Abstract
A classical objection to pictorial communication is that pictures are intrinsically ambiguous and a picture, per se, can communicate an indeterminate number of different contents. The standard interpretation of this objection is that pictures are subordinate to language and that pictorial communication is parasitic on verbal communication. We argue that in many cases verbal communication presents a similar indeterminacy, which is resolved by resorting to pragmatic mechanisms. In this spirit, we propose a pragmatic approach which explains pictorial communication in terms of implicatures in a wide sense.
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Notes
We wish to thank Claudia Bianchi for reading and discussing an earlier version of this paper.
For some samples of the ample, (more or less) recent literature on these topics consider Abell and Bantinaki 2010; Albertazzi 2006; Anderson et al. 2002; Kulvicki 2006 and 2014, Tversky 2005 and the proceedings of the various editions of The International Conference on the Theory and Application of Diagrams (http://diagrams-conference.org/).
In most such cases, pictures are accompanied by words, or communication (partially) rests on some form of convention, which in turn has been achieved through language. However, cases of purely pictorial communication are conceivable. Consider for example the picture of a bike used to communicate “bicycles on sale here”. Or, as a somewhat more anomalous example, consider a silent film without intertitles. Here too we are dealing exclusively with images (albeit moving images). And such a film could surely be used to communicate some message (to tell a story, for example - although not every story, of course). (For an interesting approach to cinematographic communication in line with our proposal, see Donati 2006.)
Here we take it for granted that the picture of a bicycle represents a bicycle, and we do not consider the problem of explaining how this can happen, nor do we commit ourselves to a particular notion or theory of iconicity. In other words, here we do not take into account the problem of explaining iconic depiction, but we simply assume that pictures iconically represent certain objects or certain states of affairs.
Here a clarification is appropriate. It could be objected that (at least some of) the examples of pictorial communication described in this paper should not be considered implicatures in the strict sense, because they are more akin to other pragmatic phenomena, such as implicitures (Bach 1994; 2006) or explicatures (Carston 1988, 2004). In the last few decades the Gricean notion of implicature has been reconsidered by many researchers and various, more fine-grained, intermediate distinctions have been proposed, lying between explicit meaning and implicatures in the strict sense. According to Kent Bach, for example, an impliciture is a completion of what is explicitly said (e.g. when somebody says that Some cats are black to communicate that some but not all cats are black); Bach reserves the use of the term implicature only to those cases in which what is implicated is completely separate from what is said (e.g. when I say that I am very tired to communicate that I’d prefer not go out for dinner tonight). However, the situation is still controversial and, although various proposals have been made, a univocal and definitive view has not yet emerged (see e.g. Jaszczolt 2010; Davis 2010). Therefore, since this aspect is not essential for our current concerns, we prefer to stick with the original, rather general notion of implicature. In any case, even admitting that in some cases we may use pictures to communicate through Bach’s implicitures (rather than implicatures in the strict sense), this does not affect our main thesis, i.e. the pragmatic, “Gricean” (in a wide sense) nature of many aspects of pictorial communication.
Note that in the latter example an arrow also appears, i.e. a further conventional element that is very common in pictorial communication. We shall return to this in the following section.
Note that indeterminate does not mean unlimited. Of course, a given picture cannot be used to communicate everything. And if we use a picture of a bike, then presumably we have the intention of communicating something concerning bikes. Rather, indeterminate here means that there is an open set of possible messages that can be conveyed, which is not fixed a priori, and which depends on contextual factors.
The literal English translation of Attenzione alla testa should be Mind the head.
Of course, the English phrase Mind your head also poses similar problems of ambiguity, due to the context sensitivity of the possessive your: what does “your head” mean? The head that is part of yourself? The one that you possess because you bought (or found, or severed) it? And so on. Indeed, possessive constructions are examples of context dependent expressions (Bianchi 1999), and this makes different interpretations possible, in analogy to the examples mentioned in the text.
Or to conventional devices, such as, in the case of negation, crossed out pictures.
It should be noted that in Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein 1953), just before the already mentioned example of the boxer picture (§23), the activity of “[c]onstructing an object from a description (a drawing)” is counted among the examples of language games. Here Wittgenstein seems to equate drawings and (linguistic) descriptions; and language games (in the Wittgensteinian sense) seem to include pictorial communication, and not to specifically presuppose only forms of linguistic (i.e. verbal) communication.
This is a paradigmatic example of a conflict between two competing conversational maxims: a truthful depiction of the screws in terms of their reciprocal dimensions with the drawer would entail omitting important details, thus violating the maxim of quantity.
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Frixione, M., Lombardi, A. Street Signs and Ikea Instruction Sheets: Pragmatics and Pictorial Communication. Rev.Phil.Psych. 6, 133–149 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-014-0216-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13164-014-0216-1