Depiction - Pictorial Semiotics

Pictorial Semiotics

Pictorial semiotics aims for just the kind of integration of depiction with notation undertaken by Goodman, but fails to identify his requirements for syntax and semantics. It seeks to apply the model of structural linguistics, to reveal core meanings and permutations for pictures of all kinds, but stalls in identifying constituent elements of reference, or as semioticians prefer, ‘signification’. Similarly, they accept resemblance although call it ‘iconicity’ (after Charles Sanders Peirce, 1931–58) and are uncomfortable in qualifying its role. Older practitioners, such as Roland Barthes (1964) and Umberto Eco (1970) variously shift analysis to underlying ‘connotations’ for an object depicted or concentrate on description of purported content at the expense of more medium-specific meaning. Essentially they establish a more general iconography.

A later adherent, Göran Sonesson (1989. 2001), rejects Goodman’s terms for syntax and semantics as alien to linguistics, no more than an ideal and turns instead to the findings of perceptual psychologists, such as J. M. Kennedy (1974 ), N. H. Freeman (1985; 1988) and David Marr (1977; 1978) in order to detect underlying structure. Sonesson accepts ‘seeing-in’ (2006) although prefers Edmund Husserl’s version (Husserl 1966; 1980). Resemblance is again grounded in optics or the visible, although this does not exclude writing nor reconcile resemblance with reference. Discussion tends to be restricted to the function of outlines in schemes for depth.