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A new approach, based
on the typology of signs
I
would like to suggest a new approach to the study of word-image relationships
based on the Peircean trichotomy of the iconic, the indexical, and the
symbolic sign. For readers acquainted with the fundamentals of semiotics,
it is unnecessary to repeat that pictures are predominantly iconic and
words are predominantly symbolic signs. However, it is necessary to underline
that our topic is not the extratextual (referential) relationship between
verbal or pictorial signs on the one and their referential objects on
the other hand, but with the intratextual relation between words and pictures
in one multimedial message, i.e., with the way words relate to the pictures
in juxtaposition and pictures to words. My argument is that the trichotomy
of icon, index, and symbol also applies to the intratextual relationship
between words and images.
Intratextual iconicity
Iconic
signs are signs based on a similarity between the sign and its object.
There is intratextual iconicity between words and pictures when the verbal
text conveys the same message as the picture. The picture is hence an
icon of the text, and the text is an icon of the picture. In fact, a redundant
illustration of a text or a redundant verbal paraphrase of a picture are
the clearest examples of intratextual iconicity.
With
Peirce, we can furthermore distinguish between images, diagrams, and metaphors
in the intratextual word-image relationship: The homology between text
and picture is of the type of an image when both evoke the same mental
image without any other semiotic mediation. It is of the type of a diagram
when one of the two messages represents the other by means of merely structural
relationships, and the relationship is metaphorical when there is a semiotic
mediation via a third sign.
Intratextual indexicality
Indexical
sign relationships are important in the pragmatic dimension of word-image
relationships (see 2.3). There are five major kinds of intratextual indexicality,
by which words and images are typically related:
(1) ostension, a mere showing, as in the message "The new Mercedes!"
in the context of the picture showing what the words announce.
(2) deixis, a relationship of indicating or pointing at. There is ·verbal
deixis in messages of the type "This is the new Cadillac!" referring to a
picture of the new car model, ·symbolic deixis, when picture and text are
connected by means of other conventional indicators, such as lines or arrows,
and less frequently ·nonverbal-pictorial deixis, when the image depicts gestures
or other nonverbal indices pointing at a verbal message.
(3) indexicality by contiguity: the mere spatial contiguity (juxtaposition)
between word and picture serves as an index that connects the verbal with
the pictorial sign. The message is simply: this verbal text refers to that
picture (and not to any other picture on the same page). Traditionally, the
text appears below or above the picture to which it pertains (as in a caption
or legend), but in advertising any space in the vicinity of the picture is
being used.
(4) indexicality by pars-pro-toto relationship: the pictorial message
represents only a part of the message conveyed by the verbal message, or vice
versa. For instance, the verbal message advertises "New York", but the picture
only represents the Statue of Liberty. (5) exemplification: the picture gives
only an example of what the verbal message refers to (and frequently vice
versa). For instance, a supermarket advertises only one of its products without
mentioning any of the other products for sale. Exemplification is closely
related to ostension and to pars-pro-toto indexicality, and there are many
other overlaps between the various subclasses of indexicality.
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