Reading Images And Seeing Words Alan Englis Rosalind Silvester by Alan Englis, Rosalind Silvester 9789004486706, 9789042017719, 9042017716, 9004486704 instant download after payment.

Images are generally understood to bring us closer to objects in the real world than the
arbitrary signs of language, giving an instantaneous sense of the presence of an object, one which, momentarily at least, may be released from a specific meaning or interpretation. Conversely, words are seldom consciously apprehended as visual signs by the literate reader, who rather addresses his/her attention to the underlying meaning or concept for which they stand. In this respect reading images and seeing words is an oxymoron. However, in the aftermath of two or three decades of intensive interdisciplinary analysis of word/image relations, the oxymoronic dimension appears much less significant. For it
is now generally accepted that images and words, as meaningful signs, both involve an element of reading and seeing - though to different degrees. Verbal signs when written are always already visual (the signifier aspect) ; visual signs in tum are always already legible to the extent that as signs they have to be recognizable and interpretable in terms of a code of signification. No visual phenomenon of the world becomes significant until its sign-aspect is apprehended. As a result of this, a significant degree of tautology may be seen as being encompassed in the actions of reading and seeing.