|
Aproaches to word-image
relationships
The
relationships between words and images have been described from many points
of view. From a semiotic perspective, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic
approaches may be distinguished.
Syntax
From
a syntactic point of view, the combinations between words and images are
described as to their relation in time or space. Temporally, the word-image
syntax is either one of simultaneity or one of succession. Simultaneity
of words and images predominates in the print media, when words illustrate
a picture on one and the same page, but there is also simultaneity in
the film, when the pictures show the actors speaking. Succession can be
found in books, when the picture follows or precedes the verbal text to
which it refers on a different page. It was the typical word-image relationship
in the silent movies, where the words either preceded or followed the
pictures to which they were related. Succession is also a typical relationship
between literary texts and the visual arts. With years of distance, e.g.,
paintings succeed ancient works of literature, whose scenes they depict,
and in the literary genre of ekphrasis, where a poem describes an earlier
classical painting.
Two
main types of spatial relationship between word and image are contiguity
and inclusion. Verbal texts with pictorial illustrations or photos with
explanatory legends are examples of the contiguity type of spatial syntax.
The inclusion of words in pictures is mainly of four kinds:
(1) representation of words in pictures, as for example in a photo which includes
the picture of a page of writing,
(2) pictorialization of words, where words lose their character as verbal
signs and become elements of the picture,
(3) inscription, where the picture merely serves as a writing space, and
(4) indexical inscription, where the words are inscribed in the picture as
indices referring to depicted objects.
more
|
|
|