Verbal and Visual Communication

W.J.T. Mitchell, ”Pictures and Paragraphs: Nelson Goodman

and the Grammar of Difference” in Iconology:

Image, Text, Ideology

Characteristics of the verbal and the visual messages/signs

VERBAL• temporal• successive• linear• hierarchical• chronological• causal• fluid/mobile

• diachronic• digital (Mitchell 53)• symbolic (Mitchell 53)

VISUAL• spatial• simultaneous

• fixed/stable/solid

• synchronic• analogical (Mitchell 53)• iconic (Mitchell 53)

The implication of Goodman’s Languages of Art

• „language will provide the model for all the symbolic systems, including the pictorial” (Goodman qtd. in Mitchell 55)

• „[...] semiology is required [...] there is no meaning which is not designated, and the world of signifieds is none other than that of language.” (Barthes qtd. in Mitchell 56)

superiority of language/linguistic imperialism extreme conventionalism (Mitchell 65) the abolishment of the boundaries between sign types no difference between pictures and maps (Mitchell 65)

Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors (1533)

Hans Holbein, The Ambassadors (1533)

the undistorted skull

The problematic of the iconic sign

• The most difficult to assimilate into semiotics ↔ verbal sign

• C.S. Peirce’s definition: any sign that ”may represent its object mainly by its similarity” (Mitchell 56).

iconic signs are partially ruled by convention/refer to an established stylistic rule (Eco qtd. in Mitchell 57)

→ arbitrary connection between signifier and signified/unmotivated

yet they are at the same time motivated/propose a new rule (Eco qtd. in Mitchell 57)

→ motivation: natural connection between signifier and signified

Peirce’s sign system

ICON-SYMBOL-INDEXIcon: sign by physical resemblance or

analogyIndex: • sign by ‘causal’ or ‘existential’ connection• has a correlation in space and time with its

meaning• Has a direct influence by its object (e.g.

thermometer, sundial, clock, weathervane, smoke-fire)

Symbol: sign by convention, it’s arbitrary

Photographic sign

• Composites of iconic and indexical signs (Mitchell 59)

non-mediated vs mediated non-coded vs coded ~ cf. Barthes’s idea of the photographic image as

non-coded as opposed to a drawing that is coded even if it is denotational due to its manner of execution and its focus (43)

direct vs indirect perceptual vs conceptual empirical vs symbolic• Analogous to impressions (as mental signs) and

ideas (as in empirical epistemology) (60)

Moholy-Nagy, Untitled (c. 1927)

Image vs Text Goodman’s categorisation

IMAGE• ”Super dense”/”replete”

symbol ~ read like an ungraduated thermometer

• Syntactically and semantically dense and continuous

• → every mark is loaded with semantic potential

→ no mark can be isolated as a unique and distinct character

• Its meaning depends on its relations with all the other marks in a dense, continuous field (67)

TEXT• ”Disjunct” set of symbols

(gaps without significance) (68)

• Discontinuous ~ read like a graduated thermometer