Towards a visual grammar: a peircean approach

Abstract

Western culture has for the most part been logocentric, in the sense that logos – concept, but also rational discourse – has played a central role in its development. With the emergence of a new paradigm in the XXth century – individualism, postmodernism, digital culture – this model has been challenged. Logocentric privilege is caving in such a culture, as an overwhelming flow of images is taking its place. How do all these images convey meaning? The purpose of this paper is to question the linguistic model applied to images, examining, through Peirce’s sign theory, if they are susceptible of signifying in and for themselves, and reflecting on the mechanisms through which that can be done. Reflecting an interwovenness of language and imaging that humans can hardly disentangle, this works suggests the classical rhetoric figures could lay down the framework for a visual semiotics, a theory of visual interpretation’s mechanisms that encompasses all its idiosyncrasies.