With Prosocial Behavior, Aggression, and Intergroup Relations", Social Issues and Policy Review, vol. 4, no. 1 (2010), pp. 143-180.
  15. Mark H. Davis, "Empathy and Prosocial Behavior", in David A. Schroeder and William G. Graziano (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Prosocial Behavior, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 282-306.
  16. C. Daniel Batson, "Empathy and Altruism", in Kirk Warren Brown and Mark R. Leary (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Hypo-egoic Phenomena, New York: Oxford University Press, 2016, pp. 161-174.
  17. Davis, op. cit.
  18. Stefan Stürmer and Mark Snyder, "Helping 'Us' versus 'Them'. ", in Stefan Stürmer and Mark Snyder (eds.), The Psychology of Prosocial Behavior: Group Processes, Intergroup Relations, and Helping, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 33-58.
  19. Cigdem V. Sirin, Nicholas A. Valentino, and José D. Villalobos (2016), "Group Empathy in Response to Nonverbal Racial/Ethnic Cues: A National Experiment on Immigration Policy Attitudes", American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 60, no. 14, pp. 1676-1697.
  20. Aarti Iyer and Colin Wayne Leach, "Helping Disadvantaged Out-Groups Chal- lenge Unjust Inequality", in Stürmer and Snyder (eds.), The Psychology of Pro- social Behavior, pp. 337-354.
  21. Jonathan Haidt, "The Moral Emotions", in Richard J. Davidson, Klaus R. Sher- er, and H. Hill Goldsmith (eds.), Handbook of Affective Sciences, New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 852-870.
  22. Jesse Graham, Jonathan Haidt, and Brian A. Nosek, "Liberals and Conserv- atives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations", Journal of Personality and 4 M. Merleau-Ponty, "Phenomenology and the Sciences of Man" [1961], in J. M. Edie (ed.) The Primacy of Perception, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964, pp. 55 and 57.
  23. Merleau-Ponty supposed there were many different kinds of consciousness when he wrote "there are several ways for the body to be a body, several ways for con- sciousness to be consciousness". (M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Percep- tion, Taylor & Francis e-Library, [1945] 2005, p. 109.)
  24. M. Merleau-Ponty, "The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Conse- quences" [1947], in J. M. Edie (ed.) The Primacy of Perception, pp. 14, 15 and 14.
  25. M. Merleau-Ponty, "The Primacy of Perception and Its Philosophical Conse- quences", p. 21.
  26. M. Merleau-Ponty, "An Unpublished Text by Maurice Merleau-Ponty: A Pro- spectus of His Work" [1962], in J. M. Edie (ed.): The Primacy of Perception, p. 7.
  27. D. Brang and V. S. Ramachandran, "Survival of the Synesthesia Gene: Why Do People Hear Colors and Taste Words?", PLoS Biology, vol. 9, no. 11 (2011), p. 5.
  28. Brang and Ramachandran, "Survival of the Synesthesia Gene", p. 3. -Neural hyper-connectivity normally decreases during infancy and childhood thanks to a specific gene. Cross-activation between adjacent functional areas is probably the consequence of gene mutation. For details see V. S. Ramachandran and D. Brang, "From Molecules to Metaphor: Outlooks on Synesthesia Research", in J. Simner and E. Hubbard (eds.), Handbook of Synesthesia, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 1005. the conversational implicature in question -independenly of the "ori- gin" of that content. 12 Consider the case of "serial implicatures"! We can put some conversational implicatures in sequences: that the hearer is expected to infer x from what is said, while the hearer can also reasonably in- fer a further conversational implicature y from x. This means a con- versational implicature can serve as a vehicle to another conversa- tional implicature. But there is no expectation that the vehicle im- plicature x be compositionally obtained! (For example: the speaker says that It's almost 7. She conversationally implicates: "we'd better leave to catch our 8 o' clock film at the movie theater". This in turn implicates: "if you don't make a decision fast as to what you'll wear, we'll be late for the movie". This in turn implicates: "stop staring at your closet's contents and put something on already". Or: "we'd bet- ter call a cab soon so it's here in time to get us to the movie theater".) In sum: conventionally encoded meaning need not serve as a departure point for conversational implicatures -and this holds for language and pictures alike. 13
  29. Marcello Frixione and Antonio Lombardi also embrace this strategy, see "Street Signs and Ikea Instruction Sheets: Pragmatics and Pictorial Communication", Re- view of Philosophy and Psychology, vol. 6, no. 1 (2015), pp. 133-149.
  30. I am deeply grateful to Zsófia Zvolenszky for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of the present paper. This research has been supported by Grant No. K- 116191 "Meaning, Communication; Literal, Figurative: Contemporary Issues in Philosophy of Language" received from the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund -National Research, Development and Innovation Office (OTKA-NKFIH). Notes on Contributors BÁRÁNY, Tibor, is Assistant Professor at the Department of Soci- ology and Communication, Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He earned his MA in Philosophy (2004) and his PhD (2012) at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. A former assistant research fellow in the MTA-ELTE Philosophy of Language Research Group (2008-2011), a postdoctoral researcher at Central European University ("What it is to be human" project, 2012-2014). His current research interests include theories of linguistic intensionality; speech acts; metaphor, irony; semantic and pragmatic theories of visual communication; ontology of artworks; aesthetic value. E-mail: barany.tibor@gmail.com.
  31. BENCZES, Réka, is Associate Professor at the Institute of Behav- ioural Sciences and Communication Theory, Corvinus University of Budapest, and an Affiliate at the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University (Melbourne). Her main research interests include word-formation and lexical creativity; the language of ageing; the social context of metaphorical motivation; and framing in political communication. Her most recent mono- graph, Rhyme over Reason: Phonological Motivation in English, ap- peared in 2019 with Cambridge University Press. E-mail: reka.benczes @uni-corvinus.hu.
  32. BENEDEK, András, born 1950, is Professor of Education at the De- partment of Technical Education, Budapest University of Technol- ogy and Economics, and DSc of the Hungarian Academy of Sci- ences. From 1976 to 1979 he studied systems analysis and acquired a PhD at the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences on a scholarship in Moscow. His research activities recently focus on Visual Learning and Open Content Development (OCD), introducing new conceptual elements within the framework of a pedagogical-methodological proj- ect at Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In the spirit of the Vocation GREXA, Izabella, born 1980, is assistant at the Section of Philos- ophy and Historical Sciences (Section II) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. She has a MA degree in history (2006) and a cultural organizer BA (2004). Her research concentrates on the opportunities and limits of the life of women during the Kádár regime in Hungary, expecially the marginal (worker)women's social status and the repre- sentation of women poverty. E-mail: grexaiza@gmail.com.
  33. KIMBLE, James J. (PhD, University of Maryland) is Professor of Communication & the Arts at Seton Hall University. He researches domestic propaganda, war rhetoric, and visual imagery. He is known for his investigation into the identity of the "We Can Do It!" model (now commonly known as Rosie the Riveter). This research has been noted by National Public Radio, People magazine, and the television show Mysteries at the Museum -and has reached audiences in nearly twenty countries. Professor Kimble has served as a Fulbright Scholar in Croatia, and has been a Senior Fellow at the Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies. He has been recognized by the National Communication Association with the Gerald R. Miller award and the Karl R. Wallace award for outstanding scholarship in rhetoric and public discourse. In 2010, Seton Hall honoured him with the President's Award for Service to Students. Kimble is the author of Mobilizing the Home Front: War Bonds and Domestic Propaganda (2006) and Prairie Forge: The Extraordinary Story of the Nebraska Scrap Metal Drive of World War II (2014), as well as the writer and co-producer of the feature documentary Scrappers: How the Heart- land Won World War II. His most recent book, co-edited with Trischa Goodnow, is called The 10¢ War: Comic Books, Propagan- da, and World War II (2016). He is presently Book Review Editor for the academic journal Presidential Studies Quarterly. E-mail: James.Kimble@shu.edu.
  34. KONDOR, Zsuzsanna, is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy, Research Centre for the Humanities of the HAS. Main fields of research: philosophy of communication and images, philos- ophy of mind, and theories of consciousness. Her publications in- nition and Culture: The Role of Metaphor and Metonymy (Eötvös Uni- versity Press, 2012) with Sonja Kleinke, Zoltán Kövecses and Andreas Musolff. E-mail: jszveronika@gmail.com.
  35. WEN, Xu, doctor and professor in linguistics, dean of College of In- ternational Studies, Southwest University, Chongqing, China; editor of Cognitive Linguistic Studies (John Benjamins), major research interest includes cognitive linguistics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis. E- mail: xuwen@swu.edu.cn.

Related papers

“The affordances and constraints of situation and genre: visual and multimodal rhetoric in unusual traffic signs.”
Charles Forceville, Jens E. Kjeldsen

International Review of Pragmatics, 2018

Visuals are generally considered to be rich in information, but also to be open to many different interpretations. As a consequence, many argumentation scholars doubt that visuals can constitute argumentation (e.g. Fleming, 1996; Johnson, 2003, 2010; Patterson, 2010). In this paper, we argue that the rhetorical and argumentative potential of visuals and multimodal texts is strengthened if they belong to recognizable genres, genres being governed by discourse-internal factors as well as situational/pragmatic understanding. The genre of traffic signs can draw on specific genre conventions thanks to these signs’ highly coded nature. As a consequence, traffic signs constitute an exemplary category to make the point that visuals and multimodal texts can function rhetorically or even argumentatively. We support our claim by first analysing a number of unusual instances of the genre and then discussing a few visual and multimodal signs whose argumentative potential no longer depends on specific traffic-related circumstances but crucially depends on the pretence that they are traffic signs.

View PDFchevron_right
Why are Words not Enough? Or a Few Remarks on Traffic Signs
Michał Dudek

Michał Araszkiewicz, Paweł Banaś, Tomasz Gizbert-Studnicki, Krzysztof Płeszka (eds.), Problems of Normativity, Rules and Rule-Following, Springer, Cham 2015: 363-372. ISBN (Print) 978-3-319-09374-1; ISBN (Online) 978-3-319-09375-8

"In this study two general theses are presented. In the first thesis—about integral character of traffic signs—it is proposed to stop treating traffic signs as only a subsidiary (illustrative) instruments—an alternatives to written linguistic utterances. It is shown that the construction of legal regulations of road traffic justifies the thesis that traffic signs are in fact an integral part of certain provisions and encoded norms, and not just a way of communicating them. This integral character and the fact that traffic signs as a means of visual-nonlinguistic communication have specific features which are extremely difficult to verbalize in an accurate, intelligible, and concise manner (e.g., angles, pictograms, or ideograms) or are even impossible to verbalize (colors) leads to second thesis—about inadequacy of concept of legal norm as a linguistic utterance in context of traffic signs. Concepts of interpretation of law which adopt a vision that legal norm (reconstructed from legal provisions—linguistic utterances of specific properties included in texts of legal acts) is an object of purely linguistic nature are inadequate, when one considers, for example, some of the provisions of Road Traffic Law, which refer to traffic signs. Their example clearly shows that in contemporary legal orders one can find legal norms, which cannot be accurately and intelligibly presented only with words. Thus, if the result of the interpretation of certain legal provisions must be made not only with words but also with broadly understood graphics, the cited concepts of interpretation of law cannot be actually realized in all of the instances. This makes them inadequate from the perspective of whole legal order."

View PDFchevron_right
The rules of the road, a universal visual semiotics
Anne Wagner

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique, 2006

The rules of the road form part an international willingness to simplify the understanding of road regulations worldwide. There is still an attempt to harmonise all regulations, but some countries are reluctant to do so as they fear a loss of their domestic sovereignty. Indeed, with the increase in car use for private or professional reasons, accidents have become one the central issue in international politics; and one way to curb accidents is said to have a universal visual road semiotics. However as this cultural discernment of road signs in civil society (i.e. visual encoding) has become popular, many other forms of use have derived from it for other purposes than road regulations.

View PDFchevron_right
Street Discourse: A Visual Essay on Urban Signification
Luc Pauwels

Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research, 2009

The contemporary metropolis is the site where vast numbers of people live their lives in a forced or chosen context of collectivity, but one that allows for individuality and even loneliness (often stronger felt in a crowd). To many the metropolis is a site of limitless opportunity, of continual change and growth, a utopian place, a site of constant renewal. However in actual fact in often turns into a dystopia, a boulevard of broken dreams. For there is no place where everyone's desires can be met and there is no agreed upon state of completion of the utopian project. Cities constitute a constant "work in progress" of different actors with competing agenda's. Cities are the dynamic result of prior necessities and choices and present day re-articulations and revisions of those. Thus cities invariably testify of past dreams and options taken which amalgamate with present projects that reconstitute and reclaim a territory partially occupied by former social, cultural economic, political and religious forces. Some artifacts of the past are simply torn down and replaced but many remain and are re-imbued or re-infused with new meanings, or at the least reframed as a materialized memory of past events and ways of living.

View PDFchevron_right
Neil Cohn's 'visual language' theory contradicted by experience of the iconic sign.
Simon Grennan

This paper discusses Neil Cohn’s application of the role of structures of cognitive language systems to types of visual representations other than writing. He writes that he has “introduced a new notion of ‘permeability” or a new conception of the influence of one modality upon another (2013). The term permeability also describes his general project––the theoretical application of a structure of lexicogrammar to experiences of images. Cohn explains the structures of lexicogrammar relative to the structures of writing and attempts to utilise this theorisation to analyse other types of visual representation. It is important to bear in mind that Cohn’s underlying theorization is not a theory of the comic strip register, but an encompassing claim about the similarity of the structures that are realized in writing and visual representation, including drawing. Cohn doesn’t analyse the structural relationship between cognitive lexicogrammar and the visual arrays of writing. However, an explanation of this relationship forms the basis for his theorisation of both constitutive items and proximity in his visual system. Arguing for the realisation of the structure of a modality-independent cognitive system (in this case, a language system) in the structure of graphiotactic arrays of drawn and written sequences is the point of his project. On this basis, Cohn glosses the structural problems that depiction poses for the application of this model, including both the syntactic functions of resemblance and style, or their lack of syntactic significance, within the system of realisation. He only defines an image according to its referential function within his system, according to the root explanation of the significance of topological proximity relationships in the realisation of lexicogrammar. According to this theorisation, the icon realises part of a word, a word or a sentence, because it appears in a relative proximity relationship that is similar to the proximity relationship in a lexicogrammar. This paper will argue that the structure of depiction constitutes a type of iconic image that resists both the realisation of a system of lexicogrammar by visual topology and hence requires another systematic explanation of ways in which it achieves semiosis, by referring to its objects through resemblance. Taking this approach, the status and systematic function of the panel in the comic strip register converges with the problem that “seeing-in” generates for Cohn’s theory (Wollheim 1980, Thomas 1999): in “seeing-in,” we look at the object of the depiction and at the depiction at the same time. This phenomenon is incompatible with the system of proximal correspondences that is the basis for theorising ‘visual language.’ The paper will seek to explain why this type of system does not structure depictions and the relationships between them. On the basis of this explanation, changes in the relative location of depictions in a sequence that contradict the system are completely without systematic significance, because they cannot constitute errors in a system of correspondences to which they do not belong.

View PDFchevron_right

Related topics

  • Visual Rhetoric
  • Speech Act Theory
  • Visual Communication Design Expe...
  • Visual Argumentation
    • 580 California St., Suite 400
    San Francisco, CA, 94104
    © 2025 Academia. All rights reserved