Methods and Models in Pictorial Semiotics

Methods and Models in Pictorial Semiotics
By Gran Sonesson, Lund University, 1988
Report 3 from the Project Pictorial meanings in the society of information
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics
Methods and Models in Pictorial Semiotics

Introduction
In an earlier publication (Sonesson 1988 ), we suggested that at least three different approaches to their subject matter have been taken by would-be semioticians: first, the purely text analytical approach, well-known from linguistics, in which a number of occurrences, or "texts", are reduced to a system, i.e. to a set of elements together with the rules for arranging them into larger wholes; in the second place, the system analytical approach, familiar from philosophy, in which properties are varied together in imagination, to determine the limits of their compatibility; and then the experimental approach, traditional in psychology, where fictional "texts" are created, to try out in reality the limits of the system. In the following, we will be concerned mainly with examples of the text analytical approach; however, we will be interested in discovering the finer shades of methodological distinctiveness inside the above-mentioned family of methods; and, more in particular, we will probe into the differentia specifica of the text analytical approach, as applied to verbal language and to pictures. Now, since text analysis is geared to the reduction of many occurrences into a system, a model would seem to be needed, to guide the operations with the aid of which is accomplished the reduction. A model we will take to be an roughly analogical configuration, imported into a discipline from some other domain, where it is supposedly better certified; we may then go on to require different degrees of mapping between the model and that which is modeled. There may be models on different levels, to be sure. We have already had occasion to evaluate the relative merits and disadvantages of using the linguistic model in semiotics, arriving at the qualified conclusion, that, on the whole, the medical model would appear to furnish us with a more typical instance of the production of meaning, at least as it usually occurs in the visual mode.1 There, however, in comparing the linguistic model with its medical counterpart, we were concerned with establishing very general guiding-lines for semiotics; presently, on the other hand, we would like to pass on to a much lower level of abstraction, to discuss the contributions of a number of models to the elucidation of
1 See Sonesson 1988; I.1. We were concerned, in that instance, with the general organizational principles of meaning, pointing out that, in the case of the symptom, as this is understood in medicine, the expression is not radically heterogeneous to the content, but of the same kind; indeed, the first is a part of the second; the expression is probabilistically, rather than deterministically or conventionally, coupled to the content ; the more expressions that are produced for the same content, the more firmly the content is established; when all possible expressions for a particular content have been enlisted, the complete series of expressions is indistinguishable from the content ; so that the distinction between expression and content of the symptom can only be taken to be provisionally valid. All this is different in the case of the (linguistic) sign. Thus, we were interested mainly in the way the primary units of meaning are internally organized. Here, however, we would rather be concerned with organization at a somewhat higher level.
particular kinds of "texts", in our case to visual texts. The following discussion, then, will attend to the properties of second-order models. What more precisely is to be meant by the term "second-order model" will have to be clarified in the body of the text. In the sequel, we are going to follow a double movement. In the first section of this chapter, we will consider a number of models, which have so far come to be used in pictorial semiotics: the narrative model, the rhetorical model, itself distinguishable into a taxonomic and a systematic variant, and the Laokoon-model. For reasons that will appear later, these models will certainly be given a somewhat unequal attention in what follows, the largest part of our observations being inspired by the rhetorical model in its systematic variant. The second section, then, will pass on to more strictly methodological considerations, proposing a number of exemplary analyses, in order to spell out their possible import, and also with the intention of trying out a model which, in a sense to be clarified, is more intrinsically visual in origin.2 Simply put, then, we will first consider a set of models which have already been put to use inside contemporary visual semiotics; and in a second moment we will go on to employ a model which is new to that discipline, though it has had its precedents in a tradition stemming from perceptual psychology; while at the same time, we will begin to evaluate the stand-point of text analysis generally, as an approach to pictorial semiotics.
II.1. A review and appraisal of models in pictorial semiotics.

In the first chapter of this part, we are going to consider four models, which have been used so far in the analysis of pictures, as it has been practiced inside pictorial semiotics: the narrative model, the rhetorical model in its two variants, and the Laokon model. The narrative model has been of fundamental importance in most parts of semiotics, since the revival of the latter, and the inception of narratology, in the sixties, but in the domain of pictorial semiotics, for rather obvious reasons, it appears to have been of limited use. Thus, we shall have only a small number of observations to make on the narrative model here; and the same goes for the taxonomic variant of the rhetorical model, although the justification this time is of a different order. In fact, there have been many attempts to account for pictures, by simply listing the rhetorical figures, supposedly embodied in their "pictorial substance", at least since Barthes suggested such an approach, in that seminal text of pictorial semiotics, titled "La rhtorique de limage" (1964a) ; but by itself, such a simple listing operation is
2 For clarification, see II.2. below. However, the model to which we refer is obviously related to that of
the "autonomous meanings" of plastic language, as discussed in Sonesson 1988; II.3, etc. Thus, it also has something to do with the Gestalt model proposed by Arnheim and by Sander & Volkelt, as well as with the "figurative meanings" according to Piaget, as interpreted by Gardner.
hardly productive, and it raises more questions than it contributes to answer, in particular as concerns the nature of the equivalence between the traditional figures of verbal rhetoric and pictorial organization (Cf. II.1.2. below!). When it comes to the systematic variant of the rhetorical model, however, we shall have a lot more to say about the proposals which have been made, notably by the Belgian Groupe , basing its work on the Greimasian notion of isotopy. The latter fact is precisely what gives a more systematic ring to the analysis; but we shall have occasion to note a number of problems with this now very influential notion, not only as it applies to pictures, but generally, and we shall suggest that the concept of scheme, well-known from cognitive psychology and AI research, may be more adequate for the purpose the notion of isotopy has been made to serve (Cf.II.1.3.). The Laokoon model, finally, has a completely different background than the others, since it originates in the work bearing that title by the German 18th century writer and aesthetician, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, which has not only been rediscovered, but continued by modern semioticians, notably in the historically oriented books by Udo Bayer (1974 also cf. 1984) and DavidWellbery (1984), which each seems to ignore the contribution of the other, and also, more in passing, in the work of Gebauer, Hess-Lttich, Krauss, Todorov and Wendy Steiner (cf.II.1.4.).3 In this case, then, the model has not been inspired by another discipline, but is taken over from an earlier phase of semiotical aesthetics, which Lessings treatise, after the work of Baumgarten, Meier, and Mendelssohn, may be said to initiate (Cf. Wellbery 1984). The status of this model is rendered even more complex by the fact that it is hardly ever used in its historical purity: thus, to Bayer, Lessing is a precursor of Peirce, whereas Wellbery, with rather more caution, discovers some essential analogies between the analytical strata employed by Lessing and Hjelmslev. In addition to this difference in theoretical status, it should also by noted that, in contradistinction to the other models mentioned in this chapter, the Laokoon model has hardly been put to use in the text analytical approach, but must rather be said to derive from system analysis (cf. introduction). However, it will be convenient to save these issues for later discussion , once the model has been fully implemented (in II.1.4.). Other models might have been included here; for the present, we are simply suggesting a provisional classification of some models so far employed inside pictorial semiotics. For instance, there is a linguistic model, in a more specific sense than that which we indicated in the introduction above, and which might better be termed the binary structure model, as it consists in reducing any "text" to a hierarchically organized set of dichotomous patterns; however, much was said about that model in Sonesson 1988:I.3.2-5/II.3, and it will be one of our points of departure in the general methodological discussion which follows in II.2. A case could be made for taking account also of something which might be termed the enunciation model, and which
3 To us, the principal interest of the Laokoon model is due to the heuristic value deriving from the fact that, in essential ways, its basic presuppositions are completely opposed to those of the narrative model, in the strong interpretation of the latter. Cf. II.2.1/4. below.
concerns the pattern of gazes in the pictures, in particular as they relate to the gaze of the very author of the representation; however, this is a model in a rather less strict sense, and we will have occasion to discuss it, for what it is worth, in the part of the study which is concerned with analyses of paintings.
II.1.2. The narrative model.

The application of the narrative model to a "text" obviously implies that the latter is somehow organized in the manner of a story; and while this is easy enough to admit, in the case of some genres of verbal discourse, such as novels, short stories, myths, and folktales (but more controversial in the case of experimental reports, for which Bastide 1979 has nevertheless made a case ), and not very problematic either as far as some kinds of pictorial material , like films and comic strips, are concerned, the suggestion that the picture, in the most central, prototypical sense, i.e. the single, static picture, should contain a narrative level of construction, is difficult even to make sense of. In fact, before even beginning the quest for this sense, we have to distinguish at least five different categories of pictorial objects to which our interrogation about narrative organization would seem to apply with rather different results: a. The temporal series: The continuous series of moving pictures, as
in a cinematographic film, and, often, on television.
The temporal set: A series of static pictures united by a more or less common theme, as in comic strips and photo novels.
b.
c. d.
The multi-phasic picture: A single, static picture, containing persons and events which are known to represent various phases taken from the same event series, or action scheme (Cf. II.2.3.).
The implied temporality picture: A single, static picture, lacking multi-phasicality, but recognizable as picturing an event taken from a well-known or prototypical action scheme, in particular what Lessing would have called a pregnant moment of such an action scheme (Cf.II.4.below). The static picture: A single, static picture, for which every indication making it referable to a wider action scheme is conspicuously lacking.
e.
Now, clearly, it is in the case of the last of these categories that the narrative model would seem to apply vacuously, shedding no further light on the pictorial organization; whereas, in all other cases, narration, at least in a very general sense, appears to be relevant. To be sure, most contributions to semiotics of film and television (case a) has been concerned with the analysis of narrative structures (the entire tradition from Metz; and, in the case of television, large portions of Fiske & Hartley 1978 and Cebrin Herreros 1978 ); the same would seem to be true of the semiotics of photo novels (Cf. Sempere 1976) and of comic strips (case b; most of the work of FresnaultDeruelle 1977a,b; Gubern 1972; Hnig 1974. Also cf. more generally the notion of "syntax" in Barthes 1961: 18 ). As for our category c, the multi-phasic picture, nothing seems to have been written about it so far inside semiotics, notwithstanding the familiarity of this device from the art of the Middle Ages, from that of non-Western cultures, and from traditional picture lore generally; and when it comes
to our category d, that of implied temporality, it is only in the Laocoon discussion that there are any hints pertaining to the pregnant moment.4 But the application of narrative schemes to these cases would seem to be relatively straightforward and most probably will soon offer fertile ground for semiotic analysis. However, we will not be allowed to conclude so rapidly, that there can be no narration in the last of our cases, category d ; for, inside semiotics, to begin with, at least the Greimasian model presupposes that any signifying object whatsoever must correspond, on some level or other, to a narrative matrix; and further, in the very different domain of media ecology, Neil Postman (1979; 1983; 1985) explicitly affirms that the deluge of images, following upon our entrance into information society, is at the same time submerging us in a web of narrativity, to the detriment of such argumentative chains as are connected with verbal language and print. It is true that Postman is thinking primarily about a particular visual medium, television (cf. part I), but he does refer here to the general invasion of our mental environment by pictures; and in fact, on the face of it, not even television is predominantly narrative (Cf. notably Vilches 1983, in particular on the interview). As for Greimas, there is a deeper kind of paradox, for, as we shall see, the story is to him essentially an achronic structure. But we will undoubtedly be impeded from taking our question any further, before deciding also in what precise sense we are to take the central concept of narration. And in order to do so, we will be well advised to address ourselves to the science of narratology.5 There can be no doubt that narratology is, to date, the most developed part of semiotics, after linguistics. Initiated, at the time of Russian Formalism, by such scholars as Propp, Eikhenbaum, Shklovsky, Tomashevsky and Petrovsky, narratology had its second upsurge at the beginning of French Structuralism, in the work of Barthes, Bremond, Genette, Todorov and Greimas. Independently, it would seem, narrative schemes were later developed in sociolinguistics by Labov & Waletzky, and inside Artificial Intelligence research, by Rumelhart and others (Cf. II.1.3. below). Some of the models stemming from these two traditions united were tested in memory studies, made in collaboration between the semioticians van Dijk and the cognitive psychologist Kintsch. The work of Todorov, in particular, was proved relevant to the study of narrative competence as this is developed by children through different stages, thanks to the Piagetian style experiments realized by Leondar (1977). Thus, it becomes manifest that the models of narratology, derived from text analysis mainly, have been at least partially implemented in experimental research. It is, of course, impossible to summarize adequately the extensive findings of narratology here. For our purpose, some brief remarks will have to do. A minimal story
4 Implicitly, to be sure, Barthes 1964a is largely concerned with this very problem, since many of the
so-called "connotations" of this text are really temporal schemes (in the sense of II.1.3. below), as shown in Sonesson 1988, II.1., e.g. the homecoming-from-the-market and the preparation-of-the-meal. 5 In the following, in order not to overburden our bibliography, we will have to refer the reader interested in a listing of the classical works of narratology, e.g. those of Propp and other Russian Formalists, and those of Barthes, Todorov, Bremond, Greimas, and so on, to the more recent overviews by Adam 1984, Kintsch 1977, Prince 1982, Segre 1979, Sonesson 1973 and van Dijk 1980.
is the representation of at least one event (Cf. Adam 1984:12ff). Alternatively, we may want so say, with Prince (1982:1ff), that the story must represent at least two events, insisting on the need for a temporal link on the side of the signified, and not just on that of the signifier; but such a insistence clearly supposes that we should be able to demonstrate the discreteness of each event in the sequence (in some particular cases, which we shall mention below, this seems easy enough).6 Following Bremond (1973:99f), there must be a subject S, animated or not, which, upon being placed in the instant t , is then accompanied until the instant t+n , with the result that we are informed about what happened at the moment t+n to the predicates characterizing S at the moment t. Adam concludes from this that there must be a relation of anteriority to posteriority between the two events, normally read as a link of cause to effect; that the minimal story is really made up of an event, framed by two states, some predicates of which are opposed; and that there must be a recurrence of the same agent(s) from phase to phase in the narrative chain. According to Prince (1982:2ff, 145ff), the different phases of the story may not presuppose or logically imply each other; indeed, the surprise value of the events is important, so that a story becomes increasingly more narrative, as it contains more improbable happenings, more decisive ones, like birth and death, and transformations from opposite states, often dramatized as conflicts. These remarks are important, if we think that Adams examples (e.g. "Lenfant a pleur. Le papa la pris dans ses bras") are not very convincing as stories: the events are simply too trivial. Narrativity itself would then, on Princes view, be what we have elsewhere (Sonesson 1988, I.3.1.) termed a prototype concept. From here on, the narrative model may be expanded in two different directions. We may look at the different agglutinations around the narrative kernel, and oppose the narrative to other discourse types; or we may delve deeper into the narrative fabric itself. The first approach was taken, notably, by Labov & Waletzky, and by the AI researchers. Thus, according to the first couple of authors, the narrative kernel, made up of Complication and Resolution, is preceded by an Orientation and followed by a Moral, the whole being interspersed with Evaluations.. Similarly, Rumelhart (1975:211ff) suggests the story contains a Setting and an Episode, the latter being further analysed into an Event and a Reaction, where the second member again subdivides into Internal Response and Overt Response. According to the first model, in particular, the whole narrative becomes an act of discourse, equivalent to a sentence, which may be used to affirm, to argument, or to make some other point. Now, in van Dijks (1980) terms, the story is just one of a number of "macrostructures", each with its internal organization, like those of the argument, the description, the instruction, the conversation, and the piece of poetry, which are all, in principle, realizable also outside the confines of verbal discourse (Also cf.Adam 1984:10,51ff,84ff ). The other strand in narratology, mainly represented by the French Structuralists, would rather take us inside the narrative kernel. According to Bremond, each stage of the story may really be subdivided into three phases: a Virtuality, a
6 On the theories of "basic actions", see references and discussion in Ricur ed. 1980.
process which may then actually take place or not, and, in the first eventuality, has success or has not. More important for the later development of narrative theory, Bremond also suggested that there were only two basic kinds of processes: those of improvement, and those of deterioration. A more complete elaboration of this model is found in a relatively late contribution to narratology by Todorov (1978:63-77) : there, the canonical story is supposed to contain five elements: a state of equilibrium, the disruption of the equilibrium, the recognition of this state, an action to restore the equilibrium, and a new state of equilibrium. Some stories leave out the first two phases, beginning in the unbalanced state; others, i.e. tragedies, omit the last two phases, ending in a stage of disrupted equilibrium. There are not just temporal links between these components: the fifth is identical to the first; the third is the inversion of the first and the fifth; and the second and the forth are symmetrical to each other as well as being each others inversions. This is the model which Leondar (1977:179ff) tested experimentally with children. Only at about 4-5 years of age is the child able to tell a story containing all the canonical phases, except the third one: this, which is a mental event, will not appear before 8-9 years.7 The variant beginning from the state of disrupted equilibrium is mastered somewhat after the fuller version (p.186). Before four years, no coherent stories are found: the child rivets his attention to a single field of vision, letting personae appear and vanish, instead of following them through the events (p.187ff). Adding to Leondars observation, we may therefore note that these "stories" do not even answer to Bremonds minimal requirement that there should be a recurrence of the same agent(s) through the several phases of the account.8 In fact, Bremond and Todorov are building on some more general models, those of Lvi-Strauss and Greimas. Both these authors suggest that the story is essentially a relation between a particular content and its inversion. For Greimas (1970:185ff), who concerns us more particularly here, there is a content which is posited at the end of the story, the inversion of which is projected onto the beginning. Adding to two contrary terms their respective contradiction, we arrive at the wellknown "semiotic square", supposedly underlying all meanings (Cf. discussion in Sonesson 1988, I.4.1.). Thus, in the end, the story turns around a pair of static dichotomies, a double binary opposition. Now, it is not only at this deepest level of semiotic organization that all meaning is assumed to be organized as a narrative: at one remove, we get the elementary narrative statements, which tell us that a subject is conjoined to or disjoined from an object; or that, through the operation of another subject, the first subject is put into one of the above-mentioned states; then, at the even
7 This fact makes it rather doubtful that the third phase could be considered the inversion of the first and
the last: as a mental event, it pertains to a fundamentally different category, and may thus only be said to represent, or to signify the inversion of the other states. In reference to what has earlier been said about the difficulty of establishing the discreteness of events, it should be noted here that Todorovs scheme makes such an individuation quite straightforward. If, as is suggested by Leondars (1977:181ff) research, childrens stories always contain spatial disjunctions concurrent with the temporal ones, event individuation poses no problem there either. The latter fact also suggests interesting relationships to Greimass narrative "deep structures" (for which see the following paragraphs), of which Leondar seems quite unaware. 8 For other research on childrens narrative competence, cf. also Winner 1982:315ff.
higher level of the canonical story, there is the establishment of a contract and its sanction, which together frame the narrative development, consisting essentially in the three tests: the qualifying, the principal, and the glorifying ones. At all three levels, it would seem, narrativity has here been emptied of its temporal import, and so there should be no difficulty applying it also to purely static configurations, as our case e above. It is true that Ricur (1980:38ff) takes issue with Greimass theory on precisely this point, arguing that the story is irreducibly temporal, while observing that this was still admitted by Greimas 1966, at least in the case of the tests. As we shall see, the same remark may apply also to the "deeper" level, that is, to the double dichotomy. All narratologists, then would admit that stories contain elements the interrelations of which are logical, causal, symmetrical, and so on, in addition to being temporal; but only Greimas, Lvi-Strauss, and their followers would insist on these relations to the exclusion of the temporal ones; and only the Greimas school, it appears, would posit such an achronic structure as underlying every conceivable artifact endowed with meaning. The double question which we will have address concerns what happens to this parti-pris in the extant pictorial analyses executed by members of the Greimas school - and what may possibly be made of it. When it comes to the first part of our question, we must direct our attention to the work of Floch(1979;1981a,b;1982; 1984) and Thrlemann(1980;1981a,b;1982), the principal followers of Greimas working in the domain of pictorial semiotics. Part of these analyses concern "figurative" pictures, which may be said to tell a story in a relatively straightforward sense: a photograph showing a man and a dog by Doisneau (Floch 1982), another photograph picturing two men caught in the act by CartierBresson (Floch 1984; cf. our analyses in part III.2.), a news photograph employed in an advertisement (Floch 1981a), Mantegnas painting of Christs corpse (Thrlemann 1980), and the 16th century painting "Loth et ses filles" (Thrlemann 1981a). If we except the last picture, which, according to Thrlemanns (p.36) description, contains two different moments of the Loth story, and so is a case of multi-phasicality, all the other pictures may be considered cases of implied temporality, and thus can be analyzed with reference to narrative schemes, also in the more restricted sense given that term outside the Greimas school. There is little evidence of anything of the kind having been done in the above-mentioned studies (Cf. our critique of Flochs iconic analysis, as applied to the advertisement, in Sonesson 1988,II.3.4.).As for the "abstract" pictures, both Thrlemann (1982), in his analysis of Klee, and Floch (1981b), in his work on Kandinsky, reduce the "abstractness" of them into a kind of "quasifigurativity", and so some simple happenings may be discerned; however, there is no effort to discover the details of this narrative organization. On the other hand, some narrative analyses, in the peculiarly Greimasian sense of the term, are certainly sketched out. To begin with, all these analyses contain binary oppositions, often mounted in pairs on the "semiotic square", and so the pictures in question should be narrative on the deepest level. However, as mentioned above, when Greimas gave narrative status to a content and its inversion, he placed the affirmed content at the end of the story, and had its inversion projected to the beginning; and this
10
very formulation suggests, as Ricur observed in another case, that temporality is irreducible. It is not clear, to say the least, what, in the picture, is to correspond to the beginning and the end of the story. The dichotomy may well be present, but it seems abusive to give it narrative status.9 There is, however, an exception to this: in the case of the Loth picture, containing, according toThrlemann (1981a:36ff) two scenes from the Biblical narrative sequence, the destruction of Sodome and the incestuous act, there is really a temporal disjunction between at least the two poles of the first binary pair Destruction vs Conservation, whereas, as far as I understand, both the poles of the second opposition: Generation vs Decomposition, must be included in the same temporal moment, vaguely defined as being "after the destruction of Sodome". Now, it will be remembered that Prince required the story to have a temporal link, also on the content side, taking for granted that there would be such a link on the expression side. In the present case, however, it is, on the face of it, on the expression side, that this link is lacking. But the same thing is true, excepting the blanks, about what was above termed the temporal set. It would be rash to conclude that there can be no story here. Before adding any further remarks, we need to review the Laocoon debate, in the light of contemporary semiotics and perceptual psychology (Cf.II.1.4.). The most complete application of the Greimasian narrative model to pictures, on all the three levels of the canonical story, the narrative statements, and the semiotic sphere, is found in Flochs (1979) study of one of the Urforms of the comic strip, Benjamin Barbiers story about a thievish crow. But then this is of course what we called a temporal set above; also, the language of conjunctions and disjunctions is particularly adequate for a narrative about theft; and since the story features a boy and a crow, well-known dichotomies, as between Nature and Culture, are readily discovered. Also in his analysis of Robert Doisneaus photograph "Fox-terrier sur le Pont des Arts", Floch (1982) finds occasion to use at least some parts of the canonical story, the contract and the manipulation, as well as number of semiotic squares. The photograph shows a flaneur with a dog who has paused on the far-famed Paris bridge "Pont des Arts", to watch a painter in the process of making a nude from a live model posing on the bridge; it also shows that, while his master is peeping at the painting, or perhaps rather at its model, the dog gazes at the photographer and so, at the observer of the picture. Floch analysis all this in terms of manipulation, which in Greimasian language simply means the act of getting somebody to do something ("faire faire"), here getting to see. There is then an internal story, about the painter getting the flaneur to look at his painting, and an external story, at the level of the enunciation (Cf. part IV), concerned with the dog getting us to look at the photograph. While all this is interesting, it concerns a picture which is, in our terms, one of implied temporality, it is only a fragmentary analysis of the narrative matrix, and the argument becomes rather less convincing when it turns to the complex relation between the dog and the onlooker.
9 On the relative universality of binary contrasts in pictures, see our discussion in Sonesson 1988, I.3.3-4.
11
There is an indication here, in any case, as in Thrlemanns study referred to above, the the temporality required may be found on the side of the decoder of the picture (see II.1.4.). On the other hand, our review so far suggests that, apart for purely "abstract" pictures, lying somewhere on the border of the prototypical picture concept, our case e may be a vacuous category, for so far all pictures referred to appears to be temporal, at least in the limited sense found in our categories b to d, and should thus be narrative, in the more restricted sense suggested by Bremond, Prince, and Todorov. Turning now to some pictures, which, in other parts of this investigation, we have had occasion to analyze thoroughly, we note that, for instance, the Tomato-and-bottlepicture (II.2.1.) makes relatively little narrative sense, while the Lady-with-hat-andwatch-picture (II.2.2.) sediments a number of narrative schemes, and the Guard-andboy-picture (III.2.) is much more narratively saturated than both the former. We could adopt as a hypotheses, then, that when it comes to pictures at least, narrativity is a question of degrees. Not only is there successively "more" narrativity going from category d to category a , but there is also a whole series of intermediary steps between category d and the idealtypical (and therefore unreal)10 category e. On the other hand, it should be clear that the narrative matrix may never, except perhaps in the case of the narrative series, occupy the apex on the dominance hierarchy defining pictorial structure.11 It is true that narrativity is predominant also in most narrative sets, for instance in comic strips; but even the latter admit of another reading beside the one Gubern (1972) calls "la linea de indicatividad" and which Fresnault-Deruelle (1977b) terms "la lecture linaire", viz. the interpretation spanning the two dimension of each panel, which, in Fresnault-Deruelles terms, is "la lecture tabulaire". Indeed, there should be a possibility of a tabular reading for any picture,though less so in the case of the cinematographic picture (where it may be simulated inside the "shot"), and even less in television and video, which lack any unit corresponding to the single picture (cf.Vilches 1983:75 and Sonesson 1988, III.4.2.). In the light of all this, Postmans identification of pictorality with narrativity is, at the same time, confirmed and relativised. Some amount of narrativity may be present in every picture (with the possible exception of "abstract" works, perhaps including in this sense of abstraction not only works of arts so commonly designed, but also some "pictograms" and "logograms"), but rare are the occasions when the narrative matrix gains the upper hand. It should be added, however, that neither would the dominant scheme of pictures seem to be descriptive, conversational, argumentative, or of any of the other "macro-structural" kinds described by van Dijk and Adam.
10 On idealtypes, as compared to traditional concepts, prototypes and dominance concepts, cf. our
discussion in Sonesson 1988, I.3.1.

11 The concept of the dominant, introduced by Russian Formalism, and further developed during Czech
Structuralism, and used by Roman Jakobson in his famous characterization of the functions of language, was shown in Sonesson 1988, I.3.1., to imply a definition, not by necessary and sufficient traits, but by those dominating the attention hierarchy. Thus, the traits defining poetic language are present in all linguistic message, but only dominate in poetry. According to van Dijk 1980, the narrative matrix may, in the same way, be embedded in other "macro-structures", and vice-versa.
12
In conclusion, then, narrativity in the restricted sense is certainly present in pictures, more or less so according to type, but never completely dominant; and narrativity in the vast, all-encompassing sense of the Greimas school is probably present everywhere, at least in the sense that all pictures lend themselves, more or less easily, to an analysis of terms of binary oppositions (though more resistance is apparent on the other levels of the Greimasian narrative model); only that is seems confusing to term the latter narrativity.
II.1.2. The rhetorical model in its taxonomic mode.

The rhetorical model in pictorial semiotics consists in comparing (which usually means identifying) pictures or parts of pictures with the different "figures" or "devices" described and defined, with reference to verbal language, inside traditional rhetorics, as this discipline was developed, from the time of the Greeks and Romans onwards, and in particular in the treatises of the French 17th and 18th centuries. We will say that this model is employed in its taxonomic mode, when the comparison is exhausted by the simple attribution of a rhetorical category to some visual configuration, without there being any effort to detail the comparison, and/or to integrate the figures into some over-all organization, either a general one, or one which is particular to pictorial semiosis. Ever since Aristotelian Poetics, the metaphor has been considered the most important of the rhetorical figures, and so there are those who are intent on identifying metaphors exclusively in the visual configurations searched; it is also the only figure, whose introduction into pictorial semiosis has met with a resistance of its own (See the opinions of Gombrich, Bucher, and Kerbrat-Orecchioni, as cited in Sonesson 1988, III.6.4.). Following Jakobson, there are also those who are on the look-out for two types of figures, viz. the metaphor and the metonymy (where the latter is made to absorb the traditional synecdoche), treated as equivalent to the Saussurean paradigm and syntagm , and supposedly present in all objects carrying meaning. And then, of course, there is a third group, which would be happy to find counterparts to all the rhetorical figures of the 17th century catalogues. There is yet another way, in which the exponents of the taxonomic-rhetorical model may be classified: a) those who literally adhere to the classical rhetorical model, using this very terminology. The first suggestions going this way are probably found in Barthes 1964a, but the approach is developed into a true catalogue only by Durand 1970. A close follower of the latter is Dyer (1982), who applies the same comparisons to British advertisements. Also Millum (1975:85ff) refers to the traditional rhetorical figures, also in a book concerned with advertisements, but only as a subclass of other "rhetorical devices", perhaps more peculiar to pictures (e.g. "typification", "testament", etc.). Meltzoff (1970;1978) , in his more iconological approach to rhetorics, is also concerned with more
13
traditional rhetorical figures; so is Nth (1975;1977), in his distinctions between "synecdochical" and "metonymic indices"; and so is Kaemmerling (1971), in his study of the rhetorics of film. Also the earliest article on pictorial rhetorics published by Groupe (1976) still belongs here, though it does contain some reflections on the ways in which pictorial metaphors differ from verbal one, if indeed the former are veritable metaphors. b) then there are those who employ the terms consecrated by Freud in his analysis of the "dream work", in particular the notions of condensation and displacement. The most notable exponents of this tendency are Lyotard (1971), and, in the case of cinematographic rhetorics, Kuntzel (1972). That the devices repertoriated here by Freud correspond to those of traditional rhetorics and, when they go beyond them, are of the same general kind, is convincingly demonstrated by Todorov (1977:285-322); and this conclusion must then transfer to his followers in pictorial semiotics. c) last, but not least, there a those who make use of Lvi-Strausss formula, the homology, or, as I have termed it elsewhere, the proportionality, according to which a term A is related to a term B in the same way as another term C is related to a term D (See Sonesson 1988,I.4.1.). Not only has it been suggested byWorth (1981) that LviStrausss formula expresses what is commonly understood by the term metaphor; but, interestingly, the formula seems to be equivalent to Peirces definition of this same term.12 Meanwhile, such homologies have been employed in pictorial semiotics, not by such professed students of Lvi-Strauss as Bucher (1977;1979), in her investigation of 17th century engravings displaying scenes from the New World, and as Langholz Leymore (1975) and Williamson (1978), both of them in studies of British advertisements; but also, in place of Greimass posed and inverted contents (cf.II.1.1.above), by such disciples of Greimas as Floch and Thrlemann. In fact, in Sonesson 1988, II.3.3-6., it is demonstrated that what Floch (1981a) , with reference to an advertisement for the cigarette "News", describes by this formula really works like a metaphor. It seems obvious that the second approach adds to the first one at least the presupposition, that rhetorical figures are somehow based on such resources of expression as are found in the individual unconscious, as this is described by psychoanalysis. However, there is not necessarily any claim, that a particular picture derives its rhetorical means directly from the unconscious of its maker at the time of the making; for perhaps the artist is thought to have some other access to the primeval language also manipulated by the unconscious. It is less clear what additional
12 According to Peirce (1932, II: 157), there are three kinds of icons, i.e., signs based on similarity (see
also Sonesson 1988, part III): images, where the ground of the relation are simple qualities; diagrams, which represent the relations of the parts of some other thing by analogous relations in their own parts; and metaphors, which "represent the representative character of a representation by representing a parallelism in something else".
14
presupposition is meant to be conveyed by the third approach: perhaps we are now to attribute this rhetorical language to the collective unconscious, so dear to Lvi-Strauss, who sometimes also calls it the human mind. Fortunately, we can ignore these problems here, and so we shall be able to concentrate on the common core of all three approaches. What is wrong with this common core may be stated here quite succinctly. There are two points. First, the approach inherits the shortcomings of traditional rhetorics: it simple gives labels to a set of phenomena, without being able to account for the effects which are produced and, in particular, for how they are produced. And in the second place, while it stands to reason that the same operation may have very different effects when applied to visual instead of verbal signs, no effort is made to analyze this specificity (an exception is Groupe 1976, as mentioned above). Thus, to say that a particular picture realizes the figure of repetition or accumulation (cf. for instance Dyer 1982:158ff) simply begs the question, when the different results of applying such operations to verbal signs, either written or pronounced, and to visual-iconic signs, do not even come in for consideration. And when it comes to the figure of opposition (which has also a different origin inside semiotics), it is easy to demonstrate, as we have already had occasion to do (cf. Sonesson 1988, I.3.3-4.), that the analysis only becomes enlightening, when we go beyond the mere classification of the device, to show on which features it reposes in that particular picture, how these are modified and modulated by the presence of other pictorial elements, and how the rhetorical meaning passes from expression traits to content traits and back again. So what we have to look for is a wider context in which to place the rhetorical model. This, so far, has been the notion of isotopy (see II.1.3.).
II.1.3. The rhetorical model in its systematic mode.

The section which is to follow is, as will soon be apparent, of a rather different nature from the earlier ones: it is, to begin with, far more extensive, and organized into a number of subdivisions. More fundamentally, it contains more detailed arguments, as well as some exemplary analyses, as it is concerned, first, to show the importance of the introduction of the notion of isotopy, and of its employment in pictorial semiotics, but also to point out the limits and inadequacies of this notion, in the case of pictures, as well as more generally, and to suggest a more advantageous approach, based on the notion of scheme, which, as we go along, will hopefully be developed into a true concept. The notion of isotopy was first suggested by Greimas, and used by him and his followers, notably in the analysis of verbal texts. It was then taken up by the Groupe (e.g. by Jacques Dubois, Philippe Dubois, Francis Edeline, Jean-Marie Klinkenberg, Philippe Minguet, and on occasion a few others), first in their studies of poetry, and then, in a more original way, in the study of pictorial rhetorics. The Greimasian notion of isotopy will be presented below (in II.1.3.5.), and then the Groupe rhetorics model
15
will be taken up to discussion (in II.1.3.7.), but we will start from another end, viz. from our proposed solution. We begin with a review of the conceptual history of the notion of scheme (II.1.3.1.), which will allow us to make a synthesis of the most varied semantic ramifications of the term, also adding some refinements borrowed from other sources (in II.1.3.2-3.). We will also discuss the application of this scheme concept to the layering of the sign function (in II.1.3.4.), before we proceed to an appraisal of the notion of isotopy, as compaired with the scheme concept (in II.1.3.5ff.). Caricature will serve to illustrate the possiblity of combining schemes (in II.1.3.8), and the rhetorics of pornography is taken up to elucidate the notion of a rupture of schematic expectations (in II.1.3.9.).
II.1.3.1. All we need are schemes. Sources of the scheme concept.

In recent time, the notion of scheme has met with a rare popularity among writers associated with the new discipline of Artificial Intelligence. According to Rumelhart & Norman (1978:41), schemes are "active, interrelated knowledge structures, actively engaged in the comprehension of arriving information, guiding the execution of processing operations". Also the cognitive psychologist Neisser (1976.51ff) employs the term, with reference to the work of Minsky and Goffman, who, however, in the discipline of Artificial Intelligence and sociology, respectively, use the term "frame" to designate the same or similar phenomena; but it seems clear from the context, that the term "scheme", as employed by Neisser, is also akin to "hypothesistesting" as discussed in earlier perceptual psychology, and to the notion of "set" in social psychology:
"A scheme is that portion of the entire perceptual cycle which is internal to the perceiver, modifiable by experience, and somehow specific to what is being perceived. The scheme accepts information as it becomes available at sensory surfaces and is changed by that information; it directs movements and exploratory activities that makes more information available, by which it is further modified" (p.54).
This definition should remind us of the double facet of the scheme, as it is conceived by Piaget (1967:20ff,25): that is, assimilation and accommodation. At first, the organism perforce assimilates stimuli to a pre-given scheme, but at the same time the scheme is modified, as it accommodates to the outer environment. In Piagets view, to grasp an object with both hands constitutes, to the 5-6 months old child, essentially a scheme of assimilation, an incorporation of the outer world into the self, but in this same scheme, there are also factors, such as the distance of operation, which must be accommodated to the size of the object, which means adapting the inner representation to the world.13 Both Neisser and the exponents of the AI approach also refer to the work of the social psychologist Bartlett (1932), who used the notion of scheme in his studies of memory, in order to explain the successive modifications which a story stemming from an alien culture were subjected to, as the experimental subjects were ask to recount it in
13 Piaget sometimes makes a distinction between the scheme and the schema, which we will ignore here.
16
increasing temporal distances; but also how one and the same drawing was transformed in later reproductions from memory, in different ways according as it had been labeled as glasses or as a dumbbell upon first seeing it. The scheme is to Bartlett "the setting which makes perceiving possible", but also, more dynamically, an "effort after meaning" (p.32,44); more precisely, it is "an active organization of past reactions, or of past experiences, which must always be supposed to be operating in any well-adapted organism`s response", with the result that responses do not occur in isolation, but "as a unitary mass"(p.201). Bartlett himself claims his employment of the term was inspired by the usage of the physiologist Head, who applied it to body consciousness (cf. Bartlett 1958:146), but in the original work, he also alludes to the psychologist Janet, as well as to the sociologist Halbwachs, and these references seems more directly to the point, both because the latter authors evoke the notion of scheme in the context of a discussion of memory, and because they do so, like Bartlett (in particular in Bartlett 1923), to emphasize the part of social construction in memory. Janets (1928:284ff) indications on this matter are, to be sure, very brief: he notes that many people are in the habit of using imaginary spatial arrangements, i.e., a "schma tir de lespace", where they place information they would like to remember, in the same manner as we enter an important date in the calendary grid furnished by our diary (but he seems unaware of the fact that a long tradition concerned with such an "art of memory" was prominent all through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; cf. Yates 1966; Gomez de Liano 1982 ). The example he gives is an ancient nahua map (i.e. the exodus of Totomihuaca, Puebla, Mexico), which he shows to be a history book, where the imaginary paths form a scheme on which to tack the notable events. Being a loyal follower of Durkheim, Halbwachs (1925;1951) also insists on the projection of memory onto tangible space (also cf. Down & Stea 1973); but he is even more emphatic when it comes to the social character of the act of recollection:
"En ralit, cest parce que dautres souvenirs en rapport avec celui-ci subsistent autour de nous, dans les objects, dans les tres au milieu desquels nous vivons, ou en nous-mmes: points de repre dans lespace et le temps, notions historiques, gographiques, biographiques, politiques, donns dexprience courant et faon de voir familires, que nous sommes en mesure de detrminer avec une prcision croissante ce qui ntait dabord que le schma vide dun vnement dautrefois" (1925:38f) .
This is already the scheme as conceived by Bartlett; and it already serves as lattice of pegs on which individual facts may be hooked up. The tradition from Bartlett has been taken up again recently, not only inside AI, but in cognitive psychology and linguistics. Kintsch (1974;1977) has resumed the memory experiments along the same lines, and has, together with van Dijk (1978), demonstrated, with the aid of summarizing tasks, that "story grammars" are particular cases of schemes (cf. II.1.1. above). Also taking his point of departure from Bartlett, Chafe (1977) shows how, for instance, the chunk of experience labeled "my childhood" is verbalized through a number of steps, after being broken down into "subchunks". In a less precise way, the term "scheme" is also employed by the art historian Gombrich (1960), when considering the historical development of styles, and by the philosopher
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics Goodman (1968), in a discussion of the origin of metaphors.
17
A quite different tradition is, I believe, represented by the phenomenologist Schtz (1932), whose only indication of sources is the negative one, that he is not concerned with the schema concept familiar from the writings of Kant. A scheme of our experience ("ein Schema unser Erfahrung"), as Schtzs wording more precisely goes, is
"ein Sinnzusammenhang unserer erfahrenden Erlebnisse, welcher zwar die in den erfahrenden Erlebnissen fertig konstituierten Erfahrungsgegenstndlichkeiten erfat, nicht aber das Wie des Konstitutionsvorganges, in welchem sich die erfahrenden Erlebnisse zu Erfahrungsgegenstndlichkeiten konstituierten" (p.109).
In other words, a series of earlier "polythetic acts" are now reconceived "monthetically". Once constituted in this way, these schemes are, as it is later explained (p.111), applied to the interpretation of other experiences. This is clearly the same procedure which Husserl and Gurwitsch called formalization, and which the second compared to what Piaget describes as "abstraction from the action"; and it is also reminiscent of what Bartlett 1958 calls "frames" and sometimes still "schemes" (cf. Sonesson 1988, I.3.4. and I.4.4.). In later works, then, Schtz (1967:299,327f), describes the sign as made up of four different schemes, thus containing the sediments of experiences deriving from different spheres of existence. It is reasonable to doubt, that all these uses of the term "scheme" can really be taken to point to a single concept, even allowing for the latitude characteristic of prototype concepts (yet we have ignored more tangible instances, as Lorenzs "Kindchenschema" and the facial scheme to which newborn babies are supposed to react). It is not our task to resolve this dilemma here. However, in the following sections, we will begin to elaborate a new concept of scheme, which takes its inspiration from all the notions mentioned so far, without necessarily including all these were meant to include; a concept, to be sure, which is adapted to the needs of pictorial semiotics.
II.1.3.2. How to dine and dress. Syntagms and paradigms.

The first requirement of a typical scheme in our sense, to the elucidation of which this entire section is consecrated (the other requirements being taken up in the following section) is that of being an overarching structure endowed with a particular meaning (more or less readily expressible as a label), which serves to bracket a set of in other respects independent units of meaning, and to relate the members of the set to each other. Illuminating examples of schemes are receipts (cf. Goody 1977;1982 ), calendars (cf. Halbwachs 1925 ), visits to restaurants (cf. Schank 1975 ), meals and clothing (cf. Barthes 1964b; Douglas 1972 ). An example in point is also the body scheme, which was analyzed, both in its canonical Western form, and as transformed in Matisses "Nu bleu", in Sonesson 1988, I.3.1. / III.1-2. In addition to being somewhat like what is often called "semantic fields" in
18
linguistics, which are lists of words close in meaning which may be subsumed by a more general term, sometimes termed the "archi-lexeme" (cf. Coseriu 1977 ), schemes contain some principle of order, which may, as is often the case, be a temporal link. Indeed, many schemes (like the story, the sentence, the melody, the meal, and the visit to a restaurant) are what Husserl (1928), calls "temporally distributed objects", that is, objects whose parts must, for intrinsic reasons, appear at points of time ordered before, after, and coincident with the specious present (which must be separated from objects, such as calendars, which are about time ; and schemes which are used relative to a particular moment in time, which is always possible; see point 7 in II.3.3. below). In the following, we will naturally be particularly concerned with schemes which are not temporally distributed, such as clothes, the body, and the picture (although the pictorial content may no doubt be temporally distributed, in spite of Lessings censure of this eventuality; cf. II.1.4.); but in the interests of clarification, we will now discuss Barthess and Hallidays analysis of the meal, before delving deeper into the clothing scheme. Both Barthes (1964b) and Halliday (as quoted in Douglas 1972:62ff ) take it for granted, that the linguistic distinction between the syntagm and the paradigm is apt to be transferred from verbal language to other semiotic systems, for instance to the organization of an ordinary meal. The "menu conseill" posted before the entrance to most French restaurants usually will contain a number of categorical slots which follow each other in time, and which constitute so many points at which a choice must be made. Thus, we have for instance: "entre - (hors duvres) - plat principal (fromage) - dessert", where first we have to select an item from a list of possible entres, then perhaps from a choice of hors duvres, and so on. The list would be a paradigm, and the connected temporal points should form the syntagm. Halliday takes the analogy even further, considering that some categories may be rewritten into more specific categories, just as a sentence is derived in a syntactical tree diagram. In his view, dinner consists in: "First(Second)Main-Sweet(Savoury)", where the first element is rewritten as: soup, hors duvres, fruit, fruit juice, etc.; soup being then rewritten as: clear soup or thick soup, and so on. Here we recognize the taxonomic tree, as employed in our analysis of the body scheme (cf. Sonesson 1988, III.5.1-2.); only that, alongside the categorical nexus, and the specification of broad categories by narrower ones, there is also the element of choice, the set of alternatives. We may use the term "paradigm" for such sets of alternatives, and the term "syntagm" for the nexus and the operation of specification together, if we remember that these terms stand just for "chain and choice" (Douglas 1972:62 ), for "assemblage in praesentia" and "in absentia" (Saussure 1968:278ff ), for logical conjunction and disjunction (Jakobson 1942 ); but not if we think (as Barthes certainly takes for granted) that a syntagm must imply an "enchanement", a lineal order (Saussure ibid.).14 For the meal, just as clothing and the picture, is namely, as Saussure (1974:39)
14 It is arguable, of course, that these three distinctions do not amount to the same thing, but we will not
inquiry further into this question in the present context. Also, it seems pointless to take the term "paradigm" to mean simply that there is a choice: at the very least, there must be something which may
19
says about the latter, a multi-spatial, or perhaps better, a multi-dimensional semiotic object. To begin with, we have to make parallel choices of what to eat and what to drink; and, in more fashionable dinners, this applies to each course separately. Also, at least in the case of the main course, there are a number of concurrent selections of subcategories to be made: thus, while in France, we have to pick one item from the list of meat (including fish, poultry, etc.), and another from the list of vegetables (one choice of which is potatoes), in Sweden our choice must be made from the list of meat, that of potatoes (for which, on rare occasions, spaghetti or rice may stand proxy), and optionally from that of vegetables. In the classical Mexican "comida corrida", in contrast, spaghetti and rice, together with soup, form a separate paradigm, which constitutes the first slot of the system. Apart from the parallel series of food and drink, and the internal organization of each course, we must also account for that immutable element, the Frenchmans piece of bread, and the Mexicans tortilla, which accompany all but the last course of the meal. That all these must be considered syntagms, alongside the temporal order, is seen from the fact that they specify constraints of possible combinations. To the Swede, for instance, it is quite conceivable to have cocoa, which is a sweet element, together with sandwiches, which are salt, for supper; for the Mexican, such a combination is out of the question. On the other hand, the Mexican will drink fresh fruit juice or lemonade, which are invariably sweet, with his dinner, but at least traditionally, this was unimaginable to a Swede (but is now less so, it seems, thanks to American influence), who would always drink milk or beer.15 The same remarks apply, mutatis mutandis, to the clothing scheme.16 We cannot obtain all the relevant categories of the system, if we restrict our search to what is worn "sur un mme point du corps" (Barthes 1964b:135), since the different paradigms of pants, long underpants, trousers, sweater, jacket, and overcoat all entirely or partly occupy the same body spot. Even the clothing paradigm is thus seen to be multi-dimensional. One way to shed some light on the inner organization of apparel, should be to start out from the body scheme, for, as Saussure (1968:168) recognizes, when contrasting the arbitrariness of verbal language with the properties of other semiotic systems, clothing is motivated in relation to the body (but only relatively so, of course, for even the segmentation of body parts appears to be rather autonomous: indeed, the limits between garment slots are always somewhat fuzzy, like those of "neighbourhoods", for which cf. Lee 1973 ). The body is thus seen to play the role of
be considered a closed set of alternatives. The same thing goes of course for the term "syntagm"; it cannot be just any combination, but should concern connection governed by rules. See our criticism of Gert Z. Nordstrm in Sonesson 1983/84. . Marin may also be liable to this kind of criticism. In the contrary case, there will of course be any number of syntagms and paradigm everywhere. 15 Maybe there are also meal systems which do not contain temporal syntagm: Lee (1977) claims that Trobriand meals have no order, and in particular no climax, so, at least inside the limits of the same meal, combinations would be free. 16 The only as yet existing contributions to clothing semiotics are, as far as we have been able to determine, Barthes 1967; Gopnik 1983; and Laurie 1981. There is a theory of the development of fashion in Gopniks text, to which we will return below, in II.1.3.3. As for Barthess contribution, is is vitiated by his determination, not to apply the linguistic model, but to analyze the text of the fashion review, rather than the underlying system. Lauries book is, in spite of her claim to be doing semiotics, completely anecdotical. What follows, therefore, can only be some provisional indications.
20
time in other schemes (and more importantly so than in the "syntagme de la maladie" as described by Barthes 1972, for the latter does not mirror the overall bodily organization); but the three dimensions of the body, even as seen in egocentric space, are not directly relevant (clothing details, not garments, are found back or front, to the left or to the right); instead, it is distance from the body which counts. The several layers of clothing may indeed be compared to protective shells, not dissimilar to those of proxemics, but located inside the latter (for which cf.Hall 1966; Watson 1970 ); they may be distinguished, on a first approximation, as follows:
Fig.1. The clothing scheme: Western variant.
O: the skin, nudity; Oa: body decorations, including make-up, tattoo, and hair-do; 1: underwear; 1a: secondary, optional underwear, such as long underpants; 2: ordinary indoor clothing; 2a: optional extra indoor clothing or supplemental outdoor clothing, such as sweaters; 3: outdoor clothing, e.g. coats, jackets (the latter may even be 2a and perhaps should be assigned to a category 2b; but we will ignore this and other complications here). Entering this double segmentation into body parts and clothing layers on a grid, we can now describe the common Western system of womens clothing,17 or at least one
17 Our example throughout will be womans clothing, in part because, at least from a superficial
viewpoint, it seems to be more intricately organized; and in part because will will need this substructure in II.3.9. below.
21
variant of it, as suggested above (fig.1.; with all reservations for the necessarily very sketchy character of our illustration).18 In order to get something out of a clothing scheme as abstract and generalized as this, we need to compare with an scheme which is extremely different: thus, we have chosen the traditional Mesoamerican variant of the clothing system (Our basic sources, which of course enter much more into details, but fail to discover the system, are Luchuga 1982 and Momprad & Gutirrez 1976). A few things must be explained, before we can present fig.3. First, the terminology. Both a quechqumitl and a huipil is basically a folded piece of cloth, but they are folded and sewn together in different manners. Thus, the huipil is made of a number of stripes sewn up, so as to form rectilinear pieces in front and on the back, which are open on the sides, and have a hole cut out in the middle for the head. The quechequmitl, on the other hand, consists a two pieces of squares and two pieces of rectangles, sewn together, so as to leave a space open for the head, and it is worn with one apex pointing down and the others to the sides (see fig.2.). In addition, the huipil may have any length, and so sometimes covers the whole body; it is even used folded on the head, as a headgear. There are also two types of skirts: the enredo, which is wrapped around the body, and the falda de pretina, which is suspended from a ribbon around the waist. The faja serves to hold up the skirt, and the rebozo is a large shawl.
18 The illustrations of clothing schemes which follow are largely inspired in the "meaning potentials" of
Halliday (1967:38), who has employed this format, not only to show forth the options underlying sentence construction, but also to formulate the rules of the game pontoon.
means that either a or b must be present, for c to be an option means that if a is given, options must be taken both along the path x and the path y. means that both a and b are necessary, for c to be an option. means that either a or b must be chosen. or
means the zero element, i.e. the selection of nothing.
Actually, our two basic segmentations, that of body parts and of clothing layers, should form together "a compound entry condition" in Hallidays sense (the third logotype above), but in order to ensure perceptibility, we have decided to let them form a grid. Note also that a more thorough formalization would require us to describe relations of dominance, and of constituency, as we did in the analysis of the body scheme, in Sonesson 1988, III.5.1
22
Figure 2. Huipil and quechqumitl (from Lechuga 1982:39)
Some observations on the diagram itself are also in order. We have not cared to distinguished levels 1 and 2 here, for the simple reason that there is, obviously, not Mesoamerican underwear, this layer constituting a relative recent innovation also in the Western world; and if this whole layer, as so many individual garments, is nowadays incorporated into the Indian womans apparel, there is at least no information about this in our sources. It is - or at least, it was - common for the woman to walk around nude, sometimes only to the waist, inside the dwelling (Momprad & Gutirrez 1976: 66 ),
23
and even in the close neighbourhood (Lechuga 1982:34 ). Traditionally, the quechqumitl was worn over the huipil, and so occupied different syntagmatic positions; but nowadays, they form part of the same paradigm, as "dialectal" variants, for while the former is predominantly used in Northern Mexico, the latter is most commonly found in the South (cf. Lechuga 1982:23 ). On the other hand, one quechqumitl may be worn over another one (Momprad & Gutirres 1976:68 ), and this is also sometimes the case with huipiles (op.cit.:66 ), which can , when they are sufficiently long, substitute also for the skirt (op.cit.:65 ). The blouse, which has of course been taken oven from the Europeans, is often worn instead of a huipil under the quechqumitl, in those regions where the latter is used (cf.Lechuga 1982:32; Monprad & Gutirrez 1976:70 ); however, it may also be used on its own. In the case of some Indian groups, huipil and falda,where the former is long, form a single paradigm, the latter being donned only on festive occasions (Momprad & Gutirrez 1976:70 ). The skirt is often a piece of cloth of enormous length, 5-10 meters in the case of the purpechas , and must therefore be wrapped around the body a number of times, three rounds in the Nahua tribe of Ceutzalan (cf. op.cit.:122, 135 ); thus, the skirt occupies several physical layers, but, as long as only one garment is involved, there is only one layer which is relevant from the point of view of the clothing scheme. If also several faldas de pretina may be put on at the same time, which I ignore, it will be necessary to assign them to different layers, only if the use of a single such skirt is also a significant possibility.
Fig.3. The Mesoamerican clothing system. Of course,the really interesting task is to study the variations of this clothing scheme from tribe to tribe; here, however, with have only undertaken our formalizations from a strictly methodological point of view. We see that in the Mesoamerican clothing system, as compared to the Western one, both the body part syntagm and the clothing layer syntagm remain pertinent, although the first is segmented in somewhat different
24
ways and the second does not require as much levels in the former system. However, even the Western system, as it is used in Mexico and other warmer countries, loses the distinction between level 2a and 3, and this compound level is less radically distinguished form level 2. Now, returning to our general discussion, must we require all schemes to have syntagms and paradigms? Prieto (1975b) thinks that all sign systems, which are of subclass of schemes (cf.II.3.4.), must have paradigms, but not all will have syntagms. One may doubt his examples, however. If a sign system contains a single sign, as in Prietos example the blind mans white rod, then is may have been too narrowly defined. It is true, as Prieto notes, that the lack of a white rod does not signify somebody is not blind, in the way the absence of an admirals flag on a vessel may be taken to affirm the absence of the admiral from the ship; but it is conceivable that the rod must be related to other sets of signs, which are not its negations. It should be noted, in any case, that Prietos description really leaves this "system" without both syntagm and paradigm, and so should not be a system at all. On the other hand, there may well be systems without paradigms. Considered in each than of its concrete instances in a given tribe, the Mesoamerican clothing system may well lack choices, or only have variants for festive occasions. The body scheme, in each of its cultural variants, probably lack all options, except that between the sexes. But perhaps we may require a scheme, in the end, to have either syntagms or paradigm - for, in the contrary case, there would seem to be nothing left to schematize.19 Another question if, if we should not require the scheme to have much more structure than this: relations of dominance, constituency, binary oppositions, proportionality, etc. (cf. Sonesson 1988,III.5.,I.3-4.). However, we will not enquiry further into this matters in the present context.
II.1.3.3. Memory for the ground. Requirements of a concept of scheme.

So far we have established, that the scheme must be 1 ) an overarching structure endowed with meaning, which, with the aid of a relation of order, in the form of syntagms and/or paradigms, joins together a set of in other respects independent units of meaning. We must now go on to consider some further requirements on schemes. Schemes are normally 2) constituted out of earlier experiences, i.e. they are sediments of lapsed sequences of behaviour (so Bartlett, Neisser, Schtz, Piaget); and, more specifically, they are socially constituted, i.e. the actions from which they derive,
19 Garroni (1972) states this as a requirement for something being semiotic. However, schemes are not
necessarily biplane, in Hjelmslevs terms, e.g. made up of expressions and contents, but may well be monoplane, in which case they do not really qualify as semiotic, in Hjelmslevs sense (cf Hjelmslev 1943:90ff ). Cf. II.3.4. below.
25
and/or their results, arise in interaction with other members of the socium, and thus possess a least some amount of intersubjective validity, inside the limits of a particular society. A number of objections, on very different levels, may be raised here: a) some objects, which are schemes according to criterion 1 may turn out to be innate; b) there may be schemes the validity of which are entirely idiosyncratic, and which are thus not socially grounded; c) the kind of abstract schemes conceived by Piaget are at least not social in the same tangible sense as those mentioned by Schtz; that is, they may require the mere form of sociability, in other words, human interaction, but they appear to be largely independent of the conditions of a particular society. Let us now consider these objections in turn. As to the first point (a), it might be argued that at least the body scheme must be innate - but this is to overlook the fact, that the scheme pertains to the body as experienced, and that experience is constituted out of the actions executed with the body (the motoric schemes according to Piaget), and these, in turn, must vary with the kind of "techniques du corps" (to use Mausss term) commended by the specific culture (see our discussion of "body semiotics" in Sonesson 1988,I.3.1.). On the other hand, the innate schemes introduced by Lorenz and other ethologist, and which serve to release predefined behaviour sequences, do seem to possess a number of those properties we have ascribed, and will in the following ascribe to schemes (as we shall see below). According to Schleidt, however (as cited by Hckstedt 1965:422f ), only some releasing mechanisms are innate, others are acquired, and yet a third group have been transfused by experience. In the case of all vertebrates, acquired schemes predominate, while completely innate releasing mechanisms are found only at the earliest octogenetic stages. Thus, there may be rudiments of innateness in what we will call schemes, but in themselves, they must be considered products of culture. In the same way, there are clearly inborn linguistic universals (in the sense of Jakobson, Chomsky, and Greenberg), but their specific combinations in particular languages are by no means innate. Proceeding now to our second point (b), we must first of all admit that, in a sense, there certainly are individual schemes. According to a precept of ancient rhetorics, the orator was to "place" the different points of an argument imaginatively on different locations of a house with which he was familiar (cf.Yates 1966 ) and this might well be a house unknown to everybody else! Similarly, in the Middle Ages, the devouts were told that in order to retain the Biblical stories in memory, they should think of its characters as having the faces of friends and kinsfolk, and picture the events as taking place in the well-known locations of their own village (cf.Baxandall 1972 ). In both cases, there is a certain personalization of public facts - but clearly, this personalization itself is at least potentially open to public inspection (even the hermit may conceivable invite us to his cave). And yet, all through the history of the "art of memory" (as told by Yates and Gomez de Liano), there is a constant endeavour to discover some more stable principles of construction to underprop ones reminiscences: thus, at the first stage, personifications such as Grammatica are made to serve as conceptual maps, the body parts of which becomes tags for grammatical divisions , and later more reasoned and, at least on their authors view, less ad hoc systems are devised by such thinkers as Lullus,
26
Ramus, Bruno, and Fludd.20 Perhaps, then, the public character of a scheme is at least an ideal requirement. It is certainly correct, as suggested by our third objection (c), that Piagetean schemes are at a different level of generality from thus of Schtz, which may, for instance, predict how the wood-feller will proceed after grasping his axe, or after rasing it. Consider Piagets famous experiment, in which children are to discover, that the quantity of liquid contained in a narrow glass may be same as that found in a wide glass, if the water level is higher in the former case (and then also that this is the same "conservation" found, for instance, in two pieces of plasticine). There are obviously of lot of more concrete schemes of experiences which the child is able to apply to glasses well before mastering operational thinking. In the experiment, the child is supposed to attend to a single property of the liquid (or rather, two properties, its width and height, which compensate each other), and then generalize this property further, so as to be able to discover it also in quite different spheres of experience, such as the manipulation of plasticine. In contrast, the wood-fellers scheme, as well as the scheme for drinking from a glass, depend on a great number of different features, which must precisely not be generalized beyond their particular domain of experience. However, it seems fairly well established by now (cf.Gardner 1984;Hunt 1982), that the feat of discovering such formal properties as studied by Piaget are not really accomplished by the child at the same time in different domains of experience, though the operations surely generalize at a much higher level than that of wood-felling and drinking from glasses. Elsewhere (cf.Sonesson 1988,I.4.), we have suggested a distinction between logical schemes and proto-schemes; but it is clear, that these can only be extreme poles on a continuous scale. As applied to memory and perception, the scheme approach may seem inapt to explain our experience of ineffable individuality. In fact however, schemes furnish pegs on which individual facts may be suspended, so as to enter into connection with other facts, as was already recognized by Halbwachs. The case of perception is thematized in our next point (cf. also point 8 below): 3) schemes contain principles of relevance which extricate from each ineffable object such features as are of importance relative to a particular point of view (this is Piagets assimilation, and the principle of abstractive relevancy, according to Bhler 1934 ; cf. discussion in Sonesson 1988,I.1.4./II.4. ). 4) schemes also supply properties missing from the ineffable objects, or modify the objects so as to adapt them to the expectancies embodied in the schemes (this is
20 That is, the articulation of the locations comprising the scheme is supposedly more intrinsically related
to the domain of the terms meant to be memorized. In view of this fact, it is interesting to note that, according to present-day memory research (cf.Kintsch 1974;1977), no factor is more instrumental in conserving facts in memory than the existence of a semantic network linking these facts together. The problem with the conceptions of Lullus, Ramus, Bruno, and Fludd, is of course that the connectedness they introduce into their systems is predicated on a very peculiar world-view, or ideology, and thus has ceased to exist for us, if ever it existed for their contemporaries.
27
another aspect of Piagets notion of assimilation, and what Bhler terms apperceptive supplementation also, it is involved in what Halbwachs and Bartlett call reconstruction, and in Gregorys perceptual hypothesis). We have seen this factor at work in the way the ordinary body scheme may be recovered in Matisses "Nu bleu", as well as in the outline characters in comic strips (cf. Sonesson 1988,III.5.2-3. ). Another case is point may be the way Occidental furniture schemes are adopted by the Japanese (as discussed in Canter & Lee 1974 ). 5) schemes incorporate (some of) the results of their own use on ineffable objects, and are themselves changed in the process (this is Piagets accommodation; and it also seems to correspond to what Lotman calls the internal recoding of "texts", and to the Bachtinean intertext conceived as a matrix for engendering other "texts"; cf. part I above). Part of what is addressed here is clearly the eternal antinomy of the functioning system and the hazards of history, abolished in Coserius (1958:17) decisive phrase, that "la lengua cambia para seguir functionande" (discussed in part I above). From Coseriu, however, we should also retain the capital fact, that every system contains a norm, that is, a more limited set of "las estructuras simplemente comunes (tradicionales)" inside "las estructuras functionales (distintivas)" (op.cit.:29 ). One way in which the system prepares for change is found in the combinatory possibilities present in the system which lie beyond the norm. There is also the fact that one system may contain several norms, some of which are endowed with more prestige than the others. One norm may thus be quoted by others, and even invade them, in particular if it is associated with a particularly prestigious person or group (the latter is the case in many of Bachtins intertexts, e.g. the street cries; however, in this example prestige is not assigned by the norm doing the import). In due time, aspects of the alien norm may be completely integrated, and so come to build up new functional pairs in the system: such is the case in the Mesoamerican clothing scheme, where, in some norms, the blouse, taken over from the Western system, occupies the place formerly held by the quechqumitl, whereas, in other norms, it creates new alternative sets with the latter, as well as with the huipil (cf.II.1.3.2. above). But there are also other kinds of modifications, through which the system is developed, rather than demolished. We find them in the principle behind the wine-taster code : beginning with a simple opposition separating wine form what it is not, one learns to differentiate a little further, first perhaps the major wine sorts, then the appellations controles, the different vignobles, and so on (cf. Gibson 1969 ).What is essential here, is that none of the primitive distinctions are abolished, but each member of the oppositional pair is developed into a new distinction, the members of which give rise to further oppositional pairs, and so on for a number of levels. Surprisingly, the same process applies to beer, at least in Germany (cf. Hage 1972 ). And, of course, it is found in the way children learn phonetic distinctions, as shown by Jakobson (1943), and perhaps even in the way they develop a drawing ability (as suggested by Gardner, Olivier, and Krampen, and discussed in Sonesson 1988 ). 6) Schemes may also by added to each other. To integrate two schemes, or to bridge the distance between them, would seem to be a more radical transformation than
28
those considered beforehand; and indeed, in the view of Koestler (1964;1978), this is the very act which explains "creativity", as it is manifested in jokes, but also in scientific discoveries and in artistic creations; in each case, what is brought about is the unification of "two self-consistent but habitually incompatible frames of reference" (1954:35 ). Criticizing this conception of Koestlers, the psychologist Perkins (1981:91ff) points out, among other things, that there is no way of falsifying the theory, since two "frames of references" can always plausibly be set up, whenever their supposed product is considered creative, while counter-examples may simply be declared uncreative. And yet Perkins states, a few lines further down, that Koestler has managed to present some clear cases, in which incompatible schemes have really been combined. Thus, Perkins admits intuitively the existence of schemes which are not set up ad hoc, although he theoretically denies it. And when, in another objection, he argues that the creative act may well transcend one scheme without attaining another (cf. case 8c below), he clearly takes for granted that the first scheme can been demarcated. Of course, Perkins has a point: though the feeling of contradiction may be intuitively obvious, we do have to find ways of characterizing the schemes, independently of the presumed contradiction between them; that is, the respective identities of the schemes have to be defined preceding their clash at the moment of creation. 7) Although some schemes are not temporally distributed (cf.II.1.3.1.), they can only be experienced in time, that is, as given to time consciousness. In the specious present, there is a perception of a particular element of the scheme, while other parts of it are projected onto the past (as retentions, in the terminology of Husserl 1928 ) or onto the future (as protentions). A scheme which is not temporally distributed can provide many options at each particular point, but the temporally distributed scheme only gives access to such alternatives as follow the specious present in time. In both cases, however, further limitations may be introduced, as we shall immediately see: 8) A particular object given in experience may relate in different ways to the scheme by means of which one has access to it: a) it accords in routine fashion with the scheme, i.e. it has precisely those relevant properties which may be expected, and while missing features may be filled in, no awareness of distinctiveness emerges; b) the object not only tallies with the scheme, but in fact agrees with its norm part, i.e. it appears as a prototypical instance of the scheme (and thus, we shall say, as a symbol of the scheme); c) the object diverge from those properties predicted by the norm, and maybe even from those of the scheme; but the divergence is of such a nature, that the features of the object can be projected back onto those present in the scheme, with the aid of a small number of operations, such as permutation, addition, substitution, etc. (cf. Groupe 1970). In such cases, there is an awareness of the divergence, and thus a rhetoric. It might be argued (malgr Saussure) that fashion is a kind of rhetorical modification of the body scheme, or perhaps rather, of a more "normal" derivation of the latter: the clothing scheme. So, for instance, the dislocation of the waist and the modified length of the skirt from time to time give the appearance of transforming the segmentation of the body into parts; d) when divergences are pushed so far, that the connection with wellknown schemes can no longer be made, incomprehensibility may result (as suggested by Halbwachs, Bartlett, and Hjelmslev). It is not certain that this last case is an actual
29
possibility; the history of the 20th century avant-garde gives the impression that artistic deviations (which are perhaps originally of the type discussed under point 6) end up being absorbed into the system. Indeed, according to the Russian formalists, art actually evolves in the fashion just suggested, each new movement arriving on the scene in order to "deautomatize" perception and "make strange" what has been routinized in the artistic canon, which however established itself on the same basis earlier on, in opposition to a bygone canonized body of artworks (which amounts to "a false dialectics", according to Medvedev 1978:75ff ). Taking her inspiration more indirectly from the Prague school, Gopnik (1983:1319ff) suggests a similar cycle for the development of style in clothing (the case of art being more complex, she surmises): there would be a perpetual alternance throughout the history of dress between the the loose-flowing soft type of garment epitomized by the Greek chiton, and the more "structured" kind of garment pulled in close to the narrow zones of the body , which in the Ancient world was represented by the peplos.21 According to Gopnik, these two types of clothes provides us with different kinds of information about our own bodies, and one type is substituted for the other, when we have grown all too accustomed to the kind of sensations afforded by the first, the alternance seeing to it that, in the long run, maximal body information is assured. Although Gopnik bases her theory on the existence of two distinct neural paths for the perception of touch, one pertaining to pressure and hard contact, another to temperature and loose contact (p.1324), this biological evidence does not go a long way to prove her hypotheses. Interestingly, it is the wearer of the clothes which, on this theory, becomes the subject of habituation and perception; but if women, as the ethologist Koenig (1970:116) claims, dress in order to please men (who dress in order to imitate the conquerors), habituation must be on the part of another, observing subject (and also in the visual, rather than the tactile mode). Whatever else is suggested by this example, it at least indicates the difficulty of finding the features which are responsible for the exchange of schemes for other schemes throughout history. In the next part, we will proceed to a discussion of the particular configuration of schemes supposedly found in signs, and we will also have an inkling of the complex character of real meaning production..
II.1.3.4. The hermeneutics of Ellery Queen. Layers of the sign.

According to Schtz (1967:299,327f), four different kinds of schemes are involved in each appresentation, or sign function: the apperceptual scheme, to which
21 Contrary to the Formalist model, Gopniks suggestion amounts to a perpetual alternance between two
fundamental types of clothing. This is more reminiscent of the kind of historical models propounded inside the bounds of what Medvedev (1978:41ff) calls "European Formalism" (and which he likes much better than the Russian variety), for instance, the alternation of the Classical and the Baroque, according to Wlfflin.Medvedevs preference is curious here, for being that of a Marxist, for it is certainly the latter model which comes closest to be a denial of history.
30
the directly perceived object belongs if experienced as a self, disregarding its relations to other parts of the sign; the appresentational scheme, that is, that order of objects to which the immediately perceived object belongs if taken as a member of an appresentational pair, thus referring to something other than itself; the referential scheme, to which that object belongs which is perceived indirectly, through the intermediary of the object given in the apperceptual scheme; and the contextual or interpretational scheme, which is
"that particular type of pairing or context by which the appresenting member is connected with the appresented one, or, more generally, the relationship which prevails between the appresentational and the referential scheme"(p.299).
In the apperceptual and appresentational schemes, we easily recognize the substance and form of expression of the sign, as conceived by Hjelmslev (cf. discussion in Sonesson 1988,II.4.): in the case of verbal language, the two orders of objects concerned would be, respectively, sounds and phonemes; and, in the case of pictures, strokes and iconemes.22 One difference is that, while the substance is a kind of chaos to Hjelmslev, an amorphous mass, in Saussures terms, the apperceptual scheme is organized, only according to another principle of relevance, which derives from the social Lifeworld, and perhaps even from the biological organism (which, for instance, sifts out those sound frequencies which are perceptible to human beings). In actual fact, the situation is surely much more complex, for each object may be assigned to different orders of objects, depending on the intensional level on which it is considered (cf.Sonesson 1988,I.3.1-2. ); but this is no problem, if we only can take orders of objects to contain suborders, and so on, in a fashion paralleling the hierarchical ladder of intensions. What certainly seems more problematical are the other too schemes. Consider what is covered by the different schemes, and how they relate to each other, as illustrated in our figure below (fig.4.):
a a
b b
c c
d d
e e
f f
g g
h h
Fig.4. How Schtzs schemes relate. A number of problems are apparent. First, why is there no scheme permitting us to consider the content (or the referent), not in itself, but relative to the expression (i.e. in Hjelmslevs terms, something like the content form )? It would seem that Schtz (just like Goodman; cf. Sonesson 1988,III.2.5. ) abolishes, at one stroke, both the distinction between content and reference (consciousness of an object, and the object of the objective world, respectively), and that between that part of content which is functional, and that which is not (i.e. such features of content which are pertinent or
22 The latter term, to be sure, never have possessed any well-defined meaning in semiotics. For are
review and critique of some usages, see Sonesson 1988, III.4.
31
not in relation to the sign function). In the second place, is the interpretational scheme - or, for that matter, the referential scheme - a scheme in our sense? Of course, at least the interpretational scheme may well be synthetically constituted out of acts of experience (which is Schtzs definition of a scheme), but it does not necessarily possess such other properties as we have attributed to schemes (in II.3.2-3. above). And thirdly, what is the precise relationship between the appresentational scheme and the interpretational one? Schtzs characterization, according to which the interpretational scheme relates the appresentational scheme and the referential scheme to each other, supposes that the equivalent of the expression form exists precedently to the relation between content and expression, which is of course quite the opposite of the assumption of phonology, which semiotics has taken over. It is like saying that there are phonemes in a language, irrespective of what exchanges of sounds make a difference to meaning. As applied to verbal language and other well established signification systems, Schtzs assumption simply must be wrong. We have already argued elsewhere (in Sonesson 1988,III.4. ), against Hjelmslev and structural semantics, that there can be no clear-cut distinction between form and substance on the level of content, comparable to that on the expression plane. Rather, there must be a feature hierarchy where different features are assigned varying weight. But that does certainly not do away with functionality; on the contrary, it is precisely relative to the expression plane that content features are more or less heavily weighted. Characterized in this way, the content can obviously not be identified with the result of a conceptual analysis (such as the "conceptual system" of Heger and Baldinger; or the "interpretation system" according to Prieto). From a quite different point of view, a distinction is imposed on us, in the case of the pictorial sign, between that which is here-seen and that which is presumably there-present (in Husserls terms: the picture object and the picture subject; cf. Sonesson 1988,III.3.5-6.). To take care of these distinctions, we will now redefine the referential scheme, and then add another type of scheme (presuming, for the present, that our two distinction may by cumulated): the referential scheme is that order of objects to which the indirectly perceived member of the appresentational pair belongs when considered as a self, disregarding any appresentational connections; the content scheme is that order of objects to which the indirectly perceived member of the appresentational pair belongs if experienced in its relationship to the directly perceived member of the appresentational pair; In the case of Matisses "Nu bleu" (which we analyzed in Sonesson 1988,I.5.2. ), for instance, the referential scheme will contain the ordinary body scheme, as conceived in a particular sociocultural Lifeworld, whereas the content scheme (since, in this case, it is an iconic scheme) projects some of the properties of the apperceptual and appresentational schemes on the referential scheme. If there even was a real, concrete woman which served as a model for Matisse in this work, she must be the referent of the picture, and not any scheme at all, but an individual concept which, as such, can be attached to one of the nodes of the referential scheme. But what about the distinction between the interpretational scheme and the
32
referential one? And how is it that Schtz believes the apperceptual scheme to be more accessible than the appresentational one? Very possibly, Schtz is not so interested in pre-given, socially convened signification systems, but rather directs his distinctions to such schemes as members of a given sociocultural Lifeworld, already deeply enmeshed in particular social interactions, have to construct as they go along. As an illustrative example, though perhaps not quite of the most ordinary, everyday kind, consider the way an idiosyncratic "code" is cracked in the Ellery Queen novel "Face to face". The situation may be described as follows:23 Ellery Queen is asked to resolve a murder case. The victim only leaves two things behind: a diary, and a piece of paper on which is written: "face". The detective is able to interpret the inscription as a message, only when he realizes, that the letters are not meant to be combined to words, but should be taken as the names of notes, more precisely of those notes which are customarily marked in between the lines of the score. The message, he takes it, is that he should look between the lines of that which is written in the diary; and, sure enough, something is written there, only with invisible ink. Now, let us try to make out how this strange code, this curious bricolage of different social signification systems, is able to transmit its message. The following phases may be distinguished: a) it is the alphabet which is given, as the self-evident appresentational scheme (well before the apperceptual scheme, i.e. strokes on paper), standing for the content scheme "phonemes of the English language" (since "face" is a possible English word and, beyond that, an actual English word); but the resolution of the problem requires us to substitute another appresentational scheme for the familiar one; b) the elements have to be rearranged, in order to fit into another scheme, more precisely, into another appresentational scheme. In this case, the letters remain letters, and they continue to stand for the same sounds (for as notes the letters are pronounced the same way as in the alphabet); still, they must be replaced into another scheme, for, unlike the letters of the alphabet, they are now not capable of being combined into larger configurations, viz. words; in particular, the linear order in which they follow each other is no longer relevant (or at least not relevant relative to the same sense); c) However, it is not enough to discover, that "f-a-c-e" is not only a subclass of the elements contained in the alphabet scheme "a,b,c,d,..." , but also in that of the tone scheme "c-d-ef-g-a-h"; for the question is also why this particular subclass has been selected. One possibility is, of course, that these notes have been chosen arbitrarily, to stand indexically for the entire musical scale; but this is an eventuality not considered by Ellery Queen. Even if we suppose that this particular combination of notes has been chosen on purpose, it could either be the "sum" of the elements (although perhaps a holistic "sum"), or some common property which is relevant. Some of these options may also be combined: perhaps the "sum" is relevant, but only as it is indexicality traced back to the totality formed by the musical scale. Strange to say, the victim has
23 We take other this statement of the problem from Asplund (1970:12ff) , whose analysis is however,
from our point of view, rather elementary. Yet, we owe to this author the suggestion, that the essence of the problem here resides in the discovery of the code. Eco (1976:312f) would probably consider the cracking of this code an example of what he terms "ratio difficilis" - which is not, we regret, to explain anything.
33
employed the kind of artifice which the Freudean unconscious is reputed to be using, viz. device termed "Rcksicht auf Darstellbarkeit", for the letters, which stand for notes, have been reshuffled so as to form a common word of the language (Cf.Lyotard 1971 and Sonesson 1988,II.1.4. ). The alphabetical scheme is thus misleading connotated (cf. Sonesson 1988,II.4. ). One further possible resolution of the puzzle could therefore be to unscramble the letters, reordering them as they are found in the musical scale, which gives: "c-e-f-a". But none of these possibilities produce the expected solution. Thus, we have to continue our search for a number of further phases: d) "f" is a sign which stands for the content "the tone f". Contrary to the case of verbal language, this scheme does not possess any second articulation (cf. Sonesson 1988,II.3.5.). However, on this level we cannot find any properties had in common by the four notes, which are not also present in all other elements of the musical scale. In the end, the relevant property is discovered by Ellery Queen in an alternative way of marking the notes, the score, where they all are written between lines. Thus, if we consider the letter notation which the note scheme shares with the alphabet scheme to be one expression substance of the former scheme (as well as of the second), then another substance is the score itself, and it is a property of this alternative substance which turns out to be relevant here; which is to say that the substance of the tonal scheme is turned into the form of a new, expressly made-up code. In order to discover the latter code, we need a metalinguistic competence as applied to the tonal code; but we never have to go beyond the content scheme to the referential scheme of the tonal code, to the musical tones themselves. Now, in order to get any further, we must e) ascribe to the property derived from the alternative expression substance of the tonal notation code an implicit illocution: "[search] between the lines [!]". To justify this, we must of course suppose that the victim had an intention in writing down the letters "face" on a piece of papers at the very moment of being killed. An indexical chain may be reconstructed: the writing refers to the past act of scribbling it down; and the act itself took place in the immediate neighbourhood of the act of murder. This time, no meaning is transferred by the contiguity, but only import: that which was written down at the moment of dying must carry weight. The act of murder irradiates significance all around it. We are still not arrived at the end. For if we take up a musical score, or write one down, and start to search between the lines, we will find nothing. So, between what lines are we to look? f) The riddle would have no solution, if it were not for the fact that the piece of paper was found in contiguity with the dairy, or, perhaps more precisely, that, together with the piece of paper, the dairy formed the class of objects left behind by the victim (in fact, more objects of her possession must have survived her; so we are really concerned with the more precarious subclass of objects of significance inside the class of objects left behind). However, in order to translate the injunction from the tonal score to the dairy, we will have to make a metamorphic projection from one scheme to another (which is how Goodman describes metaphors generally), using as a base the rudiment of iconicity which consists in both schemes having lines. However, we should not expect to find notes between the lines of the dairy - that would
34
be pointless. Indeed, we must watch out, so as not to transfer too many properties from "vehicle" to "tenor"; the metaphor is purely instrumental, and must be abandoned as soon as the connection between the schemes has been made (cf. discussion of metaphors, in Sonesson 1988,III.6. ). g) The last, and extraordinary fact, which is of interest to us here, is that, in the end, when Ellery Queen looks between the lines of the dairy, there is nothing written there. There is no expression of any further signification system. Still, Ellery Queen does not abandon all hope. He supposes there to be something written with invisible ink, and so takes measures to call forth the writing. Perhaps it is not so strange that he should not give up: if the text had been clearly visible in the first place, it would not had been written between the lines, but would have formed lines themselves. It was already implied in the injunction, that he had to search for a hidden system of signification. What we have here is really a hermeneutical problem, in the sense of Ricur (1965) : when the multiplicity of meanings makes the determination of import difficult of access. If he was thinking about cases like this, it is understandable that Schtz thought the interpretation, that is, the connection between the appresentational and the referential schemes, formed a scheme of its own; and, since in such cases, one appresentational scheme may have to be exchanged for another, it is less curious, that Schtz should have considered the apperceptual scheme to be more directly accessible. That pictorial meaning is at least in part derived in this precarious way, is suggested by Flochs (1981a,b) use of the Lvi-Straussean term "bricolage" in this context (though less so by Flochs actual analytical practice; cf. Sonesson 1988,II.3. and below); and by the notion of a "pictorial semiogenesis", as propounded by Tardy (1975;1979) and Doll (1975) ; and also by at least some of the examples of pictorial rhetorics discussed by Groupe . Before returning to these issues, we will now go on to consider Greimass notion of isotopy.
II.1.3.5. The notion of isotopy. Greimas tells a joke.

There is a strange ambiguity to Greimass notion of isotopy, for while the varying intuitive explanations of it are pervasively suggestive, the operationalization of this identical notion has all the appearance of being excessively simplistic (in this discrepancy we have to look for the explanation for the curious fact that the term has so often been used improperly, even by such serious semioticans as Fischer-Lichte 1983 ). Let us now first turn to the intuitive characterizations. Greimas (1966:96) talks about the permanence of contextual features, so-called classemes, whose variations, instead of destroying the unity of the "text", serve to confirm it (our italics, also in the following). We are concerned with
"un ensemble de catgories smantiques qui rend possible la lecture uniforme du rcit, telle quellle rsulte des lectures partielles des noncs et de la rsolution de leurs ambiguit qui est guide par la recheche de la lecture unique" (Greimas 1970:188; our italics).
35
In other contexts, Greimas (1972:8) informs us, that the isotopy is characterized by its "cohrence syntagmatique"; and that is should be defined in relation to the "reader" (1966:69) - it is true that the latter requirement is formulated in contrast to a definition in relation to the speaker, not to an immanent approach, which is in fact the one followed by Greimas in the sequel. For the result of a Greimasean isotopy analysis is simply a list of lexemes having some contextual features in common - which seems a far cry from all the suggestions contained in the intuitive characterizations. When the notion of isotopy is first introduced by Greimas (1966:50ff) , it is geared to resolve the same problem, which Katz, inside generative grammar, takes care of with the help of "selectional restrictions".24 In the sentence "le chien aboie" [i.e. "the dog barks"], subject and verb are semantically coherent, which they are not in the variant sentence "le chien caquette" [i.e. "the dog cackles"]; here, the difference may be accounted for by a "selectional restriction", or by a "minimal isotopy". But Greimas (p.71f) also discusses the ambiguity of the French phrase "le chien du commissaire aboie", which may either mean that the dog in the commissarys possession is barking, or that the commissary himself is crying or scolding in such an unrestrained fashion, that he seems to be barking, and that, in addition, he has the lowly status of a dog in the opinion of the speaker.25 Katz would here have said, that the lexeme "dog" requires that the verb chosen to go with it possesses a particular specification of the selectional feature "NP__[+animate]" 26. If we follow the modification of Katzs theory suggested by Weinreich and Botha, we then could take a process of metaphorization to explain the second interpretation of the phrase "le chien du commissaire aboie"; on the original theory, however, we must suppose there to be an alternative lexical entry. Greimas (ibid.) indeed discusses these examples in terms of the opposition between the contextual features "human" and "animate"; but obviously a much more specific isotopy would have to be defined, in order to account for the deviancy of the phrase "le chien caquette"; that is, we need the feature "caninity". We can now easily discover at least two advantages which the notion of isotopy possesses over the Katzean selectional restrictions: a) an isotopy does not pertain just to the relation between two lexemes, but serves to connect the entire text; thus, it is unnecessary artificially to introduce selectional restrictions repeatedly in the same text. In even without going beyond the sentence limit, we would need a number of selectional restrictions, but just one isotopy, to account for the phrase "the shaggy poodle barked viciously, but then obediently showed it could
24 The analysis which follows below resumes, and then expands, the one contained in Sonesson 1978b:50ff and in a lecture prepared for the Escuela Nacional de Antropologa e Historia, in Mexico City, in August 1981. 25 In fact, in this second sense, "le chien de X" expresses a particular evaluation of X; "aboie" qualifies in a negative way the particular way X has of expressing himself. On the content level of the metaphor, there is really no isotopy, that is, no recurrence of contextual semes here; it is by pure coincidence that the canine sphere has to provide the metaphoric vehicles for both the occurrences. 26 This is a purely imaginary example, to be sure, because Katz always has thought, that selection must start from the verb, not from the noun; that is, it is the noun which possesses a selectional features specifying the kind of verb it requires.
36
retrieve ". b) selectional restrictions, just like the indications found traditionally in lexicons, of the type "bark = making a noise (said of dogs)", gives the impression to state a simple combinatorial restraint, which does not effect meaning; it is like saying that verbs like "bark, cackle, moo, mew, neigh", etc., really mean the same thing, but are used in connection with different nouns (as the variant forms of the articles in languages like French). But it is only if we admit that these verbs have different meanings, that we can explain the possibility of metaphor, and even give a realistic description of linguistic semantics (cf. Sonesson 1988,III.4.1. and III.6.4.). The advantage of the notion of isotopy, in this context, is that it does seem to imply, that such features as these are meanings but, as we shall see, their status really remains unclear. However, there are also a number of difficulties with the notion of isotopy, in particular pertaining to the way it has been operationalized. These are, among others, the following: a) "caninity" can hardly be said to "be in" the dog in the same way in which it is present in the barking; that is, to say that a particular sound has the property "caninity" , and that a specific animal has this property, cannot signify the same thing; or else, all that the classeme "caninity" implies is something vague, like "we-are-in-the-process-of-talking-aboutdogs" . Thus, all that the isotopy amounts to is a characterization of the subject of discourse. b) the point of analyzing complete units of meaning into features is, as Hjelmslev stated, to reduce infinite classes to finite and preferentially to small ones. But since we clearly need more specific features than "animalhood", and at least as particular as "caninity" (and perhaps "poodleness"), it is not obvious that there are a limited number of isotopies. c) Rastiers (1972:82) suggestion, that the isotopy should be taken to be an unordered set, with no inner structure, is unacceptable, since it deprives this notion of all explanatory value. To begin with, the classemic features must be placed inside a syntactic frame, for otherwise we could never account for the fact that, on the literal reading, the isotopy of the phrase "le chien du commissaire aboie", does not comprise the commissary. d) But the isotopy must also possess a specifically semantic organization. In fact, apart from the syntactico-semantic restraints determining when a particular pronoun is capable of referring back to a particular antecedent in the discourse, there is also the purely semantic question concerning the point where a feature becomes so deeply embedded in the hierarchical armature of the lexeme, that it is not available as a referent in the following discourse; that "cut something with a pair of scissors" establishes the pair of scissors as a referent; but the Swedish verb "klippa", which in a sense has the same meaning, fails to make this instrument a possible referent (cf.Sonesson 1978a:132ff ). e) There is yet another organization of the isotopy, which is more important in the present content, already because it is more clearly generalizable beyond verbal language. Many of the terms employed in
37
Greimass intuitive characterizations of the isotopy concept imply the existence of a temporal structure. Redundance, for instance, deriving as it does from the mathematical theory of communication, stands for total predictability, which obviously refers us to the relative certainty of (at least the idealized case of) the expectancies of the message receiver . When Greimas talks about the isotopy being confirmed, this is clearly reminiscent of the Bruner & Postman model of hypothesis-testing as applied to perception (later developed by Gregory, Neisser, and Hochberg, cf. Sonesson 1988,III.3.3. ). Also the presence of iteration, the search for a unique reading, and the resolution of ambiguities , requires there to be at least one point in time, from which they can take their departure. We are thus reminded about the Husserlean time consciousness, projecting its protentions and retentions from a single point in time (see II.3.3. above). This last point, the necessary presence of temporality, at least in the sense of sequence, for actual meaning effects to obtain, is what will permit us to proceed in our discussion, from the notion of isotopy to the concept of scheme. For, what happens when expectancies are not fulfilled? Greimas (1966:70) recounts a funny story to illustrate the case of a "rupture of an isotopy":
"Cst une brillante soire mondaire, trs chic, avec des invits tris sur le volet. A un moment, deux convives vont prendre un peu lair sur la terrasse: - Ah! fait lun dun ton satisfait, belle soire, hein? Repas magnifique... et puis jolies toilettes, hein? - a, dit lautre, je nen sais rien. - Comment a? - Non, je ny suis pas all! " [from Point de vue, 23 fvr.1962]
The joke clearly depends on the ambiguity of the term "toilette" in French (which is also found in English): lavatory, or particularly elegant dress. According to Greimass very brief analysis, a first isotopy is established by the introductory paragraph, whereupon the dialogue permits a second isotopy the irrupt brusquely. Neither Greimas himself nor any of his followers have ever tried to detail this analysis any further; and yet, it is certainly not clear how the notion of isotopy is supposed to account for the humorous effect produced. Among the reasons for this failure, one may be particular to the example chosen: the two meanings of the signifier "toilette" do not possess any semantic features in common.Greimas (p.71) claims this term is the "terme connecteur commun" of the two isotopies, but then adds, curiously enough, that we do not have to ask ourselves if they possess a common semical figure! It is true that Greimass disciple Rastier (1972:83,99ff) introduces isotopies also on the plane of expression, but although we are concerned, in our funny story, with two contents having just one expression, there is really no expression isotopy, for the expression itself is never repeated; and, in any case, it is certainly on the level of content, that a "rupture" is produced. Taking account of the suggestion above (point c), that anaphoric chains should be included in isotopies, we may indeed rewrite the dialogue of the story in the following fashion:
"- Repas magnifique...et puis jolies toilettes1, hein? - a [that is, if the toilets2 are beautiful], dit lautre, je nen [if the toilets3 are beautiful] sais rien.
38
- Comment a [that is, how is it possible that you do not know that the toilets4 are beautiful, since everybody is able to see it right away] ? - Non, je ny suis pas all [that is, I have not been to the toilets5 ]."
According to this analysis, there would really be a fivefold repetition of the signifier "toilet", although all but one instance would be implicit. The first occurrence appears in the unambiguous context "manifestations of the success of the party, as well as of its elegant character" (hardly a member of a limit set of classemes). But on which isotopy are we then to situate the second occurrence? Note first that, instead of the translation suggested above, the word "a" could in principle also have as its antecedent everything which was said by the first speaker; but then there would be no joke; and, in any case, this interpretation is ruled out be the second speakers last rejoinder. Now, clearly, if we could have access to the mind of the second speaker, we would know that the second and third instances refer to a second meaning of the term "toilet"; but this we can only discover at a later stage, by a projection back from the last retort. At the moment they are employed, the second speakers words are really undecidable; or, more precisely, guided by the presuppositions already in force, we take it for granted, that the meaning is the same as before. The same observation equally applies to occurrence number four. In its fifth occurrence, however, the signifier "toilet" enters into a syntactico-semantic frame, which only admits of a second interpretation: it is possible to be to (actually, to go to ) the lavatory, but not an elegant dress. Thus, the puzzle is resolved by a feat which curiously resembles a Katzean selectional restriction. But this is certainly not the way all jokes obtain their resolution. Often, climax is reached in more subtle ways. Indeed, in the present case, it is the building-up of the first isotopy, and the attacks which it is able to withstand, which are the most interesting. It is of course conceivable, but not very probable for somebody to admire the lavatories. But the sheer amount of details establishing the luxurious and festive character of the occasion, immediately suggests that elegant clothing is what is meant. That the fourth occurrence of the signifier "toilette" still refers to the festive reading is obvious, not only because it is plausible that the first speaker sticks to his primitive interpretation, but also because his surprise at the others ignorance demonstrates, that he intends to be talking about something which anybody present at the party is bound to observe. Thus, the isotopy of festivity is here derived from a more general isotopy, the one of publicly observable facts, which is opposed to different orders of secrets. The result of all this, in any case, is certainly a fivefold, implicit repetition of the signifier "toilette", which may be said to establish an expression isotopy; but on this expression level, there is no rupture, for, from instance to instance, all expression features remains identical. The rupture is on the part of content; but between the first occurrence and the last, there is a complete semantic exclusion, with no features in common, not just an exchange of contextual features! Rastier (op.cit.:84) introduces what he calls "semiological isotopies", where it is the "nuclear figures" (that is, those semes of the lexemes which are contextindependent), not the classemes, which are repeated. Strictly speaking, this suggestion amounts to an abolition of the distinction between classemes and nuclear figures, for Greimas (1966:52f) uses the very fact of iteration to define the former; however,
39
intuitively, Rastiers proposal seems meaningful, so let us suppose that the distinction may yet be operationalized in some fruitful manner. In an admirable way, Rastier demonstrates that Mallarms poem "Salut" may be analyzed in a number of isotopies, two of which are "banquet" and "sailing", which each have a few unique signifiers while sharing many others. Perhaps are we confronted with a similar case here? But in Mallarms poem, such at is is analyzed by Rastier, there is apparently a whole series of lexemes which form part (and may form part) of the same semantic fields, or at least, in a vaguer sense, to the same sphere of signification, as for instance "sailing", "toasting", etc. Also, there are some lexemes pertaining to one isotopy, which, the the aid of a metaphorical suppression of some traits, may be read on other isotopies. Thus, in the toast isotopy, the term "poupe" (that is, litterally, stern) from the sailing isotopy, retains its abstract features [+extremity] and [+posteriority], becoming a metaphor for the end of the table. However, in Greimass funny story, we may perhaps be able to find some common features of the nuclear figures of the lexemes present in the first isotopy (though even these traits must be rather idiosyncratic); but nothing of the sort is possible, for the first isotopy, which has no lexemes of its own. And between the nuclear figures of central lexemes of the two isotopies, no single traits is identical. The strange fact, however, is that, while no real isotopies are to be discovered in Greimass joke, there is no doubt that it is organized around a rupture! It may therefore be suggested, that an isotopy, in the more restricted sense of a set of redundant semic categories, is only one of the several means which a scheme has at its disposal. Indeed, Rastier (1972:86) refers somewhat obliquely to "le rituel du banquet", by means of which the toast isotopy acquires its import in Mallarms poem. I Greimass joke, the first scheme is first explicitly introduced: "Cest une brillante soire mondaire, trs chic, avec des invits tris sur le volet"; and such expectancies which are thereby built up are confirmed and amplified by the mention of the terrace, as well as by the content of the first speakers discourse. Then the second, implicit occurrence of the signifier "toilette", in the second speakers first rejoinder, begins, without really succeeding, to call in question the first, already well-established scheme. At the same time, however, other, more general expectancies are beginning to crystallize. All that happens at the party, or at least all the symptoms of its refinement and distinction, are there for everybody to see; the festive scheme is one among a number of public schemes (in the sense of Habermass "reprsentative ffentlichkeit"). When the second speaker discovers to us his ignorance of all these publicly apparent symptoms of elegance, a new scheme is already prepared for. It could either be a scheme whose theme is this very ignorance on the part of the second speaker; or it might be a scheme highlighting some secret, hidden element taking the place of that which is apparently given for everyone to see. So far, no scheme have been disconfirmed; we are just in doubt. It takes a syntactical frame, not an isotopy, to destroy completely the first scheme, and to establish an alternative one: that concerned with the semi-secret practice of using the lavatories. These indications certainly brings us much closer to Koestlers analysis of humour than to Greimass isotopies; here, we are really confronted with "the perceiving of a situation in two self-consistent but mutually incompatible frames of reference"
40
(Koestler 1978:113ff; cf. also Koestler 1964:27ff ). Particularly fitting is Koestlers observation, than in funny stories, expectations are built up, but climax is never reached (although, strictly speaking, not every scheme, not even every temporal scheme, possesses a climax; thus, for instance, the festive scheme may lack it):
"The punchline or point acts as a verbal guillotine which cuts across the logical development of the story; it debunks our dramatized expectation; the tension we felt becomes suddenly redundant and is exploded in laughter. [- - - ] "We laugh because our emotions have a greater inertia and persistence than our reasoning processes" (1978:114,118).
According to Koestler (ibid.), this explanation is quite obvious to the physiologist, the emotion being located in the ancient parts of the nervous system; it is as if, in Husserls terms, reason and emotion had different protentional structures. However, we are not concerned to discuss this aspect of Koestlers theory here. In any case, not all ruptures of expectations occurring inside schemes are necessarily amusing; nor is it obvious that all schemes reach a climax, or that a dramatic tension is necessary for humour to result. Suffice it to observe, for the moment, that at least some jokes involve, among other things, a rupture of the expectancies produced by one scheme, and the exchange of this scheme for another. In the following section, we will reconsider this interpretation, though an analysis of some funny stories narrated in the shape of drawings.
II.1.3.6. Monk(e)y business. Disconfirmed expectancies in pictorial schemes.

As so often, we will take our point of departure from pictorial analyses already performed by others semioticians, not in order to criticize them, nor to present them as exemplary, but with the intention of evaluating their achievements and suggest some methodological developments. Thus, it will turn out that Koch (1971:138ff) has something to offer, which is of interest in our context, and so has his disciple Hnig (1974:35ff), who even employs the notion of isotopy as defined by Greimas (cf.II.1.3.5. above). To begin with, however, we shall consider Kochs example, which is a comic strip bearing the title "Sad Sack: the proposition", reproduced below (fig.5 ). Even at the first, superficial reading, it is apparent, that here the first seven panels serve to build up certain expectations, which may be assigned to the scheme "prostitution", whereas the last panel decidedly breaks with this scheme, instead presenting a phase taken from a scheme we could term "house work". Once arrived at this point, the signification process has to turn around on itself: the first seven panels are retroactively recuperated to the house work scheme, even though they will never take on the "norm-al" aspect of this scheme.27 There would be no difficulty, it seems, to characterize both these schemes independently of their use in this particular story. Thus,
27 Thus, the house work scheme itself has to be accommodated in Piagets sense (cf.II.1.3.1. above):
panel 1 and 3 certainly offer resistance to this process; and it is not certain that panels 1-2 can be integrated into this scheme, but then perhaps as representing a misunderstanding on the part of one of the participants; otherwise, a new rupture may ensue, on this second, retroactive reading. Cf. main text below and note 30.
41
prostitution is a scheme which is in part temporally distributed . In some respects, it should remind us of other erotic, or quasi-erotic schemes, such as what Morris 1971 calls "intimate behaviour" and what Scheflen 1974 terms "quasi-courtship behaviour"; but it also have a number of other, even static, particularities (see below). As for the household scheme, it is well known (and may be studied in the womens weeklies; cf. Millum 1975 ).
Fig.5. "Sad Sack: the proposition" (From Koch 1971:38) In the comic strip before us, the is an obvious rupture taking place in the last panel; but, on the other hand, once we have identified the genre of this temporal set of drawings as being that of a humorous story, we already expect our expectancies to be deceived .28 What the reader is unable to know beforehand, to be sure, is on what level of the scheme (or of the hierarchy of schemes) the rupture is to take place. In the following analysis, we will, for practical reasons, only consider the referential and the content schemes.
28 Indeed, Hnig 1974
had some experimental subject guess how another comic strip, which we will consider below, was to continue; no one thought of terminating the story in the way chosen by the draughtsman, but everybody expected the expectancies built up in the beginning of the strip to be frustrated. There are some similar experiments in Gauthier 1982:48ff , where it is demonstrated that scrambled panels taken from a funny stories such as Peanuts are more easily put back in the correct order, and by smaller children, than reshuffled panels of adventure strips. The latter result should be compared with the findings on story competence in general, found in Leondar 1977 (referred to above, in II.1.1.)
42
However, we should proceed cautiously here. It has often been observed, that each picture may contain a potentially infinite set of statements (cf.Sonesson 1988,III.4. ); how, in that case, are we to be able to extract, from the first panel, those elements which are relevant for what is to follow? Fresnault-Deruelle (1977a,b) , it will be remembered (cf.II.1.1.), noted that, alongside the tabular reading of each panel in a temporal set, there is also the possibility of a linear one, that is, the option of following through an interpretation from the upper right to the lower left of the set, the tabular import being as a result reduced to the continuity of a story. Koch (op.cit.;38) likewise talks about "recurrent pictorial elements", putatively analogous to the words of verbal language, here exemplified by such units as "soldier", "woman", "mutual relationship between soldier and woman", etc. It would be important to investigate thoroughly, at what level such an analogy obtains; for while it is true that units such as "soldier" and "woman" can be considered to be signs in the strip before us, since they have their independent levels of appresentation (cf. Sonesson 1988,III.4. ), the same contents may also be conveyed as portions of larger signs, standing, for instance, for such contents as "contingent" and "sewing-guild", respectively; and, inversely, it would seem that even smaller real-world parts, such as "arm position", "clothing", etc. may be appresented in a relatively autonomous way. What do make up the particularity of these units, however, is the fact that the recur all through the strip, appearing in all, or at least a number of consecutive panels. Thus, they form an isotopy, in Greimass, and more particularly in Rastiers sense (cf.II.3.5. above); however, there is no rupture in this isotopy. Unfortunately, to talk here, with Koch, about recurrent units is to beg the question; for none of these putatively recurrent units is identical in an absolute sense from panel to panel; and though it may certainly be said, that only non-pertinent features are modified from one panel to another, it is precisely this principle of relevance, for which we must account. In order to pin down the primitive phases of pictorial semiosis here, it will be necessary to adopt a little less structuralist conception. In Sonesson 1988,I.3.2. , we argued that the picture, just like the Lifeworld, is perceived along two different types of hierarchies, the extensional one, going, in the case of the body, to the body parts; and the intensional one, which brings us to more and more precise redescription of the same object, taking ever more account of contextual circumstances, thus bringing us from "being", "man", "soldier", "officer", "the Duke of Wellington", etc. Relying on findings in cognitive psychology, in particular those of Rosch and Bower, respectively, we also claimed that, in each of these, hierarchies, there is a base level, which is neither the most abstract nor the most concrete one, but a middle-level abstraction. And we hypothesized that pictures, in the ordinary case, adopt these base levels, but are also able to modify them, to change them upwards or downwards, as a rhetorical device (cf. Sonesson 1988,III.5. ). Now, clearly, the base figure level present in the first panel of the strip here considered is the ordinary one, perhaps even the primordial one: man and woman. From the extensional vantage point, this simply means, the the unit is, both times, the human body. Indeed, what Bower showed was, that at a certain point, the childs primary segmentation of reality, from having been based on events , becomes thing-individuated.
43
Moreover, there no doubt exist, biologically perhaps, and then also socioculturally, Lifeworld hierarchies on which the objects of our experience are ranged according to their relative importance (cf. Sonesson 1988,III.6. and conclusion ): thus, it is wellknown from psychology, that it is first of all human beings, then animals, and then other moving objects, which attract our attention. Pending further investigation of this hierarchy, in its different sociocultural implementations, it seems reasonable to suppose, that the content units "man" and "woman" must be placed near the apex of all variants of the hierarchy, already because of the importance of the sexual distinction, not only for the division of labour, as Durkheim remarked - but also for the unification of leisure. On this background, it is hardly very problematical to claim, already on the inspection of the first panel, that this is a story about a man and a woman, not, for instance, about a street corner or a flower-pot (if these latter objects are not exceptionally turned into "ultra-choses", in the sense of Wallon, or otherwise acquire symbolic value, in the particular Lifeworld of the viewer). Indeed, the whole comic strip can be taken to form a sequence of statements, the entire import of which consists in assigning attributes to the man, the woman, and the relationship between them, some of the attributes being immediately incorporated into the basic units, where they remain for the rest of the strip, whereas other attributes last only the space of a single panel, but may constitute protentions and retentions in further panels (this is somewhat reminiscent of the functioning of the "anaphoric chain" in a verbal text; cf. point d in II.3.5.; and also of "predication" on a perceptual object, as described by Gurwitsch 1973 ). At the intensional level, it is at once possible to upgrade our couple, terming them, more homogeneously than Koch proposes, "soldier" and "prostitute". While these may be the base figure levels, they contained by implication the contents "man" and "woman", so it is still possible to start from there. The female figure constitutes in certain respects (bosom, hips) a positively exaggerated idealtype29 of the contemporary Western prototype of femininity (in one of its senses, that of sexuality); whereas the man represents a negatively exaggerated instance on the corresponding scale of masculinity (short of stature, big-nosed - which may be a metonymy for ugliness or ridiculousness; cf. II.1.3.8. below -, timid expression, etc.). Potentially, the schemes of masculinity and femininity are present here, and becomes highlighted already be the fact of their exaggeration in opposite directions; but they are constant all through the story, and so are of less interest in the present context. That the man is a soldier is seen already in the first panel, simply from the uniform he wears. Also, the woman is immediately identified as a prostitute. What is interesting, however, is to find out how we recognize the woman as a prostitute, for it is this recognition which, all on its own, establish the prostitution scheme in the strip; for while it is true that this scheme requires one further actant, having, in Greimass
29 On the distinction between idealtype and prototype, cf. Sonesson 1988,I.3.1. , and also our discussion below, in II.1.3.8. Roughly, we take the idealtype to exaggerate features which are present in reality, while the prototype represents an at least potentially real, but particularly characteristic case.
44
parlance, the thematic role of a client, the only feature necessary for a person to fill this slot is masculinity, in the biological sense, not in the cultural sense, in which the soldier of our strip is clearly designated as lacking it. Here we may return to Kochs (p.39f) analysis, according to which the following features are relevant in the first panel: A: arm forming angular shape; B: leg position; C: dcolletage; D: body and eye position of a person waiting (bent down); E: leaning against the wall; F: street corner; G: tightfitting dress; H: flower-pot. This list has a somewhat unsystematic character, and we will try to reorganize it in the following. According to Koch, the feature F (by which he here clearly means, more precisely, the fact, for a woman, of standing at the corner of a street ) is by itself sufficient, in the Middle East, to mark someone as being a prostitute; but in periods of war, he adds, the feature C is also needed, in order to distinguish the whore from the Red Cross nurse. However, in Western society, according to the same authority, one of the constellations A+G, A+B+F, or B+D, is required, in order to designated someone as a prostitute, while the feature H is entirely irrelevant. It should be noted, that without commenting on this fact, Koch here introduces units which are not full signs, nor simply differential elements like phonemes; rather, they are symptoms, whose function it is to make a particular interpretation more and more probable (which is, as we noted in Sonesson 1988,I.1.2. and III.4. the typical way meaning is constituted in pictures). It is also interesting to observe, that many of Kochs features really amounts to constraints on the expression substance of the sign for "woman"; for while any drawing of a woman must show arms, legs, bosom, etc., lest they are rhetorical modifications of the extensional base level, as Matisses cut-outs, only some drawings must show an arm in angular position, this particular leg configuration, dcolletage, etc. As we have noted elsewhere, one peculiarity of pictures, it to contain signs-inside-signs, while yet remaining on the plane of denotation (no new, connotative principle is introduced, since the reference continues to be the same Lifeworld; cf. Sonesson 1988,II.1.3.,II.4., etc.). Thus, Kochs analysis so far serves to confirm what we have pointed out earlier. On the other hand, Kochs features certainly seem arbitrary, both as to their selection and to their limits. As for the first point, a number of other features of relevance may readily be added: the protruding hip, the hand touching the hip, etc. More importantly, the features themselves appears to be very heterogeneous, and partly overlap. To talk about "head- and eye position of a person waiting" ("Kopf- und Augenstellung des Wartens"), would seem to be a sudden shift from the expression to the content plane of gestural semiotics, at least if this signifies anything more than "bent down" ("geneigt"). But the latter features, and a lot of the others, including those we just suggested, could well be included as parts of the feature "leaning on the wall". A more thorough analysis is needed in order to differentiate what is a stake here. To learn on a wall is an instrumental act, serving to render less taxing the standing position; and it is conceivable that this act, at least when executed in particular places, such as street corners, is in itself an indicator of the status of being a prostitute; and, how ever that may be, there may possibly be some subclass of the class of all bodily configurations which constitute postures accomplishing the goal of supporting oneself on a wall, which as such signal the prostitute status. Similarly, it could be that particular angle of the arm,
45
or the way the hand touched the hip, or both, supposing them to be able to vary independently, which serve to indicate the profession of the woman. For lack of more ample information, we will in the following accept all conceivable indications of prostitutehood as valid. It must now be noted, that all the postures taken by the woman in the different panels, which are variants of the unit (Kochs "logem") "woman", are invariants when considered as manifesting the prostitution scheme, i.e. they form part of a limited class of postures which confirm the expectancies fostered by this scheme. In part, the prostitution scheme takes on the form of a story. Only the most limited resources of narratology are required for our present discussion (cf.II.1.1. above). According to the simple framework proposed by Rumelhart (1975:217) , a story must have a setting and an episode, which may be analyzed further into a series of events (and change of state, reaction, etc.). In its classical form, we submit, the prostitution scheme contains two obligatory settings, first the street, and then indoors, preferentially a bedroom. Thus, the setting is not given once and for all, for one of the important events of the scheme is precisely this change of setting. With this modification, the panels of our strip may now be distributed on Rumelharts tree in the following, somewhat overlapping fashion (fig.6.):
Scheme:
Episode1:
Episode link:
Episode2:
Setting1: street(1-4)
Episode1:
displacement(4-5)
Setting2: indoors(bedroom) (expected in 6)
Episode2:
offer(1)
client(2)
negotiation(3)
payment(-)
arrival(4-6)
undressing(7)
coitus(-)
payment(-)
Fig.6. The narrative part of the prostitution scheme. We could baptize the first episode "Negotiation" and the second one "Coitus". Payment, it seems, could be a part of any of these episodes; since, in the strip, it appears already in the first episode, the prostitution scheme is seemingly confirmed, and no second sub-episode of this kind is expected in the following. Perhaps, then, the payment should rather be considered a free element in relation to both episodes, which, in particular, serves to embed the coitus episode. Panel 1 does not only show the subepisode of the offer, but also the arrival of the male character, which is obvious from his arrested position: he is on his way out of the picture, but looks back on the woman. Other indication of the mans status as a client are forthcoming in the second panel,
46
where the man enters in verbal contact with the woman. The way of starting the negotiation is no doubt a little devious, that is, not "norm-al" in the scheme, but secrecy may be assimilated to the prostitution scheme as an indication of a lack of experience on the part of the client. The displacement phase of the scheme is present only as a retention in panel 4 and 5, which already mark the arrival at the second scene of the action. Also panel 6 partakes of the action of arrival, in the form of a retention, for the fact that the man is here offered a chair implies that he just has entered the apartment. So far, everything conspires to confirm the prostitution scheme: the womans apparel and postures, viewed from different viewpoints; the way the couple move on to the second setting; the staircase, which in itself evokes images of a decayed "htel de passe", etc. However, panel 6 is already a moment of uncertainty: is it conceivable that a prostitute would show her client such politeness, as to offer him a chair? Our doubts are quieted in the next panel already, where the chair turns out to have an instrumental function, precisely for the accomplishment of the next phase of the prostitution scheme, the undressing (though we may have expected the woman to take her own clothes off, rather than those of the man). Of course, this is nothing at all in comparison with the contradiction to the scheme which panel 8 yields: after having taken the mans trousers off, the women does not go on to undress him completely, but instead starts ironing the trousers. Here, then, the prostitution scheme is with one stroke completely disconfirmed. And yet, the question is, if it is really possible to assimilate panels 1-3, as well as the clothing and bodily attitudes of the woman throughout to the household scheme. Perhaps, after all, we should still try to accommodate the facts to the prostitution scheme: maybe the soldier in his innocence failed to identify a prostitute as such, asking her to iron his trousers; and she accepted his "proposition", either out of pity, or because better for the ironing than other for sexual intercourse. In making these considerations, we are, of course, more than ever ruining the joke; and yet it is important to observe, that a new hermeneutical problem emerges from the attempt to project the newly acquired scheme backwards. As a first suggestion, a more complete prostitution scheme should contain at least the following elements, where many a part derive from more general erotical operations applied to the common body scheme (fig.7 ): A few comments would seem to be required here. The more features from this scheme are chosen, the more the scheme itself is confirmed; but there may also be features carrying heavier weight than others. The all-pervading attributes (which are in need of analysis) are included here to stand proxy for the difference between prostitution and more "decent" seduction. Later on (in II.3.9.), we shall a little more to say about those parts of the scheme which are more generally erotic. Starting from the body type, we note, already in the first panel, that the woman of the strip has big breasts and, more generally, that her body composes the characteristic shape of a double sinus curve, so often scribbled on toilet walls (which, according to Schuster, is a biological releasing device, like Lorenzs babyness; cf.II.1.3.8.). Her clothing is tight-fitting and thin, almost transparent (that is, the draughtsman has so distributed black and white portions of the figure, that sexually invested parts constantly stand out). Indeed, the
47
bosom seems almost completely nude, but the nipples, which may be taken to be the central parts of the breasts, are hidden, following a paradoxical operation of emphasis. The leg position, in the first panel, possibly marks bodily openness. Being posed on on hip, the hand highlights the erotic charge of the hip, whereas the position of the other arm must, for purely anatomical reasons, have the effect of lifting up the bosom. The hip is emphasized a second time though its protruding position. The womans posture seems nonchalant, and the very accumulation of erotical markings is possibly what is commonly qualified as "vulgarity".
body type: large body parts prototypical shapes youth transparent tight-fitting nude erotical parts veiled erotical parts veiled parts contiguous to erotical ones veiled non-erotical parts projecting erotical parts moving erotical parts touching own erotical parts closeness to the other touching the other open body configuration nonchalance vulgarity callousness hardness commerciality street-corners doorways certain streets from street to bedroom E1: negotiation; E2: intercourse. A1: prostitute; A2: male
body scheme (to which erotical operations apply):
apparel:
posture/ movement:
all-pervading attributes: behaviour:
locations:
displacements: action sequence: roles:
Fig.7. A fragment of the prostitution scheme. In panel number 2, the same bodily type recurs, but here, as well as in all the following panels, the body is shown to us from other view-points, so that the original body interpretation can be confirmed from a whole family of perspectives. The only new fact of panel 2 is that now the second hip is also emphasized by being touched. In panel 3, the lower body parts are brought closer to the client, but in other respects, the
48
attitude conveys the properties of hardness and commerciality. And in panel 6, which, in other ways, first seems to countermand the prostitution scheme, bosom and bottom protrude markedly, the bosom at the same time approaching the man, or more precisely to his potential position in the chair offered him. In panel 7, the velocity lines around the upper body parts clearly emphasis the besom again; and, at the same time, the leg position suggest maximal openness. In the last panel, on the other hand, all erotical elements are reduced: the angle of vision is chosen in such as way, as not highlight the bodily forms. The only element which may still be erotically interpreted is the closeness of the bosom to the man, but the entire situation conspires to invalidate this meaning imposition. We have mostly been concerned about the referential scheme, but also the content scheme intervenes at a few points, notably in the choice of prototypical temporal phases taken from the full behaviour sequence, and in the election of pictorial angles. We already commented above on the latter aspect: the choice of an array of variegated perspectives serves to exhibit the womans sexual attractions as completely as possible, until, in the last panel, such exposure turns counter-productive for the new scheme. But the choice of temporal phases also is important: they are chosen so as to pin-point some essential prototypical moments of the prostitution scheme. Many a phase extracting from a real sequence of prostitutional behaviour would not serve the purpose well; thus, the prostitute and her client could well transport themselves from the initial to the secondary setting by car, but this would not read as characteristically as the walk in single file to the "htel de passe", the climbing of the stairs in the identical troop formation. On the other hand, it is also because only elected phases of the behaviour sequence are rendered, that a retroactive assimilation to the housework scheme is conceivable, although what seemed characteristic phases of the prostitution scheme must not be reinterpreted as rather deviant, or at least not very "norm-al" moments of the new scheme. The content scheme undoubtedly reduces the referent scheme also in a number of other ways: thus, unlike a film conveying the same story, the comic strip fails to render movement, and so leaves a latitude which may be exploited as ambiguity, which could well be impossible to retain in a film, even by means of montage;30 and
30 As we indicated in note 26 above, it is not certain that all the panels of our comic strip can readily be
assimilated to the household scheme; if the same story had been conveyed in a film, we should expect such resistance to be more tenacious. However, the degree to which a scheme is able to assimilate contradictory information is also dependant on the personality, and the mental state of the user of the scheme. Thus, in the case of small children, schemes may sometimes completely override singular facts, even when the latter are conveyed in photographic images, as shown by an interesting experiment performed by Worth & Gross 1974:33ff . In the beginning of the sequence, pictures showed a man, who was easily recognizable as a doctor because of his white coat and stethoscope, being busy performing various tasks in a hospital; he then is seen leaving the hospital and walking down the street. Next is shown an obviously damaged automobile with a visibly injured man inside, and the "doctor" in the background having a look an then walking by. At the end of the sequence, the "doctor" enters an apartment house, opens a door, and is finally shown relaxed, holding a drink, and smiling at a woman sitting next to him. When asked about what happened, second graders told the investigators that the doctor must have helped the accident victim, because "hats what doctors do"; indeed, most of the children said that the "meaning" of the story was that doctors are good and that they help people. Thus, the children fail to note, that the "social stereotype", that is, the scheme, is contradicted by the stills they have been shown. Older children, however, will note that the doctor did not help the victim of the
49
unlike a temporal set made up of photographs, the comic strip, by means of its drawn panels, is able to exaggerate individual features caricaturically, such as, in this instance, the timidity of the soldier. The example we will take over from Hnig (1974:33ff) differ in many ways from that of Koch (fig.8.). Already in the first panel, two schemes normally held to be contradictory in our common Lifeworld are merged: that of ball games, and that of monk life, standing, respectively, for the secular and the unworldly spheres, for leisure and serious activities.
Fig.8.The Monk strip (from Hnig 1974:34,37 ). The ball game is a rigorously organized scheme, which is in part temporally distributed (analyzed, by Pike 1967 , in terms of "behavioremes"); but it is present here
accident , explaining that "if they had wanted me to think he helped him they would have had a shot of him with stethoscope or something bending over the guy in the car" (p.37) - which means they exploit the scheme to pin down a difference form that which is expected. The smaller children, then, are able to assimilate even outright contradictory facts to the scheme; but older ones use the scheme Gombrichs way, complete with modifications.
50
only factorially ("metonymically"; cf. Sonesson 1988,I.2. ), in a the form of what, to say the least, is an optional element: the ball going outside the ground. Monk life is a less distinctly organized scheme, at least as laymen are aware of it, but, to make up for that, it is represented here by two highly prototypical features: the monastery, which is in Gothic style, in itself the most prototypical monastery architecture (in opposition, in particular, to a modern building); and the monk himself, in the classical monks frock, and also being characteristically corpulent. At this point, the two spheres seem to interpenetrate only be accident, and possibly without consequences: with the ball, the "world" transgresses into the unworldly realm. The ball which, in the first panel, passes over the monastery wall immediately actualizes a number of side-tracks to the ball game scheme. Such accidents, it may be supposed, essentially happens to beginnings, for instance to young school-boys. The grown man, who lets the children play, but does not intervene in their games, is expected to go around the wall to give the ball back. A male person, demonstrating that he still retains some of his youthful abilities, may kick the ball back over the wall; a female, however, would not be expected to do it, and a monk even less so. This explains that Hnig assigns to the monk the features "Unsportlichkeit" and "wenig praktische Kleidung", and even "geschlechtliche Enthaltsamkeit", in view of football being, in our society, essentially a male rite. In panel 2, in any case, the monk is seen executing his expected role of an adult in relation to the supposed school-boys. It is in panel 3, that a first rupture of expectations is introduced, but still of a kind which is readily assimilated to a slightly accommodated scheme: the players turns out not to be school-boys, but other presumably awkward players. viz. women. To be sure, the females depicted have those kinds of bodily constitution and apparel which conform to the erotical scheme (see above and in II.1.3.9.), not those predictable in real female football players. It is in particular because of these latter facts, that panel 3 also serves to introduce a new scheme, which will be important for the following: erotical seduction. Just like the ball game scheme, the seduction scheme is a secular scheme, but it may safely be considered to enter in a more violent contradiction the the monk life scheme, since, in opposition to the latter, the chastity required of the monk is more directly thematized. That is to say, it is easier for the monk life scheme to assimilate the fact of monks playing ball game (which is, moreover, what happens in panel 5), than their having sexual intercourse. On the other hand, the implied reader of the strip is himself a profane thinker, and so is unable to conceive of someone being able to live voluntarily inside the bounds of the monk life scheme; therefore, a transgression, or at least an attempted transgression, is expected, at least form the point where the erotical scheme is introduced. This is also what happens, or rather, what has already happened, and is retained, in panel 4. As Hnig (p.36) rightly observes, the fourth panel is a somewhat modified repetition of the first one: we see the same monastery garden, and the same ball - but instead of one monk, surprised by the ball, there is now a group of monks, avidly expecting the arrival of the ball. That panel 4 appears right below panel 1 emphasizes this structural parallelism. At least from this point, therefore, we have the
51
right to expect the story to repeat, but because of genre connotations, here (unlike what is the case in the folktale) we do not expect any identical repetition, but a recurrence involving some fundamental transformation. Since panel 4 differs from panel 1 in one important respect, that it features a group of monks, instead of just one, it is natural to aspect the opposition between the single individual and the collectivity to be of importance. This explains that some of Hnigs experimental subjects thought that, in the next panel, one of the monks in the group were to rush up in front of the others, anxious to be the first to receive the ball - which would amount to a new contradiction, after the attraction to females, the lack of the expected unselfishness (which must be what Hnig calls "Brderlichkeit"). Two other possibilities have in common the initial sequence, according to which the monk, or the group of monks, catch the ball and goes to return it. What next happens depends on the other participants of the scheme, the ball game players; and given the preceding story, the monks, as well as the implied reader, on a primary level, can only suspect that the other participants will once again be woman. When, therefore, the door is opened, the hopes of the monks may be dashed in different ways: according to Hnigs experimental subjects, boys stand outside the door this time (which, paradoxically, would frustrate expectancies built up at this point by presented what was the most highly predictable sequel at the beginning of the story); or it is the abbot, who stands outside to receive the ball. In terms of real-world causality, the first solution amounts to pure coincidence; but the second alternative would represent a punishment thought out by the abbot, with the aim of putting the monk life scheme newly into force. But the solution chosen by the draughtsman is still another: the abbot dashes up in front of the group of monks and, in a posture reminiscent of Superman, heads the ball over the wall. Thus, another expectation contained in the monk life scheme is disconfirmed: the inaptitude for sports of the monks, and thus also of the abbot. In other words, it is because of his (paradoxical) virility, that the abbot is able to impede the other monks from giving free reign to another facet of their virility, that is, sexuality. In a more systematic way, the preceding analysis may be resumed in the following way (fig.9 ): So far, all ruptures we have discussed have been disconfirmations of the schemes on the content side of the sign; more rarely, it would seem, are disruptions of the schemes on the expression side encountered. They certainly exist, however, even in humorous comic strips. In particular in recent times, it has been common to introduce disruptions of the panel convention itself, as well as of the sequencing of the panels (see, for example strips by Wilson and Fred, reproduced in Rey 1978:186ff; strips by Fred and Crepax, in Fresnault-Deruelle 1977b:58,69; strips by Crepax and Pratt, in Fresnault-Deruelle 1977a:132,165; etc.). Although the comic effect may be more subtle here, the device in itself is the same, so that we may dispense in the following with an effort to spell out the details of an application of the rupture principle to the expression schemes. Instead, we will pass on, in the following section, to an appraisal of the Groupe
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics isotopy model for the analysis of pictures.
Panel 1: Monk life s c h e m e unworldliness; vs ball game scheme worldliness B-Pr1: give back the ball; B - P r 2 : to players who are school boys; M-Pr1: reach it back, instead of kicking it (lack of sportsmanship). Panel 2 : confirms B-Pr1 and M-Pr1 ; BPr2 still in vigour.
52
Panel 3: confirms BPr1 ; disconfirms BPr2, but the scheme is accommodated to BPr2: to other awkward players. Introduces the Erotical scheme worldliness; immediately forming contradiction with the Monk life schemes M-Pr2 : chastity unworldliness. Evaluation of compared schemes: monk life scheme hypocritical. Thereof follows: E-Pr : sexual attraction to the females worldliness. Panel 6 : E-Pr is disconfirmed in the case of the abbot. Creates M-Pr3 : will to defend the monk life scheme, on the part of the abbot. EP r further confirmed for the other monks, in view of their visible deception.S-Pr also confirmed.
Panel 4: S-Pr (from the appresentational scheme of the strip): repetition of happenings in panel 1-3, with modifications. E-Pr confirmed, not directly but as E-Rt : there has been a sexual attraction to the females.
Panel 5 : M-Pr1 disconfirmed for the person of the abbot.
Fig.9. Analysis of the Monk strip (Explanations:
Pr = protention; Rt = retention; M,B,E,S = different schemes)

II.1.3.7. On the layers of the sign. Critique of the Groupe isotopy model.
The Groupe isotopy model can in principle readily be translated into a model involving schemes, more easily so, as many an example suggest, as our authors are mostly concerned with something of the general kind of schemes, rather than with simple iteration. Thus, for instance, when, on a drawing by Topor, there is a big teddybear, holding a small girl in his arms, instead of the reverse, which is what would be expected (see Groupe 1980:264f ), there is no rupture in the recurrence of identical
53
features, but an inversion of the relationship anticipated between the given personages.31 More generally, the conception of rhetorics which Groupe defends from the very beginning (cf. Groupe 1970; and, in the case of pictures, particularly Minguet 1979 ) essentially involves the postulating of a zero level from which the rhetorical operations are conceived to be divergences. It is essentially in the discussion of the collage, that the notion of feature recurrences makes sense. Thus, for instance, the collage is said to be allomaterial, which means that it is made up of different materials, in contrast to the picture norm, which requires pictures to be isomaterial, which, in this case, signifies that pictures should be put together using material pertaining to a single category (cf. Groupe 1978:17ff ). The norm of plastic discourse is said to be isotopicality, or more precisely, isomateriality of the expression materia, and allotopicality, which is to say, allograduality of the expression graduality - more simply put, that a single material has been employed to compose the picture, in order to express distinctions between the intervening signs making it possible to hold them apart ("une rpartition suspendue la fonction de reconnaissance des signes iconiques"; op.cit.:18 ).32 In contrast to these
31 With the single exception of the 1976 article, all Groupe s publications fail to reproduce the pictorial
examples on which the analyses are based, which is unfortunate, since the examples are rarely of the wellknown, easily accessible kind; here and in the following, therefore, our re-analyses of these examples actually concern, not the pictures, but the verbal description of the pictures contained in Groupe s analyses. This certainly limits the interest of our analyses as applied to these particular pictures, but it does not render them illegitimate, least of all from a methodological point of view. In the present case, Topors drawing probably occupies a single panel; thus, there is no temporal distance between the moment the scheme is introduced, and when it is disconfirmed. This is reminiscent of the first panel of the monk strip, discussed above (II.1.3.6. and fig.8-9. ), where both the Monk life scheme, and the contradictory Ball game scheme, are introduced simultaneously; only that here, as Perkins remarked apropos of Koestlers theory, the scene transgresses one scheme without entering another (cf.II.2.3.3. above). Actually, it is known from contemporary psychology, that pictures are not perceived all at once, even if they are not decoded in a strictly linear fashion like a verbal text. Thus, just as we suggested that in the first panel of the prostitution strip (cf. II.2.3.6.), the man and the woman are established as the primary objects of attention, it reasonable to suppose, that there is a first moment, in which Topors drawing is seen to depict a little girl and a teddy-bear - whereupon we not the inversion of the properties, in their respective sizes, and in the relationship of who is holding whom. The case is similar to the inversion of the properties of man and woman in the Kindy publicity parodying a famous poster for a Marilyn Monroe film, which we analyzed in Sonesson 1988,I.3.3. Also cf. the case of the tomato-andbottle as analyzed in II.2.1. below! 32 We have discussed the distinction between plastic and iconic levels of the pictorial sign, as conceived by Floch, but also by Groupe , already in Sonesson 1988, II.3. , and would therefore not ordinarily return to it here. Roughly, we thought that, on the iconic level, the picture stands for some object of the ordinary perceptual Lifeworld; while we considered that on the plastic level, expression is mostly conveyed by simple qualities of the picture thing itself, and that that which is signified are increasingly abstract concepts. However, since then we have become aware of the revision of the Groupe model proposed by Sjlin (1986) , which is based on another understanding of the model, which, while it is certainly mistaken, is yet not devoid of interest. According to Sjlin (p.11ff) , the picture should really be analyzed into three different layers: the material sign, the plastic sign, and the iconic sign. What is at stake here is the separation between the first two types of sign, which is ignored by our authors, who confound the illusion of depth per se, the property present even in a single stroke of apparently projecting out from the canvas, which effect Sjlin assigns to the plastic layer, and the capacity of simple perceptual properties, such as brightness and mattness, of carrying a meaning of their own into the picture, which, in Sjlins opinion, pertains the the material layer (p.12 ). It is certainly true that, as such, this distinction is not made by Groupe ; and, for many purposes, such a differentiation of further layers could no doubt be usefully observed. However, it is most unfortunate, that Sjlin should call "material" that layer which
54
norms, is is concluded, the collages may therefore be isogradual and isomaterial, or allogradual and allomaterial - and even, as it is added in Groupe 1979:185 , isogradual and allomaterial. But if this is so, some more generic instance is needed, in order to lay down that, in a given case, recurrence or non-recurrence is to be expected, and what particular form the one or the other will take. Thus, while a picture joining together the bosom of Mae West, the face of a general, and a football players hairy legs is undoubtedly deviant (1978:18 ), the same holds true of another picture displaying multiple copies of Mae Wests bosom where other body parts are should occur. It is apparent, then, that something like the scheme is necessary, correctly to distribute expected recurrences and non-recurrences. Indeed, Groupe may themselves be suggesting this in a late text (1984:20f ), where they recognize two separate tendencies in rhetorics, the "adjunction of order", and the "adjunction of heterogeneity". In the following discussion, we will simply take it for granted, that the pictorial sign is built up of schemes, rather than isotopies, and go on to discuss some further details of the Groupe model: 1. Groupe (1980:252) distinguishes between the so-called generic and local degree zero as the standard from which a rhetorical figure constitutes a divergence; while the first is characterized already in the system, the second is given only in the particular "text". In verbal language, both types of degree zero are found; in the case of the plastic layer of the picture, however, only a local degree zero is acknowledged.
comes closest to resemble what Groupe means by the "plastic" sign, while introducing a new meaning for the term "plastic", not only because Groupe has by now began to have an important following all other the world, but because the same use of terms is found in the work of Floch and Thrlemann, but also in art historical parlance in the French (as opposed to the German, and perhaps English-speaking) tradition; see, for instance already the writings of Matisse! In conversation, Sjlin has asserted that Groupe s central examples are all of the kind he has termed "plastic", but this would seem to be incorrect. Plastic language is certainly nowhere defined in any stricter sense; it is said to "engage[r] la substance de la picturalit" (1978:16); it is based on "les moyens de cette mimesis ", as distinct from mimesis itself (1979: 174 ); on what could also be taken to be simply free, or stylistic, variants , or "le surplus de substance " (op.cit.:175f ); and so on. Groupe 1985:450, however, observes: "Grosso modo, le signe iconique est de lordre de lanalogique: il renvoie mimtiquement un object de la ralit; le signe plastique relve, quant lui, du systme des lignes et des couleurs indpendamment du renvoi mimtique." Also, at the beginning of each of the articles, the examples given are always colours or spatial elements: a circle, standing, on the plastic level, for circularity; the colour yellow, standing similarly for yellowness (1979:180f, and passim ); and when materia, substance, and form, in Hjelmslevs sense, of plastic language are discussed (for instance, in 1980:253f ), they are said to be, respectively, light unorganized into a system, a particular colour as opposed to another, and the colour spectrum (the revision of these categories later on, discussed in the body of our text, does not pertain to the question which concerns us here). It is true that, in their most systematic text, Groupe (1980:257ff) distinguishes an array of systems which may be involved in plastic rhetorics, comprising, along with the system of chromatism, three spatial system: those of positionality, dimensionality, and directionality; and while in particular the last of these systems may well include such effects as those considered by Sjlin, there is nothing to indicate that our authors are willing to give any particular status to the illusion of three-dimensionality, outside its application to the representation of real space (for they do suggest somewhere, that what Escher has invented is a rhetorics of iconic language). Thus, that layer of Sjlins model which is lacking from the Groupe model, is the one Sjlin terms "plastic"; whereas the one he calls "material" is, as far as is decidable, identical to what the model terms "plastic language"! There is, however, another way in which Groupe would seem to be employing three sign levels without realizing it, which will be analyzed in the footnote below (note 34).
55
While this is not made explicit here, a general degree zero pertaining to the iconic layer of the picture is apparently recognized to exist, for later on, it is even said to be of two types (p.263; we will return to these types below). The interplay of such a generic degree zero and its local counterpart in the case of what we have termed the referential scheme can be seen in the monk strip, as discussed above (in II.1.3.6.). The ball game scheme makes us expect, that small boys are responsible for having thrown the ball outside the play ground; thus panel 3 is alloschematic in relation to the generic norm. In one of the conclusions of the strip, suggested by some of Hnigs experimental subjects, boys appear outside the door in panel 6, instead of young females; this variant would be isoschematic relative to the generic norm while at the same time being alloschematic compared to the local norm established by the foregoing episode as it is embodied in panels 1 to 3. The question, now, is if a similar dialectics is not conceivable in the case of plastic language. Indeed it is, and Groupe cites the obvious example: those works of Vazarelys in which some common geometrical configuration is repeated indefinitely, until a different, or somewhat modified configuration takes the place of the expected element (p.254f ). Here, of course, a local degree zero is established by the very recurrence of the same element; but, at the same time, the recurrence itself constitutes a rupture of the norm, which, in Groupe s own terms, requires a picture to be allogradual. Curiously, Groupe treats this example as just an illustration of a succession of different local degrees zero (p.256); but clearly, the first rupture concerns a rule inscribed in the expression scheme itself. Of course, the norm of isomateriality and allograduality is historically dated (as claimed on p.254 ) - but what norms are not? 2. The picture, according to Groupe (1979:178ff), may now be analyzed into a number of different layers: a) the materials33 of the plastic and the iconic expression plane, which coincide; b ) the graduality of the plastic expression plane; c) the graduality of the plastic content plane; d) the substance of the iconic expression; e) the form of the iconic expression; f) the substance of the iconic content; g) the form of the iconic content. Contrary to this list, the diagram on the following page, and in other articles by the group, does not include the material, but this is, as we have already seen, employed as a criterion on the rhetorical analysis (allomateriality, etc.). In all the texts, Groupe refers to Hjelmslev, as the source of the terminology, but if we take this indication seriously, supplying the meaning these terms have in Hjelmslevs works, at least two problems result: "matire", to Hjelmslev, is simply that which is unknowable, and, as a consequence, not susceptible of being analyzed; that is, it is the residue of the analysis; and "substance", which, in the earlier texts, is the term used for "matire" in the above-mentioned sense, stands, in the later works, for the combination of "matire" and "form", and does not have any separate analytic status.34
33 that is, "matire". The relevant concept is introduced already in Hjelmslev 1943, as Danish "mening",
which is rendered, in the revised English edition, as "purport"; but in later works, contained in Hjelmslev 1959 , the term employed is "matire". However, even the latter term has given rise to many erroneous interpretations, where it is taken to stand for "matter" or "material" in the sense of ordinary language. Cf. the main text below! 34 "Matire", it should be noted, simply means to Hjelmslev "that which is not pertinent relative to the other plane of the sign" (see discussion in Sonesson 1988,II.4. ); but Groupe uses it to stand for the material, in the sense of ordinary language, of which something is made, which then permits them to
56
Clearly, that which Groupe here calls "matire" is what the picture thing is per se, independently of its being seen as a picture; that is, properties pertaining to what Schtz termed the apperceptual scheme (cf.II.1.3.4.). Not even Groupe are really thinking about "brute matter": they insist (for instance, in 1979:192 ), that they are not concerned with paint, pigment, paper, canvas, etc, but with the corresponding "phenomenological properties", which probably means those which are given in experience. Thus, what is at stake here are properties like being perceived to be made of news stock, in contrast to being perceived as consisting of painted canvas, which is the reigning opposition of some of Picassos collages. Also of relevance would apparently be the perceived difference between pieces of paper torn from different publications (which is certainly not a difference of brute matter); for the ruse which our authors (op.cit.:186f ) find in Max Ernsts collages does not consist only in his having photographed the different pieces of paper, so as to obliterate the fractures, but also in his choice of largely resemblant popular picturelore for all of his extracts ("[le] mme type de gravures sur bois tires dillustrs populaire de la fin du XIXe sicle"). These examples certainly suggest, that we are concerned with "materials" in the sense of common understandings, somewhat extended perhaps in the last case. Indeed, the term "matire" seems to be used by Groupe in three senses, for the last two of which cues have been taken from Hjelmslev: for what the object is in itself, Schtzs apperceptual scheme; for that which is irrelevant in relation to the other plane of the sign; and, for what which is unorganized, as yet deprived of a principle of organization, that is, Saussures "amorphous mass". It is this last meaning which is invoked in the principled discussions, when, for instance, the matter of expression is said to be "la lumire non encore organise en un systme distinctif", the corresponding form being the colour spectrum (1979:181 ). But, as long as we stick with this understanding of the term, there can never be anything like allomateriality. Light is always light. And as soon as we begin to separate it out into colours, let alone into more intricate feature complexes embodied in light, such as news stock, or the kind of illustrations found in the popular press at the end of the XIXth century, we have already imposed an organization, and so passed on to form, in this sense of "matter".
make "allomateriality" one of the possible characterizing traits of the collage. But this means that, in the collage, the multifariousness of materials has become relevant, and is thus no longer part of the material, in Hjelmslevs sense, but another layer of the meaning - in other words, the form of another sign! It might be objected, that the model does not comprise any "allosubstantiality", and that this may be the proper term to use instead; but, in the first place, in Hjelmslevs later terminology, the substance is simply the material framed by a form ; and secondly, in the earlier version of the theory, when Hjelmslev just opposed form and substance, it is precisely when the substance becomes pertinent for another language, that it is said to form the basis of a connotational language (see our discussion referred to above). All this makes us wonder, if Groupe really knows what the term "form" means to Hjelmslev: namely, those traits of one plane which are "solidary" with traits of the other plane, i.e. which imply and are implied by the traits in question (one may entertain some doubt also about Sjlins understanding of these terms; his suggestion, that "form" in one of traditional art historical senses of "extension, volume, and spatial organization" is "a special case (applied to the plastic sign) of the more general form-concept developed in semiotics" (op.cit.:10 ), would seem to suggest that colours are not parts of the expression form of plastic language, which of course they are, to the extent that they are required to convey the meaning present on the content plane of plastic language ).
57
In Hjelmslevs work, this third sense of the word "matter" goes together with the second one, but there is no necessity for this: matter may well be organized, though this organization is irrelevant for the conveyance of what it stands for in the sign (see our next point below). What, however, in the model is that which is irrelevant, both in relation to the iconic content and the plastic content (as required by the stipulation, in a above, that matter should be identical for the two sign functions)? If the plastic and iconic sign functions may be roughly identified with Goodmans "denotation" and "exemplification", respectively, then they are both, when they pertain to pictures, "dense" and "replete", which means that not only are all property dimensions, but also all values on these dimensions, relevant for the communication of pictorial meaning. On this interpretation, nothing would be left for "matter" here. Even if we do not accept Goodmans conception (for our reservations on this point, see Sonesson 1988,III.2.4-5. and III.6.1.), it is not obvious that much would remain to form the residue class of both sign functions together. It may be suspected, of course, that all Groupe means to say in point a, is that the same material object forms the basis of both sign functions. Again, this suggests the ordinary language sense of material (this time in a less "phenomenological" and more tangible sense, implying at least space-time coincidence). The heart of the matter, however, lies elsewhere. It is not at all irrelevant for a work of art to be pasted together from fragments of news stock. Rather, it is (or it was) habitual for works of art to be made out of oil paint, canvas, and so on, while news stock served uniquely for the printing of newspapers, and perhaps later for some more domestic uses, such as wrapping up the garbage. Material, in this sense, is certainly what objects are in themselves, before they are employed as vehicles of particular sign functions; but it is not something which is irrelevant to those sign functions; for while these sign functions may be conveyed in alternative ways, these materials are their preferred vehicles (in Hjelmslevs 1959:80ff sense, these options are present, not in the "schma", nor in the "usage", but in the "norme"; that is, between form and substance). Incidentally, this means that the identification we suggested in II.1.3.3. of Hjelmslevs substance and form of expression with what Schtz terms the apperceptual and the appresentational schemes is not viable: for what the object is per se is not necessarily irrelevant to the sign function. This is not the whole story, however. That which characterizes the category of the picture sign as against the real-world scene it stands for, is the presence of a flat surface containing an array of pigment distinctions; and it is the presence of oil and canvas to realize these pigment distinctions, instead of water-colour and paper, which separates the category of oil-painting from that of water-colour. These properties are specifics of genres, which, when highlighted by a particular sign function, give rise to what Hjelmslev (1943:101ff) terms connotations, which may derive from the form or the substance, according as they are relevant or not to the primary sign systems (see analysis in Sonesson 1988,II.4. ). When Kolars collage "Madone" is said to be allomaterial, because it combines written texts and pictures (Groupe 1980:255), we are indeed very close to the kind of properties which Hjelmslev would claim to be
58
supports of connotation; but when, on the other hand, Picassos collage "Nature morte avec violin et fruits", which contains fragments of news stock and of wall-paper, is also said to be allomaterial (ibid.), we will still have cases of connotation, only of we admit, contrary to Hjelmslev, that such systems may be parasitic on "symbol system", and not only on sign systems (having separate expression and content planes). Moreover, while the second case suggests "materials" in the common sense way, the first is hardly compatible with that notion. Indeed, "written texts" and "pictures" are not what the objects are in themselves ; but only what, on this occasion, the elements of the collage were, because of other schemes, prior to their entering the collage. We must therefore reject the entangled notion of allomateriality. It is less clear what we might put in its stead. "Alloapperceptuality" is a candidate; but as we just remarked, there are cases in which what is at stake are earlier appresentational schemes, rather than apperceptual ones. Perhaps we should talk about "alloschematicality", but this eludes the distinction to Groupe s next level, and amounts to the normal, quite non-divergent case on the content level; so it will be necessary first to reconsider the remaining levels. 3. As for the distinction between the form and substance of expression found in the iconical sign function, it would seem that it is never really used by our authors. The same is true for the content plane. Thus, we shall ignore this distinction here. However, the iconical content is said (in Groupe 1980:263 ) to possess two different types of degree zero, and if there are divergences from both of them, it should be convenient to admit two levels of content (and indeed, Groupe 1985:450ff claims there are two, the "referent" and the "type"). The referential degree zero corresponds to encyclopaedical knowledge: the horse on the picture is considered to have four legs, for we know that real horses have it. The intertextual degree zero is the one derived from the pictorial traditions: the academic bust with no arms does not signify an amputated person, but corresponds to the conventions of the genre (1980:263). Both these would seem to be "types", in the sense of the later text; there would therefore be a third referent, which is actually so called in the late text, and thought to be "un objet singulier, dont je puis avoir lexperience visuelle, mais en tant que cet objet peut tre associ une catgorie permanente: ltre-chat"(1985:451) - which makes it a being not quite dissociated from the type. The gloss on the intertextual degree zero is reminiscent of Husserls discussion of the picture object: the marble bust, considered in itself, as a picture thing, is white, and this whiteness is still part of what is "seen into" it (as is also the case with the "photographic colours" of a photograph), but is not attributed to its real-world correspondent, the picture subject (see discussion of these matters in Sonesson 1988,III.3.5-6.). What is new here is, in any case, the suggestion that, in diverging from the degree zero of the picture subject, a picture may approach the degree zero of the picture object, and vice versa. An example of the latter case would be an artifact which, in all other respects resembles an academic portrait bust, but is painted in body colours. If then, as against the picture object and the picture subject, we resolutely reestablish the referent as the real-world singular object (as we did in the passage
59
referenced above), we are able to add that, in diverging from both of the abovementioned types, a picture may come closer to agree with with referent, as would a "realistic" picture of a person not very resemblant either to the pictorial or the realworld standard type. 4. We have seen that, according to Groupe , the iconical sign possesses substance and form, just like the linguistic sign. In the plastic sign function, on the other hand, the same authors claim there is, on both the planes, no form, but only something they term a "graduality". The plastic expression, to begin with, is continuous:
"Ce domaine, parce quil est celui du continu, est `structurable linfini: les oppositions pertinents (de couleur, de trait, etc.) ne stablissent pas en langue mais connaissent une nouvelle rpartition propre chaque texte visuel en vertue dune contractualit communicationnelle qui stablit pour chaque message." (1978:17 ).
We are also told (1979:101f; 1980:253) , that the colour spectrum cannot be the expression form of pictures, since it does only exist as verbalized, differently in different languages. Thus, just as in Goodmans theory, we are confronted with the total "density" of the sign, but this time only as applied to the plastic sign function. What Barthes wrongly affirmed about the whole pictorial sign, that is is not coded beforehand, is true, according to Groupe (1979:176f), only about the plastic sign function. Before we go on to inquire further into the problems posed by this conception, we should also note that, according to Groupe (1979:178), even the content plane of the plastic sign is a "graduality". At the same time, however, this same content plane is repeatedly said to contain colours, lines, etc.; it even seems to function to convey "le systme du chromatisme", "le systme de la positionnalit", "le systme de la dimensionnalit" and "le systme de la directionnalit" (1980:257ff) . Perhaps we can pursue the analogy with Goodmans conception, and take different shades of colours to exemplify colour categories. In any case, there really only seems to be categories here, and it is not clear why we are not aloud to call this a content form. In its extreme form, the old linguistic relativity thesis, whose favourite example always was the colour spectrum, is hardly taken seriously by anybody nowadays. Indeed, is was demonstrated, by linguistics such as Berlin & Kay, and by psychologists such as Rosch, that the organization of the colour chart obeyed a particularly universal set of principles. Thus, a language having just two colour terms, will always distinguish black and white; when a third is introduced it is red, etc. (see discussion in Miller & Johnson-Laird 1976:333ff ). It is true, that the conclusion, that verbal language has no influence at all on our colour categorization is rash (cf. Bousfield 1979 and Sahlins 1977 ), but many other semiotical systems must certainly be involved. The important point, in any case, is that already the perception of colours is categorical, even if language may choose, to same extent, where in the holon-structure to put in demarcations. This makes nonsense of Groupe s argument. Even if the colour spectrum argument had been valid, however, one wonders how it is thought to translate onto the spatial aspects of plastic language. The question is
60
also why the same criticism is not applied to the form concept as it pertains to iconical language. Are lines and colours here all of a sudden transformed into categoric beings? Or is the idea that we have to pass through the plastic layer to attain the iconic one, the continuum being transfused into categoricality in the process? The second interpretation could take its point of departure from the claim that plastic languages is "les moyens de cette mimesis" (1979:174). But is is contradicted by the figure illustrating the relationship between the two sign functions (1979:179, 1980:249) and by the glosses on the figures (in particular in 1985:450 ), as well as by the claim that the two materials, and not the plastic content and the iconic expression, are identical. In any case, the interpretation is excluded by the fact, that also the plastic content is said to be "gradual". And the theory would anyway be somewhat pointless, since, from the beginning, the intent has been to show the independence of the two sign functions. However, if we stick to the contrast between the "graduality" of plastic language, and the corresponding categoricality of iconical language, we must conclude that, in the latter case, no shades and nuances possess any meaning, and that the entire iconical signification is defined once and for all in a pictorial sign system; but this is evidently false. Indeed, we know from our earlier discussion (in Sonesson 1988,III.5.), that nuances do in fact carry meaning in pictures, but only inside a categorical framework: when something is identified as a head, from particular categorical features, we can "see into" it the size, and the particular shape of this head. It is not clear why plastic language should not be supposed to function in the same way. Before concluding, we should say a few words on some uses of the isotopy, which are not concerned with ruptures. We are referring to what Groupe (1980:266ff; cf. 1977:58ff) calls the "projective poly-isotopies", and separates into two types: the "biisotopy", where different objects juxtaposed in the picture, are projected onto each other, and thus their meanings merged; and the "pretextual isotopy", where the appurtenance to a particular genre, the nature of the communicative situation, and even the phantasms of the decoder determine the projection of some pictorial elements onto the others. Groupe s example of the former type, Hokusais "The wave", has already been thoroughly discussed elsewhere (in Sonesson 1988,I.3.3-4. ). Here we will now turn to the "pretextual isotopy", which, already by its name, denounces its real nature as being that of a scheme of expectations. As before, we will have to rely on the description of the drawing furnished by Groupe (1980:266) :
"Prenons un example aussi simple que possible: un dessin humoristique emprunt au magzine franais Lui. Il reprsente, dune part, une pompe essence dont le tuyau est introduit dans le conduit du rservoir dune automobile, et dautre part diverses parties de corps humains (essentiellement des pieds) dpassant des portires de voiture, et indiquant la prsence de deux personnages superpos".
Now, Groupe goes on to say, that our encyclopaedic knowledge immediately reorganizes this picture, so as to constitute two series: in the first, the car, a factorial ("synecdochique") relationship between two elements, the mouth-piece of the petrol pump and the opening of the petrol tank, is directly manifested ; but in the second, two couples of feet, such a relationship must be induced, using our common knowledge, first, that feet generally go in company of legs and other body parts, and second, that a
61
particular orientation of two couples of legs to each other may be a consequence of having sexual intercourse. It is here that the "pretextual isotopy" intervenes: the fact that this drawing appears in the mens magazine Lui serves at once to direct the precise interpretation of the relationship between the feet, and to suggest a similarity between the manifested factorial connection of the first series, and the factorial relationship implicitly present in the second series. It stands to reason, that the "pretextual isotopy" is no isotopy, for nowhere does it involve a recurrence of identical features. What is does is to build up a series of rather vague expectations, which, moreover, are confirmed, not denied by the actual drawing. Let us now resume Groupe s analysis step by step, while filling in the elements lacking: a) already when opening the magazine, we have categorized it as belonging to the category "mens magazine", even perhaps as the particular magazine "Lui"; and this fact is sufficient on its own to provide us with a series of interpretational schemes, which give rise to expectations, both concerning the referents and the particular shaping of the sign. This means we are now equipped with a system of relevancies, which tells us to focus on details susceptible of becoming salient in the schemes in question. b) The category "drawing" and the subcategory "cartoon" activates yet another schemes, determining still further expectations. The very expression form, or its substance, no doubt contains graphic features which brings about the connotations "drawing", and perhaps even "cartoon". Alternatively, it is conceivable that the mens magazine scheme determines, that all drawings subsumed under its heading should be cartoons. Combing the scheme for mens magazine, pictures generally, and cartoons, we are now set to discover such features are may become relevant in their intersection. c) Mens magazine having a very "Freudean" imagination, everything which, through relations of similarity, contiguity, or factoriality, may be relayed to the sexual domain seems a priori susceptible of being highlighted. Because of the constraints on pictorial signs, only visually manifested similarity, contiguity, and factoriality can be directly employed in the process. On account of the limits and resources of cartoon drawing, all such relationships must be fairly gross, and admit of exaggerations and other deformation in order to foster perceptibility. At first, however, very little comes of out of the expectancies engendered by these schemes: the two pairs of legs suggest bodies, and bodies are often enough sexually invested. d) The legs give us two clues. First, following the body scheme, we know that legs are generally joined to legs, and further to other body parts. Thus, the legs are parts standing factorially for a whole, the human body, of which there are two in the present drawing. Secondly, according to proxemic schemes (cf. Hall 1966: Morris 1971; Scheflen 1974 ), the legs, and therefore the bodies, are placed so close to each other, that they can only be engaged either in a fight or in love-making; but the orientation (we take it) would rather seem to suggest the latter alternative
62
(if this is not induced by the mens magazine scheme). It should be noted that there is a certain redundancy of information here: our couple is apparently making love in the so-called "missionary position", which, in Western countries, is the prototypical position of love-making. e) Here we must now return to the cartoon itself, and newly inspect its thematic organization (geometrical texture, foreground, sizes, etc.), in order to delimit some second semantic domain in the picture, which, in connection with the first, may be called upon to shed some light on the intended crux of the drawing. This, it appears, can only be the car and the petrol pump. f) Since we have thus arrived at two relatively independent subsigns contained in the cartoon, we shall expect some minimal structure to obtain between them. This cannot be a contrast, as Floch would have anticipated, for, on the face of it, the two subsigns do not have a sufficient base of common features, for an opposition to become salient (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.3.3. ). Perhaps, then, there is instead (a less obvious) identity or similarity? But first, we have to select a relevant property dimension, on which to search for the similarity. No answer is forthcoming directly from the consulted schemes. g) In order to find the dimension in question, we need to pin down the features which are most central to each of the two subsigns. Because of the presence of the picture in the mens magazine "Lui", but perhaps already because of the general importance of sexuality to human affairs, we should start with the sexually dominated subsign. While the sexual act is here manifested by some of its relatively peripherical components, the feet interrelation, its central trait is overall acknowledged to be the meeting of the sexual organs of the two parties. The defining moment of the act of petrol-filling is no doubt the encounter between the mouthpiece of the petrol pump and the opening of the cars petrol tank. It is, then, between these central traits of the two subsigns which we should expect a similarity to emerge. h) Considered in this way, there is of course no similarity between the central features of the two subsigns. We have to shift to the level of what the psychologist Gardner (1970) has termed "modal/vectorial thinking", to get the clue: in both cases, an oblong object, which narrows off towards the apex, is introduced into an open hole equipped with a rounded orifice. From here on, it is easy to formulate a Lvi-Straussean type of proportionality (cf. II.1.2. above): the male sexual organ stands to the female sexual organ, just as the mouth-piece of the petrol pump stands to the orifice of the petrol tank. When this is read as a metaphor, the features of the four elements fuse, and the two separate domains become merged (cf. also Sonesson 1988,III.6. ). Here, then, we are supposed to laugh. Unfortunately, be it for personal or for more intrinsic reasons, we are unable to find this joke particularly amusing. But is should be amusing: it would seem to present us with an instance of Koestlers creative clash of independent schemes (cf.II.1.3.3. above). On the other hand, as we noted above, there is no real rupture here, only the integration of two schemes which, on the face of it, have nothing in common. Modal/vectorial thinking being what it is, however, one wonders of
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics this fusion is not simply too predictable here.
63
Now, in order to draw this discussion to a close, something should be said about which schemes, corresponding to the Groupe isotopies, will still remain with us. There is the apperceptual scheme, which, as we now know, is not identical to Hjelmslevs matter of expression. There are of course the iconic appresentational scheme, together with the plastic one (both being concerned with the picture thing); and, in addition, there are such alien schemes of apperception and appresentation which are reused as components of the picture thing. On the iconic level, we also have a number of referential schemes (some of which may apparently be fused without given rise to a clash) and a content scheme (corresponding to the picture subject and the picture object, respectively35). Moreover, there must be some representation, not easily separated into content and reference, for the meaning side of the plastic sign; for convenience, we shall call it the plastic content scheme.
II.1.3.8. Variations on a nose of Nixon. Caricature and the metaphor.

With the exception of two rather essayistic articles by Gombrich (1963;1982), an analysis of a particular cartoon by Tardy (1979), and some remarks by Worth (1981:148ff), the only discussion of the nature of caricature, which we have been able to find, is that initiated by the cognitive psychologist Perkins (1975; & Hagen 1980). His original definition lays stress on the fact, that caricatures are ordinarily characterized by exaggeration and individuation: "a caricature typically exaggerates so as to differentiate the subject from his fellows" (1975:1). Other criteria our rejected by Perkins (p.2ff): humour is notoriously difficult to explain, and apart from that, Perkins wants to include also non-humorous caricatures, by which he means, for instance, "caricature-style drawings of complex machinery". such as those used by Ryan & Schwarts, whose study, demonstrating that objects are more rapidly recognized on such drawings than on photographs, provoked the revision of Gibsons theory of picture perception (cf. Sonesson III.3.2. ). Not even the the distinction between caricature, which emphasizes defects, and idealization, which renders the subject perfect, is of use to Perkins: on the one hand, he thinks there are also "benign caricatures" (p.3.) ; and, on the other hand, idealization tends to efface differences between individuals, and is therefore excluded already by the requirement of individuation. Since faces stereotypically suggests personalities which do not agree with the real ones, a caricature which also conveys the actual personality traits "must be counted as an especially fine achievement" (p.4.). It should be noted, that Perkins here assumes, that a caricature must exaggerate external appearances, but that it may also, in exceptional cases, visualize inner
35 As for the referent, in the sense of a real, singular object, it is not a scheme, but an individual (though it
may be perceived, and remberered, and so on, largely by means of schemes, as we have indicated above; cf. II.3.1-3.)
64
personality traits. A picture just exaggerating inner properties would then not be a caricature. In spite of the mention of caricatures of machine parts, the bulk of Perkinss discussion is almost exclusively concerned with pictures exaggerating characteristic traits of public persons, the exceptions being some remarks on Nazi drawings portraying Jews (p.2.), and also a few comments apropos of caricatures relating to social classes and abstract concepts (s.9). Our own treatment of caricature will also in the main adopt these restrictions. To begin with, however, we need to reconsider the contribution of exaggeration to caricature. A particular standing for a concept by means of exaggerating such properties as are characteristic of individuals subsumed under the concept, constitutes what we, following Weber, von Schelting, and Larsson, has called an idealtype (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.3.1.).36 In the case of caricature portraying persons, the concept is question must obviously be an individual concept, but the difference it to no avail. Perkins & Hagen (1980:271) points out, that it is "exaggerations already worked upon a face by nature" which are further magnified in the drawing. If, instead of applying the operation to individual concepts, we put it to use on (certain kinds of) species, we will obtain typical instances of what Lorenz and other ethologists call "innate schemes" or "releasing mechanisms"; for these are reputedly characterized by "bertreibbarkeit natrlicher Merkmale". In those cases, the relation between the intervening parts may be magnified, contrasts can be reinforced, appendages standing out from the contour can be prolonged, the velocity of a temporal sequence may be augmented, colour and size can be emphasized - which all are factors contributing to the explanation of the familiar phenomenon, that animals reacts more rapidly to dummies representing their enemies and preys than to the enemies or preys in person. These are indeed the effects found by Hckstedt (1965:422ff) in her experimental study illustrating some aspects of Lorenzs "Kindchenschema": from 1013 years onwards, girls tend to prefer baby faces showing "supranormal headform" (that is, exaggerated vault of the forehead), whereas males only begin to favour this shape from 18-21 years of age. When the vaulting of the forehead is exaggerated in silhouettes of older children (who would not show this disproportionate shape in the real world), girls starts preferring the overdone variant only around 14-17 years of age, whereas men will never get to prefer it (that is, at least not before 30 years, which is the age of the oldest subjects). Although, in these experiments, Hckstedt was concerned with preference, while Perkins attends to recognition, it seems possible to conceive of some common denominator, a similar pregnance of supranormal forms. Hckstedt (op.cit.:424) observes, with commendable caution, that her study has nothing to say about the inborn nature of these schemes. However, Fullard & Reiling (1976:1193) thinks a biological basis for the schemes is suggested by the fact, that girls starts to prefer the supranormal forms at puberty, with men catching up
36 In the work quoted, we also found that idealtypes differed from prototypes in being able to harbour contradictions; but this is to all likelihood not a requirement.
65
somewhat later. On the other hand, if we take into account the status of initiation rite which puberty retains (and perhaps possesses more than ever) in our society, also a purely sociocultural genesis seems possible. Our interpretation is reinforced by the the results of Canns investigation (quoted in Fullard & Reiling 1976:1191 ), according to which the degree of preference in males augments successively with the attainment of the status of married man, and then again with the birth of the first child. In the case of caricature, supposing the basis mechanism to be the same, we should certainly not expect there to be any biological explanation. Of course, the very possibility of idealtyping could possibly be biologically grounded. According to the speculations of Schuster & Beisl (1978:129) , there should exist a likewise innate "partner scheme", whose female variant is the double mirrorsymmetrical curve figure often inscribed on the walls of public lavatories. This is a surprising suggestion, if one just stops to ponder for a minute the distance between this familiar curve figure, and such apparent feminine ideals as Venus von Willensdorf, and the Gothic lady with her rounded stomach contour. In any case, also these authors note, that the rendition of the releasing object is not necessarily naturalistic, but rather exaggerated (op.cit.:130). Yet another result of Hckstedts appears to be fundamental in shedding some light of the workings of caricature, also in the stricter sense, and on our latter-day reactions to Venus von Willensdorf figures: it is always (in the case of the "Kindchenschema") "moderately exaggerated" forms which are preferred, never the most extreme variants. But what is to be taken as being "moderately" supranormal is apparently left to be decided for each particular time and culture, at least in the case of caricature drawings and "partner schemes". Before we go on, we should observe, that Perkinss analysis of the caricature (based on Nixon caricatures of numerous draughtsmen) concords well with the symptom model for pictorial meaning, which we have suggested elsewhere (cf. Sonesson 1988, passim ). The four features "elongated nose, hairline with bays, box chin and jowls" turn out to be "rather necessary" (Perkins 1975:10ff; & Hagen 1980:261ff) . These features, in a less extreme form, may be observed on photographs depicting Nixon, though not all from a single vantage point37, and they are present in most Nixon caricatures, but there are also a number of other frequent traits. Modifications of one of these features, or a number of them, immediately impairs recognition, in particular the absence of "jowls", and least the lack of "hairline". More serious than the absence of the traits, however, is their "contra-indication": a partly hidden face may still be recognized (1975:15). But, clearly, at least one of the traits must actually be there, if recognition is to take place: the face cannot not be entirely hidden! On the other hand, Perkins observes (p.15f), that even the contra-indication of two attributes may fail to impede identification. While he earlier observed, that some features, which are logically as
37 It will be observed then, that this "idealtype", like Webers idealization of the Middle Ages, contains
contradictions: the drawing goes beyond what can be given in a single perspective, just like Webers concept includes features which were never co-temporally present.
66
distinctive as the four criterial ones, as for instance the brows, may be wrongly depicted without this having any effect, this observation now turns out to apply, to some degree, to all features. In conclusion then, there would seem to exist, rather than criterial features, attributes carrying more or less weight, as well as combinations of features being more or less loaded (cf. our discussion of Kochs features for prostitution in II.1.3.6. above). Goldman & Hagen (as quoted in Perkins & Hagen 1980:267ff ) accomplished a more systematic study of Nixon caricatures, where they took account of 11 features, including two of Perkinss "rather necessary" ones, and different degrees of exaggeration. Their results supported Perkinss conclusions, for the choice of features and their degree of exaggeration proved to be constant between artists, "jowls" and "nose length" being the features most exaggerated. Interestingly, these results remain valid for Nixon caricatures after 1972, when Nixons reputation seriously deteriorated, the the absolute size of the deformations rose significantly. Thus, different relational features carry different kinds of information. In fact, neither Perkinss four features alone, nor these in conjunction with some other features he mentions, are sufficient for identification to take place. When Perkins (p.17f) made a drawing containing them, Nixon was not recognized. What this suggests is, as Perkins himself notes, that, on the one hand, his features are compound, and may vary along a number of dimensions (for instance, the nose may be long, wide, turned upwards, etc.; that is, the features themselves may have features); and that, on the other hand, there may be further "rather necessary features" (and these may then be global; cf. op.cit.:21 ). All this agrees perfectly with the symptom model: features contribute more or less to make the interpretation "Nixon" probable. But the problem is, as Perkins (p.16) notes, that the exaggerated features, strictly speaking, are false about Nixon, and therefore should lead to the rejection of the "Nixon" interpretation. Curiously, direct tracings of photographs are much more difficult to identify. At the beginning of their joint article, Perkins & Hagen (1980:260ff) oppose two earlier theories of caricature: on one hand, the "tag theory", which is attributed to Gombrich, and according to which the caricature corresponds to a small number of traits present in the real face, familiarity with which is not sufficient to recognize the caricature; and on the other hand, the "super-portrait theory", which claims that numerous features of the real face appears in the caricature, not in their exact form, but as trends (that is, a nose which is long "with respect to population norms" is rendered even larger), and that familiarity with the actual face, with little help from convention and context, permits identification of the caricatured object, more rapidly so than in the case of photographs, realistic paintings, and even the face itself. One of the experiments of Perkins & Hagen (op.cit.:272f) clearly contradicts the first theory, for the recognition of a caricature from a photograph, and vice-versa, were above chance. But also the super-portrait theory must be rejected: the latter predicts that those who see caricatures first should more easily recognize photographs than those who earlier have seen photographs, and that those who first see photographs
67
should recognize caricatures better than other photographs, but the inverse is true. The authors consider a number of possible explanations of these results, opting in the end for what they call the "selection theory", according to which the recognition of real faces depends on both exact and trend information, whereas the interpretation of caricatures depends on ignoring the negation of exact attributes, while still attending to trend information (op.cit.:279ff) . Among the alternative theories, the "identity theory", based on the possibility of recognition from a fuzzy photograph, is contradicted by the fact, that one may discover the similarity between a person going by on the street and an acquaintance, while still realizing that they are distinct persons. Details are here retained in memory, our authors suggest, just as, in Kolerss experiment with sentences, information about typographical fonts could be retrieved. This analogy is instructive to us, for psycholinguistics has often intimated, that sentences must organized like schemes, to which details of vocabulary are attached, soon to fade away, leaving only the semantical skeleton, the gist, behind (cf. Chafe 1977) . This concords well with our earlier suggestion, according to which pictorial continuities only gain their import as variations inside given categories (cf. Sonesson 1988,III.4.). A minor reservation should the voiced here, however. It seems doubtful that "exact metric information" is ever taken account of in the recognition of faces, except as it is turned into a formal procedure taking place at the police station. Rather, while in both cases, we attend to physiognomic quantities (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.1.4.), we may choose to see them as they are in themselves, or as tendencies breaking away from the norm - as results of ideal typing devices. However interesting all this may be, it still glosses over at least two facets (if we follow Perkins in ignoring the puzzle of humour) of that which is typically called a caricature, which we will continue to construe as a picture having a person, or a situation involving animate beings (not machine parts) as its subject matter: in the first place, that it often contains information, which is not meant to be literal but exaggerated apropos of outer appearances, but metaphorically intends to convey something about inner being; and, second, that it ordinarily has a critical-satirical import. Let us now first attend to the metaphorical aspect. In his article about caricature, Worth (1974:209), points out that "a metaphor, like a great caricature, hits us like a blinding flash and forever reorganizes the world". Even Perkins (1975:5) observes, that "revelation is a frequent achievement, though not a requirement for, caricature". An example of such an achievement, according to Perkins (ibid.) , is David Levines portrait of Beckett (fig.10c ), which
"reveals an unexpected visual affinity between Becketts physiognomy and that of a buzzard, an affinity that gains depth because of Becketts morose literary works".
Choosing the same example, Worth emphasizes that what is depicted is not so much Becketts facial traits, as the qualities of his literary creations. Here, we must remind the reader, that, according to Worth (op.cit.:196), the metaphor has the form of a LviStraussean proportionality. In this case, then:
"This drawing of Samuel Beckett is to the way the real Samuel Beckett looks, as the way we feel about buzzards and birds of prey is to the way we fell about

certain aspects of the work of Samuel Beckett." (op.cit.:205f)
68
In other words, we would get: "Portrait of Beckett : Becketts real looks :: our feelings for birds of prey : our feelings for Becketts works". However, it seems that all this could be more simply, but equivalently put, by saying that the drawing differs from the real Beckett in containing, in addition, some expression conveying the content of predatoriness. And this, in turn, could also be expressed by claiming, that the Beckett caricature cumulates two iconical sign functions, one whose content plane contains the face of the person Beckett, while the other points to some rather diffuse properties of Becketts writings. In the sense we have given to these terms in an earlier work, the first sign function is therefore a picture, while the second is a symbol; the whole, however, may well be a metaphor, though not exactly for the reasons proposed by Worth (cf. Sonesson 1988,III.6.). Is there then, as suggested by Perkinss phrase quoted above, a similarity between Becketts facial physiognomy, and some abstract properties of his texts? Not necessarily. In an earlier re-analysis of Groupe s cat/coffee-pot, and some other pictorial metaphors (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.2.5. and III.6.), we demonstrated that it is on the expression plane of the picture that the traits are partially fused, so that all resemblance could well disappear, when the details are resemantized, with reference to the different integrating wholes. Thus, the similarity of the spout of the coffee pot and the cats tail is abolished, once they are seen as these particular portions of the two objects; and this is even more true of Magrittes famous picture, whose details may show facial traits, or the sexual parts of a female (this is not to say that, once we have been treated to these fusions of features, the perceptual world is not "forever reorganized" at a global level). Now, the Beckett metaphor is, in a way, more complex than these other cases: it is only on a more remote level, that it attributes traits of rapaciousness to a literary style, for primarily, it constitutes a fusion of a mans head with that of a bird of prey. And on this primary level, we should expect the similarity posed to transfer more readily to the content plane than in the other cases considered, for both the objects subject to fusion are head parts of animate beings, not only in Greimass abstract sense of the traits [+extremity] and [+superativity] (cf. Sonesson 1988,II.2.2.), but in the concrete animal sense, permitting relatively parallel resemantizations of parts. In order to secure identification of both the objects merged, even particularly characteristic traits of one of the objects may have to be left out, as Groupe (1976:42) notes in the cat/coffee-pot case. In a similar vein, Perkins (op.cit.:8) observes that while another Levine caricature of Beckett sports enormous ears, in accordance with the trends of the real-world face (see fig.10b ), the portrait of Beckett (fig.10c ) as a buzzard includes extremely small ears, "so as to avoid an absurdly large-eared buzzard".Other observations could be added: the large neck is more reminiscent of a bird than of a human being; however, the overall shape of the head is human, and its extreme vertical extension particularly suggests Becketts head, while counter-indicating that of a bird. The presence and position of the human mouth is down-played by the execution of the drawing; and the hair is given a shape which is assimilatable to the bird prototype. Also, the nose of the Beckett-as-buzzard drawing is over-dimensioned and extremely pointed,
69
but so is the nose of the other caricature, although, in the photograph, it does not appear to be particularly large, and is flattened on the top.38
Fig.10. Levine on Beckett. a) photograph; b) "trendy" caricature; c) Beckett-as-buzzard. (From Perkins 1975:1.) Before delving deeper into the analysis of the Beckett caricature, it will be convenient to pursue another line of reasoning, pertaining to the second characteristic of the caricature prototype. We could begin from Perkinss assumption, that the term "caricature" is commonly used it two, completely different meanings: on the one hand, to stand for exaggerations aiming to produce individuation; and on the other hand for pictures having double reference. As a case in point, the caricature of Roosevelt as a donkey reproduced by Gombrich is based on "a few effective clues: the cigarette holder, the smile, the tilt of the chin" (op.cit.:8), where the only caricatured trait, in Perkinss original sense, is the exaggerated length of the cigarette holder. However, it is certainly not true, that double reference is sufficient, for something to be seen as a caricature: thus, the cat/coffee-pot is no caricature, nor is Magrittes face/lower trunk, or the advertisement presenting fruits and vegetables in the
38 While Nixons nose does appear to be unusually large, one wonders if the magnification of the
subjects nose is not also a general ridiculing device, employed not only in caricatures, but also in cartoons and comic strips generally. Cf., for instance, the soldier of our prostitution strip, analyzed above in II.1.3.6. Thus, it may even connote "humour", "depreciation", etc. See further discussion in the main text below!
70
shape of a crown (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.2.5.). Nor is is clear, why Perkins (p.9) thinks animal cartoon figures like Donald Duck cannot be caricatures, even in this second sense, for they clearly join features of animality and humanity. That Donald Duck does not stand for any particular person is no reason for denying him caricature status, if, as Perkins maintains earlier, even machine parts may be caricatured; for the restriction to individual persons only becomes meaningful as a specification of a restriction to persons. Since Perkins accepts group caricatures elsewhere, we must also note, that there is nothing in the Donald Duck drawing, which permits us to see him as the standing for a particular group of human beings. Of course, he may be taken, and perhaps was originally meant, as a caricature of the human species as a whole.39 In any case, the important question which must be elucidated here, is why not all pictures having double reference are necessarily seen as caricatures, and why some would even resist such an interpretation. In order to be a caricature, it will be suggested, a picture must contain a double standard of interpretation, one of which tells us what is taken to be the case, while the other is a commentary suggesting a negative evaluation of this state of affairs. The double standard may be introduced by different means, through exaggeration (that is, idealtyping devices), pictorial metaphors, or otherwise. Though they are idealtyping, neither Perkinss machine part caricatures, nor the babyness and partner schemes, are caricatures in this sense, since they fail to suggest any tension between the actual state of affairs and its evaluation. Donald Duck, as he is nowadays interpreted, is no caricature, since the state of affairs and the commentary cannot be told apart. The issue of the negative evaluation would seem to pose a problem. The advertisement presenting fruits and vegetables as a crown intimates an identity statement, transferring positive value from the crown to the foodstuffs: and Magrittes picture suggests no unambiguous evaluation; but neither of them would ordinarily be considered caricatures. When Roosevelt is depicted as a donkey, there remains no room for doubting, that a depreciative statement is intended. In Gillrays drawing showing Napoleon as a Lilliputian in the palm of George III/Gullivers hand, it is the former, not the latter which is caricatured, for, as Lewis (1947:182) comments, the English "would like Napoleon to be contemptible and puny, would like to feel that he is small and insignificant". On the face of it, nevertheless, the Beckett drawing seems different, since it certainly does not intend to disparage the writers literary style. Yet, on the more direct level, on which an identity between the man and the buzzard is suggested, a negative evaluation is certainly conveyed. This point bears elaboration. While exaggeration can be used to make certain physical particularities stand out, and thus secure identification, the choice of this particular means for bringing out the individuality of the person caricatured, may itself carry a connotation (in the strict Hjelmslevean sense of resulting from the selection of
39 It is not the fact that Donald Duck is the protagonist of the comic strip that makes him escape
caricature status; for so was Giscard dEstaing, in the work of Wolinski.
71
means; cf. Sonesson 1988,II.4.), which is read as a derogatory judgment. It is perhaps no accident that Nixons characteristic features came to be further magnified, once the Watergate affair had brought him into a unfavourable light. The Nixon caricature would contain a double reading: once, it is seen to stand for an ordinary face, to which operations of emphasis have been applied, so that identification can be secured; and then again it is perceived as a deformed face, a monstrous, ridiculous, non-human face. This is similar to the way the Northwest Coast masks discussed by Lvi-Strauss were shown in our analysis (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.3.5.) to result from operations on the facial prototype, to indicate their exceptional, god-like status, while at the same time, by their very divergence in relation to the facial prototype, approaching the prototype of the monster face. The Beckett-as-buzzard picture is different here, because it does not contain exaggerations (but understatements, at least in the case of the ears); but it is similar in positing some kind of identity between Beckett and the buzzard, which, like the donkey, carries negative value in our culture. At this point, we can return to our earlier discussion, and admit that there is even a certain outer resemblance between Becketts real physiognomy, and that of a predatory bird, which is obvious once the rapprochement has been made (as Mallery says about the "motivation" of the American Indian Gesture language; cf. Sonesson 1988,III.2.2.): in the ridge above the eyes, the outstretched neck posture, and, one imagines, the intense stare of the gaze. The crux of the drawing is certainly not to point to these similarities; nor should, by means of such outer similarities, an internal resemblance between man and bird be suggested; but rather, the man being a writer, he style is to be characterized. And it so happens that, in the age of (post)modernism, what is ugly and frightening in birds and men, inspires awe and admiration in a work of art. Are the indications of satire and critique then directly present in the outer conformation of the pictorial sign, or are they just uses among others, to which the picture may be put? The latter conception is made explicit in Kjrups (1978;1985) theory of "pictorial speech acts", but it can definitely not be true, at least in the case of caricatures, which are uniquely designed for their particular use. But the opposite conception is not quite acceptable either. It is possible that the general tendency to exaggerate the dimensions of corporal appendages, in particular the nose, serves to bring out the connotation "this is meant to be humour/satire/caricature" (though not all idealtyping is humorous, as we noted above); but to get on with the interpretation, much more than a general acquaintance with the body scheme is required. In order to be able to decode the Beckett caricature, in particular, it is not sufficient just to know how to recognize the individual Beckett, but we must know that he is a writer, and we must have some ideas, not only about the general evaluation of predatory birds in our culture, but also about the literary canons of Modernism. In a way, all this is present in the drawing; but it is only there for someone who is capable of taking the clues, that is, someone who is equipped with the necessary schemes. To draw our discussion of caricature to a close, then, we will suggest that the Beckett caricature reposes on ruptures of everyday expectations on at least three levels,
72
two of which are finally resorbed. First, there is the contradiction present on the level of expression, where some features indicate one picture object, other features a second, some features are compatible with both picture objects, which both are contra-indicated by further features. This contradiction is resolved by admitting double reference, and is common to all pictorial metaphors, and is present, in an implicit way, also in mere exaggerations. In the second place, there is the aporie between that which is posited to be the case, and the deformations of the commentary; this contradiction cannot be resolved, and is the basis of the caricature. Finally, there the surprising suggestion, that Becketts should be taken as morally similar to a bird of prey; this unmotivated derogatory statement is resorbed, when the evaluation is transferred to the level of literature, where is gains a different meaning. The latter device may be rather peculiar to the workings of the Beckett/buzzard metaphor.
II.I.3.9. The noble art of undressing. Rudiments of a rhetorics of pornography.

There is at least one other category of pictures, which shares the heuristic advantage which Barthes (1964a) attributes to advertisements, namely, that of being made in order to accomplish a very simple, well-defined goal: pornographic pictures (also cf. Sonesson 1988,II.1.1.). While the aim of advertisements is always (at least among other things) to create the desire for buying a particular product on the part of the reader, pornographic pictures invariably aspire to cause sexual excitement in the respondent (or perhaps, more crudely put, in the manner of Orfali 1983: to produce an orgasm). These are straight-forward goals; it is certainly much more difficult to pinpoint the intentions behind the production and use of news photographs, diagrams, and caricatures, not to mention those presiding at the creation of an artistic picture; nor is it easy to specify their intended effects, or the behaviour sequences thought to result from the observation of such pictures. There is a further similarity between pornographic pictures and those employed in advertisements, in that both of these pictorial categories visibly contain thick layers of symbolic values, which have a lot to tell about contemporary ideology. Yet, with the exception of Orfalis dissertation, only an article by Casalis 1975 and a few remarks in Barthes 1980 would seem to touch on our theme.40 Orfalis dissertation poses a number of problems, which cannot be fully discussed in the present context. For one, she does not make any distinction between purely pornographic and merely erotic pictures, which seems to us a necessary differentiation, at least in the sense in which the latter may be negatively qualified as pictures having a sexually loaded content without for that reason sustaining as simple
40 Our own observations in the following are based on a rather superficial examination of a set of
volumes of Swedish and American mens magazines, arbitrarily picked out from the editions of the sixties and seventies. A more serious investigation would of course require a book in itself. Nor have we investigated more recent trends, or attended to hard-core pornography, or to pictures of a more plainly erotic character (in the sense of the distinction made below).
73
and well-defined a purpose as that of pornography.41 What is worse, those drawings by Klossowski, as well as the photographs by Zucca inspired in the work of Klossowski, which are the main object of study in Orfalis thesis, could hardly be said to be pornographic, nor simply erotic; rather, they must be qualified as meta-pornographic. In order to understand these distinctions, it is however indispensable to tell three sequences of events apart, which are all the time confused by Orfali: the events in which the depicted subjects are involved; the events occurring to the observer of the picture in his function as observer; and the events which in addition, and quite apart from the observer function, but possibly occasioned by the content of the picture, could happen to the observer. To begin with, we should differentiate two "narrative" sequences: in the first, there is the experiencing subject, which, starting out from a perception, is to be brought to a state of sexual excitement; this sequence starts out from the second function above, and ends up in the last one. We could think of it the way Aristotle conceives of the drama (as he is echoed by Prince 1982 ): as having a beginning, a middle (a peripeteia or climax), and a conclusion. Then there is another narrative sequence, which is manifested in the picture itself, and which corresponds to our first function. We are not thinking about pornographic photo novellas, which are in fact quite common in pornographic magazines, and indeed forms the substance of the work of Klossowski; but of photographs as isolated pictures, which, because of the visibly concocted environment, the presence of many indexically loaded details, and so on, clearly point to narrative sequences of which they are mere fragments. In such pictorial fragments, it often happens that the experiencing subject is present, precisely because he is absent, that is, more precisely, because no other (depicted) subject (of the first, erotical sequence) is there to trouble his solitude with the sexual object, so that he can vicariously enter the scene. This describes the most trivial variant found in mens magazines. In pornographic photo novellas, the same structure present in the behaviour sequence of the experiencing subject is found also in the pictorial set, only that the distance between the beginning and the peripeteia have been filled in with numerous details. Since real action is continuous, and the photo novella is made up of discontinuous stills, it would be interesting to discover the way in which relevant moments are selected for representation. Since the choice is certainly not arbitrary, there must be some kind of "sexual intercourse scheme", comparable to the "quasi-courtship behaviour" of Scheflens, and the "intimate behaviour" of Morriss, but subsequent to the first, and more fine-grained than the latter. In the case of pictorial sets representing the sexual act, it is usually not the peripeteia which is depicted, but the pictures contain so many indexical details, that the experiencing subject can easily bring
41 Barthes (1980.70ff) also relies on a distinction between pornographic and erotical pictures, which in
one way seems to be the opposite of ours: the former is "une photo toujours nave, sans intention et sans calcul". On the other hand, it is also "une photo unaire" and "homogne" - but that certainly seems to require the unity of intention, as least as an attribution on the part of the decoder. In pornography, as we take the term here, numerous props appear (but partaking of a limited number of categories), but they are unified by one, overarching purpose: the sexual act. Eroticism, on the other hand, may share its domain with other values.
74
the sequence imaginarily to its conclusion (a curious case is the picture showing sperm spread all over the body of the female - an obvious retentional index, showing that climax - which, here, because of the "implied reader", means the ejaculation of the male - has already taken place; but can the vicarious filling in occur also retroactively?). Interestingly, Klossowskis drawings, as well as the photographs made by Zucca to illustrate Klossowskis stories, relate to each other in the ways expected of such a pornographic photo novella, and thus build up a sequence of actions which is full of indexical details pointing to an approaching climax (which is however more an act of violence than a sexual act). When expectations have increased to a maximum, however, they always suffer a set-back; no climax is forth-coming, and temporal indices leaves off at such a distance, that imaginative filling in would be absurd. In point of fact, the whole pictorial sequence is so stylized, so completely distanced and "quoted" already form the start, that the observer, instead of becoming an experiencing subject of a sexual series, remains an outside onlooker. We cannot make an actual analysis of Klossowskis work here; instead we shall concern ourselves with the ordinary pornographic series, which is the background from which the artists work detach itself ironically. Suffice it so say, that, in addition, stereotypes and ironical metaphors are important here (for instance, the theatrical poses of many pictures; the lilliputian male nude standing on a womans lap, for which cf. the discussion of caricature in II.1.3.8.). Now, let us begin from another angle. Two schemes are of obvious relevance for the understanding of pornographic pictures: the body scheme, in particular as it is erotically invested; the sexual intercourse scheme (something like Morriss progression from "hand-to-hand" to "sex-to-sex", but more finely textured). We will here concentrate on the first scheme, which in itself is not temporally distributed, though it forms the basis of other temporally distributed schemes, as we shall see presently. Also, we will be concerned with the erotical investments of the female body alone, since it is the nearly unique bearer of such investments in our culture (in contrast, for instance, to the case of the Ancient Greeks). One way of approaching a kind of erotical value hierarchy projected onto the body could be to ask persons of different sexes on which parts of the body they are more or less frequently touched by persons of the same or opposite sex. Jourard did just that (here quoted from Argyle 1969:93f; also cf. Heslin & Alper 1983; Major 1981). Reorganizing Jourards diagram, so that the amount of touch augments from left to right, we obtain fig.11 below. There are a number of valid reasons for finding Jourards tactile body scheme less satisfactory, both in general, and for our purpose. The mechanical partitioning of the percentage scale into chunks consisting each of 25 degrees is not very illuminating. Indeed, considered as a physiognomic quality, of the erotic subspecies, 0 degree touch is something very different from 25 degree touch, although both are here included in the same chunk. It also seems desirable to separate, in the category "opposite sex friend", those which are (potential) sexual partners (as are those of Jourards investigation, to judge from the results) and those which are really just friend, with no sexual intent being implied. If common sense may be trusted, the first group should comprise those persons permitted most touch of all, while the second group would be assigned the
75
smallest amount of touch. Furthermore, though father and mother may touch some parts as much as the opposite sex friend, the quality of the touch would normally be expected to be very different in the two (or three) cases. Indeed, the configuration of touch found in the body-for-the-gynaecologist could easily be the same as in that for the sexual partner, but the meanings assigned to the two body scheme are extremely divergent.
Fig.11. The tactile body scheme (From Argyle 1969:94 ). The latter objection, which we originally made independently, is taken much further by Major (1981:16), who notes that factors such as the duration, intensity, location, and intentionality of the act of touching, the relationship inside of which it occurs, as well and the context of the act, may completely change the experiental quality of the touch. In particular, Henley, as referred by Major (p.22ff), observes that touch is not only the carrier of sexual attraction, love, and other affiliative feelings, but may also express violence, dominance, and so on. In fact, Henley thinks that the double correlation of power and intimacy, embodied in the personal pronoun model conceived by Brown & Ford, is also adequate to account for touching. Whatever the details of this approach, the suggestion that touch is also a function of animosity is certainly reasonable; at the same time, it is sufficient to throw serious doubt on our reliance on Jourards body scheme for the interpretation of pornographical rhetorics. The following
76
remarks, therefore, should not be assigned any great amount of intentional depth, but must rather be taken to indicate a methodology, which may be applied to a more adequate model of the touched body, if such a one is forthcoming. Such as Jourards results are, we may still ask if they give rise to a transitive relation of touching. With one notable exception (the father touches the head 51-75%, while a same sex friend only touches the head apart from the crown 26-50%), it really seems to be the case that, from left to right on our figure, more parts of the body are touched, and those already having been touched are touched increasingly, if maximum has not been attained earlier. In fact, there is a second, less straightforward exception: the knees, which had not been touched earlier, are touched by the opposite sex friend more than he touches the lower shins, which they other touched already. For our purpose, however, it is necessary to obtain some kind of scale containing different degree of eroticalness. Therefore, we shall assign the value 0 to those parts of the body which, according to Jourard, are touched 75-100% of the time; the value 1 to those parts touched 51-75%; the value 2 to those touched 26-50%; and the value 3 to those touched 0-25%. In this way, Jourards numbers will translate as follows (table 1):
For female: Fath S-sex Moth O-sex Sum 1 1 0 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 2 3 2 2 For male: Fath S-sex Moth O-sex Sum 2 2 1 2 3 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 3 2 2 3 3 3 3 2 3 3 2 3 3 2 2 3 2 2
crown head/neck shoulders upper arm lower arm hands upper trunk lower trunk upper leg knee lower leg feet
0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 1 0 1 1
2 4 4 2 1 0 10 11 10 9 9 8
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1
5 6 4 3 3 0 7 10 9 9 8 8
Table 1. The transitivity of touching. (Numerical assignments made be the author, on the basis of Jourards experiments, as referred in Argyle 1969: 94 ; partly reproduced above as fig.11 . See text for further explications of the procedure employed). Supposing Jourards figures to be significant42, we may now translate them further into hierarchies of relative erotical load. In the case of females, the hierarchy, in order of increasing eroticalness, would then be the following: hands - lower arm - upper arm/crown - head/neck/shoulders - feet lower leg/knee - upper leg/upper trunk - lower trunk. The males scale is different in many ways: hands - lower arm/upper arm - shoulders - crown - head/neck upper trunk - lower trunk/feet - upper leg/knee - lower trunk.
42 The problem, again, is the distance covered by each of Jourards partitions of the percentage scale:
between what we translate as 3 and 2, there may be a difference of 1% of of 50%: for in one case, the interval could obtain between 25% and 26%, and in another case between 0% and 50%.
77
A notable difference between the two scales - which will hardly surprise members of our culture - is that, in the case of females, upper leg and upper trunk only just precede lower trunk in erotical load, whereas the mens upper trunk only possesses a medium degree of eroticalness. Comparing the two hierarchies, we will also register a number of other important differences: 1) Whereas the figures underlying the mens scale increase continuously from hands to lower trunk, the womens scale contains sudden discontinuities: between hands and head/neck/shoulders, the scale augments from 0 to 4; then it suddenly jumps up to 8 for the feet, and continues thereafter to 11 for the lower trunk. There are different ways of accounting for this discontinuity. One alternative is to consider that the female hierarchy really cumulates two different semantical investments. Since the body parts concerned, with the curious exception of the feet, are exclusively accessible to sexual partners, the second investment, beginning after the discontinuity, may be the erotical scale proper. Before that, and running parallel to the erotical scale, there would be a scale of increasing privacy; and only the positive pole of the privacy scale would contain the eroticalness scale. In the case of the males, however, the two scales coincide. 2) If now we consider the projection of the highest erotical loadings onto the body scheme, the female body turns out to contain two erotical centres43, around which are grouped zones of decreasing erotical load. The three highest figures are those of the lower trunk (11), the upper leg (10), and the upper trunk (10). The upper leg will not be considered to form a separate centre, since is appears on the body in the immediate vicinity of a higher load, that of the lower trunk. The erotical load then decreases for all lower body parts, from the knees over the lower legs to the feet. The same phenomenon may be observed on the mens scale. Now the high load on the upper trunk, in the case of females, could also be explained as a neighbourhood value in relation to the lower trunk. But the loading does not decrease as radically here as on the mens scale. It it true that the females loadings decrease continuously with increasing distance from the upper trunk (this is not the case on the mens scale, where head/neck have increasing values), but they are already from the start much below the values of the upper trunk. Here further investigations are needed.To begin with, it would be necessary to specify much better the body parts, differentiating, for instance, belly, bosom, and other portions of the upper trunk. It is true that Heslin & Alpen (1983) have repeated Jourards experiment, using a different bodily segmentation, which, among other things, better circumscribes the sexual parts, but they do not report their results in any detailed way in the article referred; in addition, their body-for-X-categories are different (stranger vs close friend) and the eliciting questions are also distinct (e.g. where is touch most pleasant?), which renders comparisons difficult.
43 It should be noted, however, that Jourards investigation fails to distinguish frontal parts of the body
from those on the back: the sex and the buttocks will occupy the same body part. Also, the partitioning of the body is certainly not sufficiently fine-grained for an analysis of erotical loadings.
78
Thus, we will try in the following another approach to the problem of the scale of eroticalness, more in the style of a "natural history method": we will consider the actual workings of the highly meaningful, cultured act called strip-tease. Since it is necessary to retain the suspense until the end (cf., in a similar vein, Bouissac 1976 on the circus act), the undressing must follow an increasing scale of erotical loading: first outdoor clothes, if any, that is hat, coat, possibly sweater, then blouse, followed by a shift to the lower body, which means the skirt is removed, then perhaps the stockings, whereupon there may be a shift back to the upper body, the bra falling off, after which the last operation brings us back again to the lower trunk, to the panties, which however, in the classical version, are never taken off, or are at least replaced with darkness. It is the clothing scheme (cf. II.1.3.2. above), which is here temporalized: each layer, in the sense of that scheme, is run through separately, following both the syntactical dimensions of the scheme in question, the one inside out, and the one projecting onto body parts. But since the clothing scheme lacks a temporal dimension proper, the direction of undressing must be given by something else, in particular in the relation between clothing layers; and that which gives the direction, we submit, is the erotical dominance hierarchy. It may be objected, that it is simply impossible for mechanical reasons, to remove first clothes found on the lower layers; but this is untrue, as will be seen from the fact, that there are rhetorical operations on the eroticalness scale, which permits just that to be done. Before we go on, we must consider Barthess (1957:147ff) classical text on the strip-tease, which, at least apparently, directly contradicts what we have said so far: the strip-tease, he says, or at least its Parisian variant, is based on a contradiction: "dsexualiser la femme dans le moment mme o on la dnude", the result being that "toute une srie de couvertures [sont] apposes sur le corps de la femme, au fur et mesure quelle feint de le dnuder". This is so, according to Barthes, because, at the beginning of the act, the woman is disguised as a Chinese woman, a vamp, or what have you, or she is adorned with feathers, furs, and the like, and the effects of these fittings remain, even when they are taken off. The supposedly "artistic" dancing is not intended to be erotical, but is there to out-distance the very fact of nudity; which is proven a contrario by what happens in the amateur competitions, where the awkward movements of the participants do make their nakedness apparent, and even embarrassing. To all this, it may be retorted, first, that, because of his sexual preferences, Barthes is unable to take on the role of a participant observer of the female undressing act44; which is why we are under no obligation to take his judgment seriously. In the second place, Barthess judgment may apply, but only, as he indicates, to Parisian striptease. More importantly, however, his evaluation really supposes an implicit, everyday
44 We ignore if there are any practice of male strip-tease for a male , homosexual public. Lately, acts of undressing executed by males for a female public have become fashionable, but they are in no way parallel phenomena to traditional female strip-tease, as evidenced by the different reactions of the respective publics. At least at the present state of acculturation, females are unable to see the act of male undressing as anything else than a parody, or perhaps a caricature, of an activity more properly accomplished by females. That is way they laugh, as the males never do.
79
assumption, which it is designed to deny, according to which the successive uncovering of the female body amounts to an increasing sexualization; and it is precisely this assumption, which we are out here to formulate in a precise way. It is of no avail to us, if the professionalization of contemporary strip-tease has smoothed out the procedure, to the point of depriving it of all erotical loading. The essence of the strip-tease, for all we know, may well be embodied in amateur competitions - or even in the more secret doings occurring in private bedrooms. Now let us, in a way which is parallel to Halls proxemic distance, call the 0 layer of clothing the intimate level, layer number one the personal level, layer 2 the social level, and layer 3 the public level. The layers which were designed with the numbers 1a and 2a will now be termed the semi-personal and the semi-social levels, respectively. Given these levels, there is a first rhetorical operation, which consists in introducing incoherences in the clothing syntagms, both inside each layer, and between the layers. Thus, for instance, when Klossowskis wife is depicted, on one of Zuccass photographs (reproduced in Orfali 1984:67 ), dressed in a fur cap (public layer) and undergarments (personal layer), this is really a double rhetorical operation applied to the clothing scheme, first because the outermost elements pertain to different layers, and second because the head is on a public level, while the rest of the body remains on the personal level. In order to see the difference between these two concurrent meaning effects, it is important to realize that the first of them is independent of temporal sequence, while the second derives from the assumption of a norm-al order of undressing, which requires the hat, as an object pertaining to the public level, to be removed will before the undergarments, which are contained in the personal level. It may seem that, at least in the case of static photographs, the difference is of no avail: if, for instance, the girl is naked under the blouse, we cannot know, from the photograph alone, if, infringing the norm-al order, she took the bra off before the blouse, or if she never put any bra on. In fact, however, pictures often contain indexical signs, which permit us to reconstruct the preceding happenings from the schemes of experience, and these reconstructions also determine different erotical operations. Suppose, therefore, that the norm-al strip-tease takes on the shape suggested by fig.12 below.
3 hat gloves coat shoes sweater 2a blouse belt skirt stockings panties 2 bra 1
Fig.12. The norm-al undressing scheme. What we have tried to do in the figure above, is to render the different layers of clothing involved in a norm-al act of undressing, as well as the shifts from upper to lower body, and vice-versa. Inside each layer, the rule is, it seems, to expose the most private parts only in the end. One obvious rhetorical operation consists in the permutation of the order between the body parts: taking the panties off before the bra (a state description contained in many pornographic pictures) is undoubtedly to unveil "the best" already at the beginning, but it also creates a tension in relation to the norm-al
80
order of undressing, which in itself seems to carry erotic weight. There is a possibility of permuting hat, gloves, and shoes, also outside the layers to which they pertain, since usually no other clothing layers occupy the same bodily slot (the stockings do just that, to be sure, in relation to the shoes, but the distance of potential layers is appreciable). Gloves are often kept on until the very end of the strip-tease act; what function may then this accomplish? It could be an outcrop of the common tendency in pornography to enmesh its improbable situations in some more probable ones, that is, in some everyday scheme of interpretation (thus, for instance, we get the nude girl busying herself washing up the dishes, riding a bicycle, swinging, sitting in an arm-chair reading a book, or even walking on the street), which may be a technique aiming at making the erotical utopia more easily assimilatable into the everyday reality of the observer. In this case, the gloves, just like Me Klossowskis fur cap, stand for the real woman the man may meet every day on the street, while the rest of the body is made to represent the pornographic utopia. Another interpretation, which does not necessarily exclude the first one, is that the experience of all the layers of clothing which norm-ally separate the fur cap or the gloves from the near-nudity of the rest of the body creates an additional tension, as if all the degrees of eroticalness could be run through in a single moment. Something like this would in any case seem to happen in some more subtle cases of permutations between clothes pertaining to different layers. There is no real difficulty in taking the stockings and the panties off before the skirt, and with a little feat of acrobatics, the bra may be removed before the blouse. The undressing has, as always, the effect of segmenting the body anew, confirming its boundaries, but the result only becomes visible after several operations have been accomplished, only some of which we can observe: the erotical loading to all appearance runs through many clothing layers at once. Here we may return for inspiration to the work of Orfali (1984:129), who recognize different kinds of erotical intensifiers:
"Lintensificateur retardant vise la cration dun obstacle permettant de retarder la saisie de lobject imagin; lintensificateur renchrissant vise promouvoir une surenchre sexuelle dans la reprsentation de lobjet."
As examples of the former in Klossowskis pictures, Orfali mentions the veil, the gloves, the stays, the panties, etc., but also an arm-chair or a table standing in the way. An arm-chair is for instance claimed to function in this way, when it forces the woman to raise her leg, thereby hiding her sex. But even moral obstacles are included in this category. If the ignore the latter case, however, the important idea here, is that the action which physically conceals the erotical object actually highlights this same object for the mind:
"A chaque fois est soigneusement souligne une zone rogne ou sexuelle particulire que lattribut vestimentaire -- dans notre perspective -- carte momentanment de la vue du sujet afin dirriter adquatement son dsir dappropriation." (Op.cit.:131).
The other type of intensifier possesses two subtypes, which both serves to augment the presence of the sexual zone:
"soit exhiber directement une zone sexuelle, soit lexhiber indirectement en dissimilant une zone annexe moins importante." (Op.cit.:134f).
81
A necklace may serve the first purpose, whereas the veil functions according to the second subtype, and thus emphasizes the nudity of the rest of the body. This second subtype was noted already by Casalis (1975:365f), who referred to a picture of a girl wearing a bathing suit ending exactly below her naked bosom, which, together with the text "Examine these two impressive points", is said to point metonymically to the breasts. If now we ignore some more curious examples, such as moral obstacles and other vaguely situational impediments for the observers excitement, we recognize here some procedures reminiscent of our rhetorical operations. But there is a problem. From the point of view of content, the effect of the intensifier is all the time to foreground the sexually loaded zon; but on the level of expression, this may be accomplished, either by concealing the zon, or by marking out its limits, or again by hiding some neighbouring, less erotically loaded zon. Put this way, the theory seems void: no matter if the sexual zon is hidden or exhibited, and if the veil is applied to it or displaced laterally, the effect is always the same, that is, there results a sexual excitement on the part of the observer! At this point, we are reminded of the famous negation present in the Freudian unconscious, which has the effect of making A and non-A synonymous, much to the scandal of the logician and (without pun) any conscientious semiotician; for the effect of this effect is to make any arbitrary affirmation provable. But, of course, the centrality of sex to pornographic pictures, in contradistinction to the part played by it in the unconscious, does not need to be proven. Rather, sexuality is a given; all that is at issue is how it is to be given. Just like Foucault (1976) notes about the verbal discourse on sexuality, keeping silent about it is just another way of tattling about it. Sex is set from the start, if not by biology, so at least by our civilization. This is why we have to start out from the schemes: the body scheme, the clothing scheme, and the scheme of undressing. Let us suppose that, when the body parts most erotically loaded are covered up, we have attained the zero degree of the erotical scheme: the erotical effect (some small distance left to sex) is that which is norm-ally expected. The following operations would seem to be included in the rhetorics of pornography (many examples illustrate several operations at once): a) permutation of the erotics scale (as a whole): less erotically loaded parts are covered up, whereas more erotically loads once are disclosed. Often, there is a possibility of seeing through the layers onto more private ones: nipples (0) through the blouse (2); sexual organ (0) through the panties (1); stays (1) covering the belly but leaving the bosom (0) and/or the sexual organ (0) exposed; pieces of jewellery (2/2a) placed on a naked body (0); etc. b) permutation of the erotics scale relative to bodily contiguity: covering of body parts which are relatively low in erotical loading, being contiguous to body parts on the apex, or near the apex of the erotics scale. For instance, the lower legs dressed in stockings, or the belly covered, whereas the contiguous sexual parts are naked. In a way, this seems to be a contiguity index, as suggested obliquely by Casalis (cf. Sonesson
82
1988,I.2.5. ). c) displacement of the borderlines on the body scheme: covering of erotically loaded body parts, but with a slight dephasing of the clothing scheme relative to the body scheme. A classical case is the dcolletage, which displaces the clothing equivalent of the breasts downwards. Also, the hairy coat of the sexual organ extending over the panties, and the like. Here, the parts stands for the whole, much more effectively perhaps than the whole itself; we get an factorial index (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.2.5. ). d) fictifying of the clothing layers: cloths which are transparent or tightfitting are rendered "fictional", since they fail to accomplish the function of concealing the body. An extreme case, which however also involves a substitution of the clothing scheme for another one (cf. below), is when the girl is dressed in a fishing-net, or the like. e) tension/contradiction between the clothing layers: there is more than the distance of a single layer (a kind of deletion) between cloths present on the body at the same time, that is, a state which does not occur in the norm-al process of undressing is represented. E.g. a hat (3) and undergarments (1). There results a tension between the everyday, public character of the hat, and the erotical, personal loading of the undergarments. f) permutation of the undressing order within layers: contravenes the norm-al order of undressing prescribed by the undressing scheme. Thus, for instance, the panties, which cover a a body part relatively high in erotical value, are removed before the bra, which covers a part which is relatively less loaded erotically. Such an inversion can of course only be gathered from indexical signs in a static picture. g) permutation of the undressing order between layers: this case is similar to that in e, but the difference is that the effect is not directly visible. Thus, for instance, the panties (1) may be removed before the skirt (2); but this information can only be indexically conveyed in a static picture. We get a kind of build-up of erotical energy, promising a subsequent explosion; so that here we could really talk about a delaying intensifier. There are, of course, a large amount of other rhetorical operations at work in pornographical pictures. Some, like those mentioned above, concern the erotical scheme, conceived as a modification of the body and clothing schemes. Thus, there could be an addition of clothing layers; and there is sometimes a substitution of the elements of the clothing scheme relative to the body scheme, as, for instance, when the bra is placed under the bosom (which is however also case b above), or covers the sex; but this has perhaps more of a comical, than an erotical effect. More important cases are those in which the entire clothing scheme is substituted for quite different schemes, as when a tyre is made to serve the function of panties, etc. In addition, there are of course other operations, which do not apply to the body and clothing schemes, as described here, but involve more traditional "symbolic" values, and therefore are also illuminating for the study of the female social role going beyond sexual behaviour (in the way Millum 1975 and Umiker-Sebeok 1981;1986
83
have studied female stereotypes in advertisements). Thus, for instance, when we observe a girl pressing here naked body against the rough-textured bark of a tree, or lying extended on a rugged piece of rock, there is an obvious intention of deriving a meaning from the contrast: we are to put the softness, warmth, and vulnerability of the female body in opposition to the harshness, coldness, and resistance of dead matter. But why is not instead a contiguity exchanged for a similarity, as when the same naked girl is placed on a car in countless advertisements (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.2.5.)? Structure is not everything: the ideology of femininity in our society resists; even with the aid of contrasts is does not allow just any sense to be derived, but only admits of such modulations inside the given category which can be felt to be opposed to whatever values can be carried by tree trunks and blocks of stone, as they are conceived in the given Lifeworld, inside the ideology of the natural.45
II.1.4. The Laokoon model.

Laokoon is the title of a book by the German 18th century writer and critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1766) ; it takes its name from a Hellenistic sculpture group, rediscovered in Rome in 1506, and still to be seen in the Vatican, which shows the priest Laocoon and his sons dying under the attack of serpents, and which is chosen by Lessing to epitomize the issues he is concerned to discuss: the limits of painting and poetry, as the subtitle reads. Indeed, Lessing uses the Laocoon statue, as compared to the same incident as told by Virgil, to demonstrate against Winckelmanns doctrine, that restraint in the manifestation of pain, rather than being a characteristic of the Antique spirit, is a constraint on pictorial expression, which is foreign to poetry.46 The merit of having discovered, that Lessings problematics is authentically semiotic, without doubt is due to Todorov (1977:169ff), who was also the first to point out, that Lessings stand-point is severely hampered by normative concerns. Lessing, to be sure, formulates the comparison between painting and literature in terms of signs, noting that the former employs figures and colours in space, while the latter articulates tones in time; and that, whereas the signs of painting tend to be motivated ("natural"), those of writing are predominantly arbitrary. Then, however, Lessing postulates, that artistic signs have to be motivated, that they should have what he terms a convenient relation to what they designate. This being so, we should expect artistic signs in space to refer exclusively to spatial objects, and artistic signs in time to indicate objects in
45 Our rhetorics of pornography is probably a fairly recent outgrowth of sexual imagery. Very few traces
of it would seem to be present in the (erotical?) pictures collected from the history of art by Clark 1956. However, is may take some of its origins from the last century, as suggested, more by the illustrations than by the text, in Hess & Nochlin 1972. 46 Krauss (1977:1ff) is quite mistaken in suggesting that Lessing was somehow interested in determining the nature of sculpture. Though the Laocoon group is a sculpture, many other examples are pictures, and Lessing uses the term "painting" to refer to both types, noting explicitly that he will do so. Herder already criticized Lessing for failing to observe this distinction, important as far as the relations to time and space are concerned; this is noted both by Bayer (1975:47) and by Wellbery (1984:114ff).
84
time alone. The first, according to Lessing, are things; the latter are actions (and more properly, processes). This means spatial signs are quite capable of referring to temporal objects, and temporal signs to stand for spatial objects; but they will lack the "convenient relationship", and thus will fail to be art. The Laokoon model in semiotics must however mean something more than just the correct interpretation of what Lessing meant to say. Indeed, there have been at least to attempts to salvage Lessings work, by reinterpreting it in the terms of more recent currents of semiotics. One of them start out from the semiotic theory of Peirce, while the other takes some help from Hjelmslev; and none of them seems aware of the others work. Bayer (1975;1984) has be concerned to rediscover in Lessings work some notions of Peircean semiotics, as they are conceived by Max Bense and the Stuttgart school. Of particular interest is his employment of the notion of index to account for the fact that temporal objects, i.e. actions, may, in spite of the difficulties,be represented by means of spatial signs, i.e. pictures. Hess-Lttich (1984) seems to us to be generally justified in censuring the rigid orthodoxy of the Stuttgart school, and its fossilized adherence to a benighted Peirce interpretation, but less so in the case of Bayers work, which is at least in part an original investigation. On the other hand, the same critic is certainly right when observing the discrepancy between the space devoted, in Bayers study, to the possibility of pointing indexically to processes when using spatial signs such as pictures, and the very slight attention which Lessing gives the same issue. It is, in any case, extremely difficult to attribute any clear theoretical status to this projection of Peircean notions onto Lessings much earlier text. One is, at times, reminded of the practice, among certain religious sects, of searching in the Bible for equivalents to recent scientific discoveries. In this respect, the second of Lessings semiotically-minded interpreters, David Wellbery (1984:110f), is much more explicit about the import which should be given to his attempt to correlate Lessings distinctions with some parts of Hjelmslevs scientific terminology: it is to be treated as a heuristic device, and should not be taken to demonstrate any closer resemblance. Moreover, Wellberys study is first and foremost a historical investigation, which starts out from a discussion of the particular, explicitly semiotical theory which is the background of Lessings work: the tradition from Wolff and Baumgarten over Meier and Mendelsson, that is, the German division of Enlightenment semiotics (Gombrich 1982:40ff has more to say about some English precursors, notably Shaftesbury and Harris; but also Gombrichs discussion is biased by its exclusive attention to the problem of punctum temporis). According to Wellbery (1984:1ff,35ff,228ff), Enlightenment semiotics on the one hand, as Foucault has noted, embodies the conviction that signs are indispensable instruments of all rational inquiry; while it at the same time, as Lotman has argued, manifests a deep suspicion of all semiosis, not only because, being arbitrary in the sense of being freely chosen, signs may well introduce distortions of the facts they are supposed to convey, but because, in any case, they are bound to establish a distance to
85
the things themselves. Knowledge, according to Enlightenment conceptions, is of two kinds: intuitive and figurative or symbolic. While the latter involves "the objectivity of discourse, its opacity, its otherness to lived experience" (op.cit: 22f), only the former is able to guarantee its own truth. Natural signs, which are somehow closer to intuition, are considered the telos of all our culturally instituted systems of arbitrary signs (p.28). However, signs are necessary to represent things distinctly, to abbreviate ideas, and to discover new truths, and therefore are essential for inquiry to progress. In the Enlightenment utopia, there is a passage from a first mental stage of intuition, over signuse, to a second stage equivalent to the first, but incorporating the discoveries due to signs (pp.31f, 38ff).47 For Enlightenment thinking, all mental activity is conceived of as a kind of seeing, termed a representation, and is often likened to the way we supposedly look at pictures. Inside this framework, it was the classification of ideas proposed by Wolff which proved decisive to all later thinkers, including Lessing. According to this classification, concepts [Begriffe, eine jede Vorstellung einer Sache] are either obscure [dunkel] or clear [klar]; and, in the latter case, either confused [undeutlich] or distinct [deutlich] (op.cit.:12ff). An obscure representation is one which remains unnoticed, or is not thematized by the subject, impeding the recognition of its object. A clear representation, on the other hand, is one which permits it object to be identified, and lets it be discriminated from others. But a clear representation may yet be con-fused: that is, experienced as a compound of globally apprehended features. In distinct cognition, however, the object is analyzed in terms of its features, which are themselves represented clearly. Thus, as Wellbury notes, the distinction between that which is confused and that which is distinct is entirely relative: it depends on the determination of parts and wholes. In addition, since distinct cognition involves the ability to "enumerate for someone else" what the individual features of the object are, it is also opposed to confused representation as successively to simultaneity, and as discourse to designation (op.cit.:15). It is in these terms that aesthetics is conceived by Baumgarten. Aesthetic experience relies on sensate, that is to say, confused representations, and is concerned to bring this lower kind of knowledge to perfection. Baumgarten even discovers some advantages to sensate representations: they are replete with content representing individual entities in the fullness of their multiple determinations; they convey the object in the coalescence of its features, instead of analyzing it away; they concern the whole person, not only the intellect; and they requires intuitive actualization, although they are conveyed by signs (op.cit:50ff). But Mendelsohn was not content to let the knowledge acquired through art be necessarily of a lower order. He claims that a perfect sensate representation requires extensive clarity, as opposed to the intensive clarity which characterize cognitive representations. While the latter makes the individual features stand out as a succession in time, the former lets the whole be
47 According to Wellbery, both the linguistic attack on nonsense typical of the Vienna school (p.23f),
and the dialectics of intentionality and fulfilment in phenomenology (p.240ff) take their origins here.
86
grasped simultaneously, as a manifold, internally rich representation made up of separate, but intertwined features (p.56f).48 Lessing, however, will side with Wolff and Baumgarten here, arguing that the sucessivity of verbal language, as against the global character of paintings, is precisely that which places the real object at a sufficient distance, to permit the aesthetic effect to be produced (p.132f). As mentioned above, Wellbery (p.110ff) makes use of a few elementary concepts of Hjelmslevs theory to bring some order into the different constraints and limitations attributed by Lessing to painting and poetry, respectively. This conception involves, in the first place, a straightforward distinction between expression and content, which, as in Hjelmslevs theory, is combined with a threefold separation of the instances of material, substance, a n d form. This is then completed with a differentiation between the rules applying to the respective sign systems generally, and those which must be followed in addition, to obtain an aesthetic effect. As is apparent from his translation, Wellbery takes "matire" to be the "material" of the sign, that is, on the expression side, the "sensuous stuff"; and we have already noted some serious problems for such an interpretation (cf. II.1.3.6. above). And although on first introducing the terms (p.111), Wellbery rightly observes that form concerns the selection and arrangement of matter, and that substance is the union of form and matter, he later (in table 2, p.113 for instance) uses the terms rather differently, for here, at least on the content side, substance appears as a particularization of material, and form is opposed to substance as is a set of principles to units. However, in spite of these reservations,, we.will now.proceed to expound the essential moments of the classification. We will begin with the content side. Whereas the material of literature is the totality of imagined, historical, and legendary aspects, only visually apprehended elements form the backdrop of paintings. Thus, bodies are the substance or content units of painting, whereas actions play the same part in literature. There is then a set of seven rules of selection and arrangement which make up the form, and which oppose the fully determined entities of paintings to the abstract ones of poetry (that is, the fact the former must depict the lion in its entirety, whereas the latter can select just a single property, the courage, in order to attribute it to Hercules; p.148ff ); the identical ontological status of all painted entities as against the several regions of literature (the fact that angels and gods are equally visible in pictures as human beings ; p.158ff ); beauty as the principle of choice in painting, and functional contents in poetry (which means that the former is unable, in Lessings view, to attain any higher value, whereas the latter may occupy itself with moral issues; p.162ff ); harmony of spatial parts in painting, as against unity of action (the former being the unit of visual-spatial experience, while the latter is a series of changes forming a whole by being geared to a single goal; cf. p.185ff ); perceptual habits contrasting with narrative logic (the object
48 Interestingly, the separation of extensively and intensively clear representations would seem to
correspond to our independently made distinction between the configuration or Gestalt and the structure., for which cf. Sonesson 1988,I.3.4. In his rendering of Mendelsohns ideas, Wellbery (ibid.) even uses the term "Gestalt".
87
is seen in once glance, but only given part by part in description; however, in Lessings view, every present moment of narrative forms a whole; p.210ff ); selection of pregnant moment opposed to that of the most sensate quality (just as the crucial selection of a punctum temporis assures a stronger experience of the temporal whole than that procured by the whole could it be rendered in its entirety, so the decisive choice of the descriptive attribute determines our experience of an action; p.167ff ); strong determination by material as against supremacy of form over material (whereas the expression material of pictures is particular flagrant in its materiality, that of poetry is apparently immaterial; p.117ff ). Proceeding to the expression plane, we will now find that the material, in the case of pictures, is supposed to be "matter" in general, making it strongly material; whereas that of literature, that is, "articulate tones", is weakly material (we already noted the impact of this on the respective content planes above). The substance of painting is the work as a physical object; that of literature the spoken text in its physical manifestation (here the distinction of material and substance, as well as of the two substances, appears to be vacuous). The form then contains two rules of arrangement (and none of selection, for no obvious reason), according to which the syntax of literature is discrete, and follows a temporal deployment, whereas that of painting is dense, and obeys a spatial deployment. The opposition between temporality and spatiality brings us to the heart of the matter, at least as it is described by Gombrich, Todorov, and Bayer, and we will return to this issue below. As for the notions of discreteness and density, they are certainly borrowed from Goodman, though this is never made explicit, but the sense of at least the latter term appears to have been subtly modified. Wellbery (p.124ff) refers to Lessings affirmation, that in poetry a dress is no dress, for it does not cover anything, letting imagination see through it everywhere. Since pictures transpose a part of the real relationships between objects in perceptual space, namely the visual one, the presence of the sign /cloth/ precludes that of the sign /body/, just as a real cloth impedes the perception of the actual body (but a /cloth/ does not keep a /body/ warm, and so on). The two content units are thought to be exclusive of each other in pictures, because of the syntactical relation of covering which their respective expressions entertain.49 As we noted in our discussion of the critique directed at Goodman by Carter , however, the formers notion of density would rather seem to concern the difficulties of categorizing the world, than those occurring in the segmentation of each particular visual "text" (cf. Sonesson 1988,III.2.4.). If this is density, then, it is surely of a different kind. Also the aesthetic rules of selection have been hinted at above. Indeed, all the restrictions of the content form, from beauty onwards, would seem to concern art in particular. Since paintings reproduce spatial objects in their continuity, the best we can
49 This is doubtful indeed, as our discussion of the rhetorics of pornography (in II.3.9.) should have made
clear, though of course some of these devices may have smelt of "allegory" to Lessing. In fact, also Wellbery (p.266, note 33) observes, that Laocoons body could well be seen to be twisted in pain "beneath the sculptured robe".
88
hope for is harmony between the parts, that is, beauty. Of two equally beautiful objects, the most expressive one is to be preferred; and of two equally expressive ones, that prevails which corresponds to decorum (p.162). In the case of literature, on the other hand, what is important is the way in which the action as an organized whole is geared to a goal., and the moral status of this whole. This difference is related to the second issue, opposing the choice in painting of a single moment out of the entire stretch of action to the selection in poetry of a unique attribute characterizing a thing. In both cases, the part must be chosen out of the whole, so as to be as "fecund", or "pregnant" as possible, that is, so as to be able to evoke the whole in imagination, better than the whole itself, could it be reproduced in its entirety (this is Baumgartens "ubertas", translated by Meier as "Fruchtbarkeit"; cf. Wellbery 1984:142f,148f,167ff,207ff. Also Bayer 1975: 111 points to this inverted parallelism). Indeed, Lessings critique of Hallers poetry derives from his conviction, that one or two well-chosen epithets should be sufficient to produce in the observer a complete image of the object. Whereas in poetry, the imaginary fulfilment is supposed to occur in space , expanding the single trait conveyed to an image of the entire object, the painting, seeking its fulfilment in time, in the before and the after, has its observer imaginatively supplying further moments to the stretch of action represented. Thus, interestingly, the spontaneity of the imagination each time addresses itself to the dimension, out of space and time, which the sign system in question in unable adequately to reproduce. This is so, undoubtedly, because aesthetic experience, being a free activity, must be as unhampered as possible by the materially given, that is, as close a possible to unmediated intuition (cf. also Wellbery 1984: 181ff ) However, the idea of imagination supplying time to the sign system deployed in space, and space to the one deployed in time, is insufficient to account for all aspects of Lessings conception. Action, it will be remembered, is the essential subject matter of literature. Rather than deriving an image of the complete object from a single one of its traits, imaginary fulfilment in poetry points to the causes and effects of the happenings represented. Thus, according to Lessing, the picture of the screaming man is ugly, because of its suggesting to our imagination even more extreme screaming, but when mentioned in a work of literature, the same scream leads on, according to the logic of action, to its cause, that is, to the suffering which provoked the scream. The imaginary environment of literature is therefore principally temporal, just as that of pictures is in the main spatial; and just like the oblique suggestion of temporal relations in pictures is only a degenerate case, at the limits of the possibilities of painting (as Hess-Lttich rightly observes against Bayer), the evocation of the full perceptual objects from its single epithet is just a limiting-case of literature. Before delving deeper into the question of time and space, it will be convenient to take our stand on two issues. First, to what extent is Wellbery justified in fitting Lessings notions of the arts into the conceptual framework of Hjelmslevs much later theory if that is indeed what he does? And, in the second place, what is left of Lessings theory, when we deduce those parts deriving from normative conceptions which are no longer defensible in our epoch?
89
As for the first question, we have already hinted above, that the framework used by Wellbery must be much truer to Lessing than to Hjelmslev, although the systematic character of the system certainly bears witness to Wellberys capacity for understanding the author better than he did himself, as the hermeneutic saying goes. What is here called the material is certainly not irrelevant to the sign function, nor is is particularly amorphous; rather, it is the material in a sense close to ordinary language, which is also familiar from traditional art history and literary history, including the conceptions of the Russian Formalists:it is the general idea of the resources being at hand before the act of creation takes place. At the level of content, what Lessing must really be construed as saying then, is that literature, but not painting, is what Hjelmslev (1973:119ff) has called a pass-key language, that is, a semiotic system which may take just anything as its subject matter. This is probably what Benveniste (1969:8f) terms the domain of validity of a semiotic system: that of literature, like that of verbal language generally is universal; however, that of traffic signs, according to Benvenistes example, is exclusively the displacements of vehicles, whereas that of pictures is somewhat larger, for it comprises everything that can be seen. These, then, are the resources available in different systems to signify about ; what about the resources available for conveying the signification? Here it is painting that has the most universal class of resources at its disposal, and as long as we take the term in the general sense given it by Lessing (cf.above), that is as including sculpture and all kinds of pictures, it comes close to comprising the same class as on the content level: everything visible. But, of course, as the film was not yet invented, painting even in this general sense may only comprise visible and static configurations; and in the stricter sense, the expressive resources of painting only include visible, static, and bidimensional configurations, further specified as produced by some particular kinds of pigment, and so on. Furthermore, the sense of the term configuration must be further elaborated, even in the general case, for drama is not meant to be included (even if Lessing sometimes talks about "transitional paintings"), despite its having at least in part recourse to visible resources; for drama is to Lessing a kind of literature, but its use also of the visible resources of real persons, furniture, and so on, its what brings is closest to having "natural signs", thus realizing the ideal of sign-mediated intuition (cf. Bayer 1975:30ff; Wellbery 1984:226). However, no matter how much the expression resources of paintings are specified, they will never be as peculiar as that of literature and language generally: Lessings "articulate tones", now much narrowly characterized by modern linguistics. What we have called the expressive resources would probably be termed by Benveniste (ibid.) the modes of operation of the respective semiotic systems; but it may be convenient to retain the parallelism between the expression and the content. As against these resources, Wellberys substances stand out as something closer to those of Aristotle and the scolastics than to those of Hjelmslev: the what, the unity subsisting in itself, as opposed to the "accidents" attributed to it. Indeed, this certainly comes closer to what interested Lessing than Hjelmslevs concept does, at
90
least on the level of content (and it is there that the distinction works out), for one of the essential points the former wanted to make undoubtedly was that the units in which objects come in space are predominantly bodies, whereas in time they preferentially appear as actions. This is like stating the principle of individuation, according to which objects are given to consciousness, in time and space, respectively. On the expression plane even this distinction breaks down, however: if there is any difference, its concerns elements and compound signs. Form, as the term is used here by Wellbery, is certainly not sufficient, as it should be, to determine the substances, given the material. Nor does it comprise any units, on an abstracted, schematized level, as we should expect, were Hjelmslevs concept really employed. Perhaps "bodies" and "actions" could more adequately be included here. Instead, Wellbery (and Lessing) are really concerned with rules, principles, and regularities - which may of course be part of form, on a higher level, as grammatical rules are in verbal language. However, Wellberys broader term "rules of selection and arrangement" is certainly more explanatory. Before we go on to resume the results of this discussion, we will rapidly touch on the second question: what, if anything, of Lessings distinctions can be considered enduring results, which must form the point of departure also of contemporary semiotics? Now, although we will discuss some objections below, it seems obvious that literature is, in some sense, a temporal art, while paintings are mainly spatial. It is also certain that pictures are restricted to render directly only such things as are visual, whereas no such limitation applies to poetry (On the other hand, the indirect representation of non-visual facts, which Lessing rejects as "allegory", proliferates in all contemporary pictorial genres, from advertisements to abstract paintings). Since pictures are visual, and render the same by the same, it follows that they only allow of a single ontological status, that of visibility. There is some exaggeration to the claim, that pictures can only render "fully determined entities", for all semiotic processes involve some abstraction: but it is certainly true that, because of the property we have elsewhere termed exhibitive import (cf. Sonesson 1988,III.5.1. ), the units of pictorial signs tend to come in greater, and more closely interlocked chunks than those of verbal language (cf. our remarks on Bayers interpretation below). It is also because of exhibitive import, that real-world relationships are to some extent transposed to the pictorial sign, but not to the verbal one. Also, there would seem to be some justification, in the sentiment of the sign user, for claiming that the expression plane of pictures is in some way relatively more opaque, and that of language relatively more transparent. As for the requirement of selecting the most pregnant moment, and the most sensate quality, respectively, it is certainly normatively imposed, but it may well be founded on correct observations of what constitutes a "convenient relationship". When it comes to the rules calling for beautiful contents, harmony of spatial parts, and perceptual habits, on the one hand, and functional contents, unity of action, and narrative logic, on the other, they are more obviously dated, depending on a particular conception of the role of the arts. These preliminary
91
observations are sufficient, for us now to proceed to a new summary of Lessings system (fig.13 ).
Expression
Content
Pictures
Resources Units Constraints static visibility any resource spatial deployment,
Literature
linguistic system whole texts temporal deployment,
Pictures
everything visual bodies entended chunks, contiguous chunks, one ontological region
Literature
everything imaginable actions minimal chunks, abstracted attributes, many ontological regions
dense syntax discrete syntax
Fig.13. Constraints on the arts, according to Lessing, as seen by Wellbery, and reviewed by the author. We must now touch a little on the particularities of Bayers approach. In his view, Lessings problem is essentially one of the correspondence between the distributional schemes of the respective expression planes ("Mittel", in the terminology of the Stuttgart school, that is, Peirces Representamen) and the extensional schemes of the referential domain involved (i.e. the Objects)(Bayer 1975:16ff). This correspondence is easily obtained in the case of verbal texts and actions:
"Das Gemeinsame von Handlungen und Texten ist, da sie aus Nachfolgebeziehungen bestehen und eine Ganzes ausmachen. Als Nachfolgebeziehungen sind sie indexikalisch bestimmt." (Bayer 1975:19f).
That both texts and actions are wholes, or units, is something we have already noted, together with Wellbery. However, according to Bayer, they also both involve indexicality, with means, at least in this case, that they constitute "directional functors" (ibid.). The direction, we take it, is the famous arrow of time. In any case, poetry is particularly apt to represent actions; and even when rendering things, it will preferentially pick up such attributes of them as are action-oriented (p.23). Indeed, the linguistic representation of objects poses no serious problem, since visible properties are less important, and it is always possible to consider the object from the vantage point of the actions in which it may be involved (p.97f).
92
There is a much more serious difficulty, however, when it comes the iconical representation of action (p.35ff). Bodies are the prerequisites of actions, according to Bayer (p.43ff) : the latter are relations between the former, so the former may be seen as the carriers ("Trger") of the latter. On the other hand, actions are continua; and continua can only be rendered in iconical semiosis when transformed into discrete states, as already Diderot recognized (p.52).50 Indeed, the distributional scheme of pictures does not admit of any successivity: therefore, pictures can only render actions as conveyed indirectly through bodies, as well as collective actions, that is, actions occurring beside each other (that latter being a domain of overlap with poetry; p.24,44, 93f ). The representation of collective actions is possible, because these are distributed among many bodies, and so also contain coexisting elements. As for the indirect rendition of actions, Bayer (p.56), claims that it implies, that "die Krper Indices auf Handlungen enthalten mssen". Resuming Bayers interpretation, we arrive at the following chart (fig.14.): There are a number of problems with this: first, the liberal use of the notion of index, typical not only of the Stuttgart school, but of Peirce himself, tends to cover up the important differences between pictures and language pin-pointed by Lessing, instead of clarifying and foregrounding them. Thus, both texts and actions are indices, and purportedly explains that the former may represent the latter; but when then actions are indirectly rendered in pictures by means of objects, this is also because of indices! This problem is resolved, however, if we observe the distinction, suggested in Sonesson 1988,I.2.5. between mere perceptual contexts, or indexicalities (which may be actual, or, following Husserl, retentional or protentional, according as they point backward or forward in time), and real indexical signs, or indices. The former are simply based on a meaningful relationship of contiguity, factorality, or other kind of connectedness; the latter also require the sign function, for which a number of criteria, ranging from discontinuity to relative indirectness and thematization, can be deduced.51 In the second place (and here it is not clear if we should direct our criticism to Lessing or to Bayer), the so-called collective actions are in no way peculiar, for in pictures they can only be rendered, in so far as each one of their parts are conveyed through the intermediary of objects, that is, as pregnant moments; and verbally, they
50 Bayer (1975:24,52; 1984:61ff) suggests that only the film is really apt to accomplish the goal set up
for artistic semiosis by Lessing, of being, at the same time, maximally motivated, and capable of rendering time sequence. There is some truth in this, on a general plane, for while Lessing clearly preferred verbal semiosis to the pictorial one, he also wanted it to assimilate the advantages of paintings, the realize "the idea of painting" (see Wellbery 1984:179ff,202, etc.). However, when Bayer (1984:61f) suggests that, being less discrete, film would be better off than literature in the Lessingian paragone, he is certainly mistaken, for as Wellbery (p.131f) observes, it is precisely because of its discreteness, that poetry approaches more closely to Lessings ideal of art: first, in opposition to the dense syntax of paintings, that of language permits a free choice of pertinent traits; and secondly, as a series of discrete temporal states, literature realizes Wolffs (but not Mendelsohns) ideal of reflection, as a successive unfolding of traits, leaving more room for an autonomous imaginative activity. While the kind of discreteness to which Bayer refers may be purely temporal, and that of Wellbery more abstract, the latter undoubtedly includes the former, as seen from the reference to Wolffs notion of reflection.. 51 In fact, pictures would normally contain proto-indices, which, in relation to the above-mentioned criteria, constitute an intermediate case. Cf. Sonesson 1988,I.2.5-6.
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics may well be represented in their temporal extension.
93
Coexistence
Successivity
BODIES Language
indirectly through actions visible attributes as pregnant features
ACTIONS convenient link
Language and pictures Pictures
collective actions indirectly through bodies (as indices)
convenient link
Fig.14. Lessings system, as seen by Bayer. Third, there is something wrong with the idea (if Diderot did say that or not), that actions cannot be rendered iconically, because they are continua. It is not only that the fact, adduced by Bayer (1975:52), that even the film is made up of discontinuous phases, is irrelevant, as long as these phases are not perceived as such (cf. Sonesson 1988,III.4.2.). More importantly, even if we consider only the range of semiotic systems familiar to Lessing and Diderot, the thesis can only hold when applied to temporal continua. Indeed, Lessings opposition between the arts could be reformulated advantageously by claiming that pictures are better apt to render spatial continua, whereas language wins out in the representation of temporal continua.52 It is even true, as Bayer knows very well, that it is the necessity of the pictures rendering the very continuity of the spatial objects to which it refers, which in Lessings view makes it a cumbersome mode of representation.53
52 Contrary to Bayer, Gebauer (1984:144ff) curiously seems to believe that continua are naturally thought of as spatial, so that he feels required to add that they can also be temporal. He also thinks that, because of its "semantic density", in Goodmans sense, verbal language is able to represent continua, but that only pictures, having both kinds of density, manage to ascribe to them any precise position. The first claim is unclear; however, verbal language can certainly not do more than assign discrete names to continua considered as wholes, or to some of their parts. And if we were justified in our criticism of Goodman, in Sonesson 1988,III.2.4-5., double density is not sufficient to define "continuum analogy". As for the suggestion that even temporal continua may be rendered in pictures, as in the case of erosion, weathering, and dirtying, this is undoubtedly cases in which continuity is transfused into discontinuity, for the real connectedness of time is here exchanged for a result, that is, an indexical sign, in the stricter sense hinted at in the text above. 53 Also, it should be noted, that not all iconical signs, in Peirces sense, are pictures, or even semiotic systems employing the visual mode, and that the ability for other kinds of iconical semiotic systems of
94
To begin with, Lessing, Bayer (and also Wellbery 1984: 124ff,148ff,171ff ) observes, believes that pictures are unable to select just those features of a situation, which are relevant for an information, but are obliged to render a phenomenon in the integrity of its occurrence; for even the avoidance of determining a features is read as a particular determination of that feature:
"Werden nmlich in der iconischen Degradation etwa vom Farbportrait zur Silhouette die assertorischen bereinstimmungsmerkmalen vermindert, so wird ihre Stelle nicht leer, nicht unbestimmt, sondern sie fllt sich mit den associierenden bertrgermerkmalen: an die Stelle der iconischen Eigenfarbe des Gesichts tritt das Schwarz."(Bayer 1975:36).
Lessing and Bayer are somewhat off the point here, as we have noted elsewhere (cf. Sonesson 1988,III.3/5.): there not only exists a cartoon style of pictorial representation with leaves out many features necessarily present in perception, but all pictures are somewhat "schematized" in this way, and the distinction between picture object and picture subject, mediated over the Lifeworld hierarchies of relative importance, takes care of the determination of undetermined features. However, Bayer notes that Lessing also points to a different kind of limitation present in pictorial representation: Homer, but not a painter, is able to show the gods drinking and, at the same time, taking counsel together, because, as Bayer puts it, only on lower levels of semioticalness (that is, in the case of more motivated signs) does the increased quantity of information become disturbing (p.39). It might be doubted that it is the increased amount of information as such which causes the problem here, and that all motivated signs must be subject to it. Verbal semiosis has a number of devices at its disposal which serve to mark the relative centrality, newness, and order of thematization pertaining the items it chooses to introduce (known by such terms as "topic/comment", "theme/rheme", etc.); and there certainly are similar devices in pictorial representation, though they are at present much less known (such as the choice of perspective, the placement in relation to the frame, etc.). However, in pictures the space of representation is at the same time the representation of the space given to ordinary human perception, and thematizing devices are normally not allowed to deform space representation (this constraint was abandoned by Cubism, and also by Matisse, yet without there even having crystallized any new thematizing conventions). Something more is involved here, however, for the act of taking council together and the act of drinking, being relationships pertaining to the same objects in perception, cannot be separated in the rendering of a prototypical picture, though they might well be so treated in a Peircean diagram (cf. Sonesson 1988,III.5.3.). Nothing of this applies to contemporary art, but then contemporary art does not aim at rendering perceptual space. This should really suggest, that what so limits pictorial semiosis, in Lessings view, is not really only its adherence to spatiality, but its dependence on spatiotemporal individuation. If not, the picture might well have shown us the gods, first
conveying temporal objets in their very temporal continuity is something which must be investigated specifically for these systems (cf. also Sonesson 1988,III.6.).
95
drinking and then taking council together, though in perceptual reality, they supposedly did both things at the same time. But of course, Lessing even rejects the medieval custom of representing beside each other those happenings which took place in sequence, so how would he accept to represent side-by-side happenings occurring concurrently? If this reasoning seems to deprive linguistic successivity of its specificity, we shall see later that the allotment of temporality to literature is itself in doubt. What, then, about the concurrent attribution of consecutivity and the sense of hearing to language and literature, and that of succession and vision to pictures? Bayer (1975:45f), it is true, argues that bodies are also in time, but may be abstracted from it, whereas actions, as relational beings, are more essentially bound to its carriers. In fact, however, it must be a very peculiar concept of space which is deprived of succession, and is coterminous with simultaneity. According to Wellbery (1984:115ff), Lessings concept of space is from the beginning tailored to the concept of vision: "it is a purely Euclidean space; that is, space as seen"; indeed it is described by Lessing himself as that which can be seen at a glance, that is, as "the simultaneity of things within a synoptic view". As against this, Herder, who insists on the difference between painting and sculpture, has, in Wellberys opinion, a tactile concept of space. However, Gombrich (1982:40ff) has already sketched out a thorough criticism, on the basis of perceptual psychology, of the idea that painting is a purely spatial art, insisting that perception is a process taking place in time, and that each moment of perception, both when it is geared to the world, and when it is directed to a picture, gathers up the results of a whole series of acts of memory and anticipation. Interestingly, Gombrich here refers to Augustines reflection on the experience of time (p.46f), which is also the point of departure for Husserls (1922) analysis of time consciousness, where he concludes that, in each specious present, multifarious layers of retentions and protentions, retentions of retentions, and protentions of protensions, are embedded in each other. As applied to our discussion, all that this amount to, in the end, is the claim that all moments are, to some extent, pregnant moments. But both phenomenology and psychology of perception may take us further: for both will tell us that the visual space of the Lifeworld is very different from Euclidean space, and is in fact imbued with time. In the works of Merleau-Ponty and Gurwitsch, and of Gibson, Gregory, and Hochberg, the perception of the spatio-temporal thing is presented, in spite of all their mutual difference, as a synthesis out of a number of temporally distributed approximations. On the other hand, in terms of Husserlean phenomenology, it might also be said that while time is a form through which bodies are given to consciousness, they are not given as time, but certainly as space. In this case, time, as in Lessings discussion, is seen as succession; but time is also simultaneity (as the term says). And in the Lifeworld, also simultaneity takes time. This brings us back to the idea, expressed above, that what is really characteristic for the picture is a determined spatio-temporal location. Before we pursue this line of reasoning in a somewhat different direction, however, something must be said about Bayers construal of the pregnant moment. In
96
literature, as we know, imaginative fulfilment is concerned to sketch out the visual details of the object not directly given in the single, sensate trait selected for reproduction; but in pictures, this same fulfilment takes place in the direction of the before and after of the implied action (cf. Wellbery 1984:167ff ). In Bayers (1975:53ff) terms, the indexical traits of the temporal phase are so derived, as to render the foregoing and the following phases as comprehensible as possible. In Lessings view, however, this temporal phase can never be the highest point of a developmental process; for then there is no room for the imagination to extend it, in either direction, without encountering a state of lower intensity. Now, Bayer (1975:53; 1984:77f) complains that, in some places, Lessing only considers the possibility of extending the process forward in time; but this seems an unjustified criticism, for even the very passage Bayer quotes from Lessing contains references to both temporal directions. Indeed, it says that, if Laocoon had been shown shouting, the tension would have been lower, both if we had extended the action backwards in time, so as to see the Troyan priest beginning to wail, and if we had extended it forward, to see him already dead. But there certainly are other problems with Lessings conception. First, Gombrich (1982:43ff) has pointed to the fact, well-known from the early history of photography, and illustrated in particular by the reactions of painters to Muybridges horse photographs, that no phase of an action, as reproduced in a photograph, corresponds to a moment of perception, as it has traditionally been rendered in painting; for the latter in fact already incorporates the embedded retentions and protentions of the moment elected. Thus, if a photograph has not been separately posed, as Gombrich assures us is the case with the pictures posted in front of the cinema, some very particular selection mechanisms must apply, if it also is to be prone to stand for the entire action (for some evidence of this, in the case of facial displays, cf. Bengtsson, Bondesson, & Sonesson, in preparation ). Second, not all processes are actions geared to a goal; and neither all actions nor all other processes are organized in phases having a climax. It is true that the theory of narrativity presupposes all events to contain a climax (cf.II.1.1.); but pictures often indeed always, at some more or less backgrounded level, because of the tendency of pictures to reproduce scenes in a relatively integral fashion - refer to very trivial sequences of behaviour, which are routinely accomplished on a everyday basis, and thus may well lack any phase which could properly be termed their apex. But then Lessings criteria break down. Now let us return to the way temporality and spatiality relate to verbal language and pictures, respectively, and take the issue from a new angle. Perhaps we should reject these allocations entirely, claiming with Mitchell (1986:95ff), that there is a spatiality of literature, and then why not also a temporality of pictures? And of course there are; only not in the same sense, as there is a temporality of literature, and a spatiality of painting. Unfortunately, Mitchells arguments, if there are any, are difficult to make out; and the phenomena which he adduces, to show the spatiality of literature, either concern the mere expression, and are rather marginal, or are purely on the side of content, when spatiality is what is described.
97
Steiner (1982:33ff) is more to the point, when she notes that the much-vaunted simultaneity of the picture exists in the material artifact, but not in its perception. Also Bayer (1975:94) once observes, that it is only in connection with the collective actions, that Lessing stops to consider the fact, that the very act of picking up the information takes time. It should be added (for which see for instance Kolers 1977; & Perkins 1975; & Smuythe 1979 ), that neither are verbal texts really decoded in pure succession. Steiner goes on to make some interesting speculations, in reference to Jakobson, on the relative availability of the coexistence structure of a piece of literature, where it must be put together from temporally distributed facts, and in pictures, where it is given materially, in the artifact which is the bases of the experience. She also (p.71ff) makes a very suggestive analysis comparing a painting by Brueghel and a poem by Williams which refers to the painting, indicating parallels in the respective expression planes. Following up the pointer to psychology, however, we should also note that the extension of psycho-linguistics beyond the Markov-chain model would seem to indicate, that sentences and discourses are only very peripherally perceived to be temporal objects. At least the sentence is primarily seen as an hierarchical structure, referring to higher organizational levels, rather than to mere temporal succession. A more important objection, from our present point of view, however, is that whatever temporality there is is language is never a point-by-point reproduction of the temporality of real-world action (as the spatiality of pictures may, in a way, be of real-world spatiality). Bayer (1975:98ff) points to a few ways in which objects may be rendered through actions, in Lessings view: Helens beauty is not described, but the old men act of talking about it is; the shield of Achilles is not described either, but its act of production is. But neither in these cases, nor when actions are described for their own sake, is there really any parallelism between the time of the expression plane, and the time of the content plane. We could not even talk about what Peirce would have called a diagrammatic relationship here: there is not even the same proportion between the relata of the expression, and those of the content, for nothing guarantees that there is more talk about happening taking more time in the sequence. But perhaps there is a Peircean metaphor of time: that is, the temporality of the expression plane may be that "parallelism in something else", which suggests "the representative character of a representation" (cf. Peirce 1931,I:157 ) of the contents temporality! This leaves with only the vaguest temporal coincidence in language; and it is true that Lessing later suggested it takes drama to make language coincide temporally with itself. But, of course, then we are beyond pictorial signs, which are signs for likenesses, and well inside that other domain of identity signs, which signify be referring to themselves, or to other of the same type (cf. Sonesson 1988,III.1.).
II.1.5. Summary and conclusions.

So far, we have been looking, more or less extensively, at a number of models which have been used, or could have been used, in the semiotic analysis of pictorial
98
signs. The models being of rather different status, as noted above, our treatment has also differed substantially from case to case, and consequently the conclusions will also be various. We have included the narrative model (in II.1.1.) as a negative instance; directly, it only has applications to pictures of less interest to us here, as cinema, television, and, to a lesser degree, photo novellas. But time structure is important also for the understanding of static pictures, as becomes obvious from the discussion of the Laokoon model (in II.1.4.), as well as from the study of time-distributed schemes (in various parts of II.1.3.). In the present context, our discussion has principally served to separate out some different categories of pictures in relation to time, as well as to define the various time questions which may be posed to them. As for the taxonomic mode of the rhetorical model (treated in II.1.2.), it has turned out to constitute a negative case in quite a different sense: for while it is probably the most prevalent approach inside contemporary pictorial semiotics, it clearly lacks in substance, being too vague, too general, and itself too metaphorical to make any distinguishable theoretical claims. This is also what leads on to the third model, the rhetorical model in its systematic mode, so far only developed by the Groupe , which is also the one which we favour here. What we have been concerned to do, then (in II.1.3.), is to address a number of fundamental issues, critical to the Groupe model, and to develop a new model of systematic pictorial rhetorics, in the process of which we have of course learnt a lot from the Belgian group, but we have also absorbed principles evolved in contemporary cognitive psychology. Many particular problems have also been treated in this connection, and a number of earlier semiotic analyses have been discussed and extended, using the framework of expectancy schemes. The discussion of the Laokoon model, which follows (in II.1.4.), does not issue out in the setting up of another model, but actually extends the earlier considerations of time structure, hinted at in II.1.1., as they appear in the new light of the conclusions to II.1.3. While it is true that so far, the Laokoon model has been theoretically, rather than analytically exploited, even by ourselves, we will try out our results later, in chapter III, when turning to the questions of photography and indexicality. In the second part of this chapter, however, we will approach two particular pictures, which we will try to account for analytically, using both the suggestions of the foregoing sections, and the modified structural model developed in our earlier work.
99
II.2. Models in pictorial semiotics: a few exemplary analyses.

In the first part of this chapter, we approached the problem of models and methods in semiotics through the consideration of a number of models, which could be applied, and have to some extent been applied, to the analysis of pictures inside semiotics. While we will stay also in this second part with the same problem, we will now address it in another manner: by trying to make sense of two particular pictures. From the point of view of method, what follows is really an extension of the kind of analysis we developed from our critique of the structural approach (in Sonesson 1988 ). As for the first picture, it was actually analyzed already in our earlier work, and the analysis to follow adds to, rather than revises the propositions made at that point. As we go along, we will certainly incorporate some of the insights stemming from the discussion of models in the first part of this chapter, but the objective of this part is not really such an assimilation, but rather to develop such analytical means as are sufficient to allow us to account in a satisfactory manner for these particular pictures. Even if we could manage to do that, we have of course no right to claim that this approach could be generalized to all pictures, not even to all pictures which, in some sense, are of the same general kind. Now it should be admitted, already at this point, that we will not be able to develop methodological means capable of producing analyses which are in all respects satisfactory. What we can hope to do, instead, is, first, to suggest some criteria for what might be counted as a satisfactory analysis; and second, to define some analytical problems to be handed along to later chapters.
II.2.1. The bottle and the tomato.

In the following, we will apply a number of tools from the semiotic paraphernalia to the analysis of the apparently simple picture of a tomato and a bottle reproduced below (fig.15.). It was because of this apparent simplicity that the picture was chosen in the first place: on the face of it, it only involves two elements, and their interrelation, thus permitting us to pose the problem of analyzability under minimal conditions. In fact, the picture was first selected for analysis by Gauthier (1979:55ff), and his suggestive, but not very systematic approach inspired us to propose an extended, and somewhat revised analysis in Sonesson 1988,II.2.2., where it served to illustrate the problems attendant upon the isolation of such relevant traits as characterize a structure in itself deeply embedded in the picture. It is this same analysis will will here be further extended, and given more precision. First, however, it will be necessary to resume Gauthiers analysis, which we will present here, together with our critique and reflections. We begin with a few relatively uncommitted remarks, which sets the backdrop for Gauthiers description. The picture displays a glass container, inside which a tomato,
100
the surface of which is lighted up by a drop of water, has been located. Some incident light is reflected also from the sides of the bottle, but the background is entirely dark. We also note, in view of the importance this will acquire later, that the bottle, which seems disproportionally large in relation to the tomato, is placed exactly in the middle of the picture, while the tomato takes up the middle position on the bottom of the bottle. Now, roughly, Gauthiers observations amounts to the following: that the tomato stands for freshness and, indirectly, for undisturbed Nature; that, in opposition to the alternative set of other conceivable vegetables, the tomato inside the bottle comes to designate fragility; that the bottle is photographed in such as way, as to highlight a single one of its properties, that is, its transparency; and, finally, that the tomato and the bottle participate together in the familiar relationship of content and container, while circumventing it, since it is impossible for the tomato to have passed through the bottle neck.
Fig.15. The bottle and the tomato (reproduced and enlarged 141% from Gauthier 1979:57 ) Gauthier (1979:56) begins his analysis by telling us that the tomato becomes a sign, because it immediately evokes those of its properties which are not directly present in the picture. This, however, is not strictly a sign relation, but an appresented pairing, like the one from noema to noema (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.2.5.), and, in part, like the intermodal references (cf. Gibson 1969:215ff ), and is equally present in real-world experience of tomatoes. The drop of water, Gauthier informs us, signifies "freshness", and together with the tomato, it evokes a garden early in the morning, which in turn refers to "la nature non souille non altre", that is, to an ideal which is so much Arcadian as it is ecological. Our author never tells us how he goes about to derive this reading, but it is interesting that is should accord so well with that "ideological system"
101
featuring undisturbed, virginal Nature, which Williamson (1978:96f) has diagnosed in so many other advertisements. It is clear however, that Gauthier simply takes this system of interpretation for granted; he even needs it, it would seem, to decide that the drop of water is dew.54 This brings us to Gauthiers second point. In analogy with the linguistic operation of commutation, Gauthier (p.57) exchanges the tomato inside the bottle for other vegetables, to establish that, like the carrot appearing in other variants of the advertisement, but no other vegetables, the tomato stands for fragility, epitomized in its short life-span after harvest. But this procedure is invalid, because, in the first place, we cannot know beforehand that vegetables is the relevant category, inside which to execute the variation, and secondly, even if there is a similar advertisement using a carrot, and none using an apple, it does not follow that the common factor must be ephemeral freshness, since there may be other similarities between a carrot and a tomato (even if that indeed is as similarity!), and since there is no guarantee that the tomato picture and the carrot picture do mean the same thing. If in fact fragility is important here, something else is needed to pick it out, and in part this may be the plastic organization of the picture, as we will argue in greater detail below (in II.2.1.1.).55 However, at the iconic level, concerned with what is depicted in the picture, the relationship of the tomato and the bottle is important in yet two other ways, only one of which is noted by Gauthier. The fact that the tomato appears in a bottle is important, for we know that tomatoes do not grow in bottles, but on bushes, so someone must have brought the tomato inside the bottle. The watery surface of the tomato may be taken to indicate dew, as Gauthier thinks, or it could be water remaining from the tomato just having been washed. In both cases, it is reasonable to conclude that the tomato has not been in the bottle for a very long time - or at least, that is have been furnished with all the outer trappings of a tomato just have been put into the bottle. Taken together, the tomatos location in the bottle and the water drop on its surface constitute a proto-index (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.2.5. for this term) of the tomato being newly-harvested. Thus, the tomato is single out as being prominently fresh. In the real world nothing of this would perhaps have been sufficient: but in the picture, the photographic angle, together with the illumination, and the location of the highlights, serve to pin-point the relevant elements. That the the freshness of the tomato is ephemeral is something which must be added by our world-knowledge - besides being required by the verbal text ("verre: got intact"). There is another important factor of interaction between the bottle and the tomato, which is observed, but not properly appreciated, by Gauthier (p.60) : that the tomato is, in actual fact, to big to pass through the bottle neck, and so could never in the real would have got into the bottle. Pretending to note this with the help of
54 Gauthier is of course also wrong in calling "la nature non souille non altre" a connotation (p.56).
For a thorough critique of this kind of confusion, see Sonesson 1988, II.1.2.
55 We have discussed commutation in general in Sonesson 1988, I.1.3., and its problematic application
to pictures in particular, in the same work, sections II.2.2. and III.4.1.
102
commutation, Gauthier remarks that therefore, a cherry cannot be substituted for the tomato; but neither can a small tomato take the place of the one which have been selected; nor can the bottle be exchanged for another having a wider bottle neck, of for a container which is entirely open on the top. In fact, in order for the precise effect which is here produced to be obtained, there must be a concurrence of a great number of factors. In addition, Gauthier would seem to be wrong in thinking that this discrepancy between the sizes of the tomato and the bottle does only stand for the independence of the tomato relative to its container, and is just "une pointe dinsolite" (ibid.) in the picture. On the contrary, this discrepancy appears to be fundamental to the central message of the picture, for it points to an outright contradiction between the state of the tomato, its shape and size, and its position : in the actual world, the tomato could either be as it looks here, but then be outside the container, or it could have changed its state, that is, it could have been crushed, and then in could be inside the container. The point is, that while the tomato is inside the bottle, it is claimed to be, in important respects, as if it had still been outside it. This is exactly what the verbal message says: "verre: got intact". But is will be convenient to return to this point, after having delved deeper into the plastic organization of the picture.
II.2.1.1. On squaring the tomato. The plastic analysis.

This should be the right moment to resume the several conclusions resulting from our discussion (in Sonesson 1988, I.1.3. ) of a possible specificity of the "semiotic method", for it is in the following analyses that we should attend to these conclusions. Thus, we may start out from the following observations: a) the particular occurrence which is to be analyzed is regarded as the "text" of a particular "system", which means minimally, that it has be resolved into a number of iterable elements and the rules for their combination; b) while it is the "text" (or rather, a number of "texts") which are studied, the object of study, that is, that which it is the goal of the procedure to describe, is the underlying "system", that is, the iterable elements and the rules for their combination; c) the relations obtaining inside the "system" determine the identities of the elements, even as they appear in the "texts", that is, what properties of the units are to be taken as relevant; d) on the structuralist view, the only relations inside the system which determine identities are the differences, which, according to some variant conceptions, can all be reduced to binary oppositions. While point d is certainly too restricted, the set a-c seems more reasonable. However, it has generally been ignored inside semiotics, when such principles as these have been transferred from linguistics, that the postulate set a-c has important implications for the analyses which they determine. In particular, it follows that each new analysis of a
103
"text" may have consequences, not only for earlier analyses of the same "text", but for all analyses of "texts" being similar in kind. Thus, just as in linguistics, later analyses may force us to resolve what was earlier treated as one unit into several ones, and to move the limits between units, even as this applies to earlier "texts". It would seem that no extra-linguistic analyses have observed these principles so far; but then it has never been made clear, if subsequent analyses were thought to concern "texts" deriving from the same "system". In our case, the "system", or the "type", could be "pictures", "photographs", "advertisements", "art pictures", or some particular pictorial genre, and so on. Now, there is no structural access (not even in linguistics) to what the "system" is: is has to be taken for granted, and may be "proven" a posteriori by the relative coherence of the resulting description. Indeed, we need hermeneutical understanding, at least on three levels, to establish, first, what are the limits of the "system"; second, which are the principles of organization, if they are not, as in some parts of verbal language, binary oppositions; and finally, which are they repertories, inside which we can choose candidates for the commutation test (cf. our criticism of Gauthier in the introduction to this sub-chapter above!). On the level of plastic language, however, we can avoid much of these difficulties, if we take the "system" to be as large as possible, that is, if we take it to be coextensive with visual perception, or rather, somewhat narrower, with the perception of two-dimensional, visual space. In several parts of Sonesson 1988 (notably I.3.1.; II.3. and III.3. ), we were concerned to show, against Floch and indeed most exponents of pictorial semiotics, that the only serious basis for the analysis of plastic language has to be searched for in cognitive psychology and in the psychology of perception (at least if we are not content to accept a completely redundant content level for plastic language; see now also Sonesson 1987 ). As we will see later, the extent of information that can be culled from psychological experiments is insufficient for our purpose, and so it will be necessary to admit some amount of speculation, at least provisionally. In the long run, however, this informational lack serves to pin down the areas in which more experimental work is needed. For the following discussion, we will need a number of theoretical conclusions of cognitive and perceptual psychology, which were more fully discussed in the abovementioned works: thinking largely occurs in terms of prototype concepts, which means that "most characteristic" instances are used as reference points, in relation to which limiting-cases are defined; this is in particular in opposition to the definition of categories using necessary and sufficient criteria (cf. Rosch 1978 and Sonesson 1988,I.3.1. ); the configurations, or Gestalten, recognized by Gestalt psychology, are particular instances of such prototype concepts, as applied to visual perception (see Arnheim 1969 and Rosch 1973 );
104
configurations, but also less organized wholes and their elements, such as strokes, half-circles, and so on, are endowed with relatively stable, though somewhat vagues meanings, which may be discovered, notably, in the childs first efforts at developing a drawing ability (cf. Hoffmann 1943; Sander & Volkelt 1962; and Sonesson 1988, I.4.4-5. and II.3.5-6. ); the relations of contrasts inside a given visual surface serve to assign more precise meanings to the intervening elements, and/or to operate a choice among meanings the elements may possess as such (cf. Gibson 1969 and Perkins 1981 ). There are, in our picture, only two real-world objects present: the tomato and the bottle (the dew-drop, lacking particular shape and independence, could hardly be apprehended as anything more than an attribute of the tomato). The same thing is true on the plastic level: we have two relatively independent geometrical shapes, which are closed off from each other, while together forming a figure on a completely homogeneous background (with the text, as a visual element, being a secondary figure on this same ground).56 In terms of prototypes, or Gestalts, the tomato approaches most closely the circle; and the bottle, though much further off from the reference point, suggests a rectangle. This means there is an internal heterogeneity to the figure; indeed, it may be more correct to treat the bottle, being a figure on the homogeneous ground, as a secondary ground for the tomato in its function as figure. In any case, it would seem that the fact of the contiguity, and even factorality obtaining between the tomato and the bottle, helps picking up the essentially opposed properties of the two configurations. Thus, there is a structure, or an opposition, which is directly manifested in the arrangement of objects in the picture, i.e., in Flochs terms, a contrast (cf. Sonesson 1988,II.3.). Now, in general, the tomato and the bottle do not possess properties which are in exclusive opposition to each other; but each one of them approach more or less closely to opposite prototypes; and the effect of the contrast is to push each of these attribute even further from each other. This is true, not only at the level of configuration, as the circle and the rectangle, where it is the tomatos real closeness to a circle, which makes it possible to interpret the bottle as a deviant rectangle (though the peculiar illumination of the bottle is also of some help, as we shall see below); for the same thing also happens on the lower level of more or less global properties. Thus, the bottle is rather big, the tomato rather small ; the bottle has a predominantly vertical orientation, whereas the tomatos both axes are nearly equal in extension, with a slight preeminence for the horizontal dimension. There is also an opposition between the compact body of the tomato shape
56 For easy reference, we will continue in the following to talk about "the tomato" and "the bottle",
although it is the corresponding plastic configurations which are meant. It should be noted that such as convenient procedure is not always possible, as the elements of plastic and iconic language do not have to coincide, which we will see an example of in II.2.2. below.
105
as against the contour around the bottle resulting from the reflections of light on the sides. In general, it is an array of roundish forms which constitutes the tomato shape, whereas the bottle shows up a number of angular elements. In addition, the bottle is, in terms of topology, the including member, with the tomato being the included one; and while the placement of the tomato gives it vertical weight in the composition, the bottle is inscribed in the middle point, parallel to the text block and the borders of the picture. Besides being associated with the Male and the Female, respectively, as shown by Jessen (1983), the rectangle and the circle may also carry other meanings. To the small child at least, the roundish forms stand for something rather than nothing, for "Etwas berhaupt", as shown for instance in Hoffmanns (1943:39ff) figure imitation tests, so it somehow appears to be the more elementary form. Hoffmann also found, in the same test, that compact forms were preferred over contoured to designate "Etwas berhaupt", so there is redundant indication that the tomato is somehow on a more simple, "natural" level than the bottle. Smallness and inclusion, on the other hand, could perhaps be taken to indicate a childish condition, maybe the need for protection. But we shall not try to take these interpretation any further at the moment. Now, there are certainly not only oppositions between the tomato and the container, but also similarities. And not only such similarities as are presupposed by the very oppositions (e.g. both elements being geometrical shapes, etc.), but also similarities which follow on the oppositions and modify their character. Thus, the fundamental opposition between the square formed by the container and the circle of the tomato is attenuated by the square taking on some attributes of the circle (the opposite case is less obvious). First, the upper part of the bottle, at the extreme opposite end from the location of the tomato, forms a half-circle, whose parallelism goes beyond that with the roundish border lines of the tomato, the bottle neck itself repeating the shape of the tomato tops. There is also, in direct contiguity, the rounding of the bottom of the bottle, though this aspect is less prominent from the way the picture is photographed. It is, of course, a frightful reductionism to treat the tomato as simply being a circle, and the bottle as just a rectangle. For this reason, it is important to understand the rationale of or analysis so far. We start art from the prototypes laying a close as possible to the actually perceived shapes; and we then go on to note, on a lower level, details of organization which deviate from the prototypes. And while we take account of the correlation sets of contrasting features building up the respective configurations, we also pin down those traits which tend to unite them. More precisely, we operate on four levels of abstraction: 1). the oppositions of Gestalts, or configurations A+B, redundantly sustained by the correlational sets of global features; 2). deviant details, as the A-properties of B, and the B-properties of A; 3). parallelism and other similarities between A and B, which do not pertain more to A than to B, or vice-versa; 4). further deviations from the levels 1-3, for which new interpretational systems may have to be postulated, or which are
106
possibly only iconically interpretable. 57 It remains for us to list systematically those elements which have seemed to us to be of relevance on these distinct levels. In order to render the argument clearer, we will refer in the following to the simplified outline figures of the bottle-and-tomato-photograph contained in fig.16a-c.
A) PRIMARY OPPOSITIONS
configurations:
Circle (A)
vs
Rectangle (B)
Global features: Equi- vs Vertical dimensional (horizontal ascendancy) Big Small vs Angular Rounded vs Compact vs Contoured (highlights vs Full contour Parallelism Vertical weight vs (relative to borders and text block) including Included vs
Fig.16.a. Primary oppositions of the tomato and the bottle
57 Using this rationale, our reanalysis of Flochs "News" advertisement (in Sonesson 1988, II.3.3-5.)
could now be more succinctly formulated as follows: 1) the prototype for including/included members is repeated a number of times, with each included member becoming the including member of another pair; thus, we have a series of similarities between contrasts, with however occur together with a directed scale of differences, for each new included member is smaller in extension and ever more included; there are a number of holistic properties which redundantly confirm this organization, as noted by Floch; 2) deviation from the repetition inwards (here instead of A-properties in B, etc., since we started out with a higher-order similarities, instead of an opposition): some important holistic properties are different from phase to phase (which was one of the things Floch failed to note); 3) on a higher intensional level some elements may be perceived as displaced in relation to each other; that is, there results a secondary contrast from the fact that expected similarities (between the primary contrasts), already confirmed through a number of phases, fail to occur (this is of course an isotopy, in Groupe s terms, and more properly, a expectancy y scheme generated inside the picture; cf. above II.1.3.6.;) 4) there remains numerous differences of details, which could be appraised both iconically and plastically.
107
b) THE A-PROPERTIES OF B (that is, tomato-like properties of the bottle): bottle neck and opening rounded bottom of bottle visibly rounded. There appears to be no B-properties of A in the present case (bottle-like shapes of the tomato).
Fig.16.b. A-properties of B in the bottle-andtomato-picture
c) PARALLELISM A/B the tomato placed at the horizontal middle point. congruency between bottle neck and opening on the one hand, and the upper rounding of the tomato with tops, on the other hand. d) MODIFICATIONS OF THE MODIFICATIONS: the tomato is rounded further downwards the bottle neck has more prominent straight lines in the middle of the rounding. the bottle neck as such constitutes a single body, while the tomato tops are three in number; the bottle neck points straight upwards, while the tomato tips tend leftwards up.
Fig.16c. Parallelism A/B This, then , concludes our four-level discussion of the plastic organization present in the bottle-and-tomato-picture. In the next section, we will go on the investigate the iconic language of this same picture, and then try to put the two analyses
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics to gether, in order to derive a reasonable interpretation of the picture.
108
For the moment, what can we say about the presence of iterable elements, and rules for their combination in the picture? Clearly, we will find other near-circles and quasi-rectangles in a lot of other pictures, and probable they will carry some of the same meanings; and perhaps even the relationships of inclusion, will be repeated, as one of the rules of combination endowed with its particular meaning. Indeed, in our later discussion of the semiotics of photography, we will encounter a case, which is similar in some respects (cf.chapter III below). And yet, these meanings are very vague; and when more concrete meanings are generated in conjunction with the iconic level, the chances for iterability seems much more restricted. Which is what we are going to see in the sequel.
II.2.1.2. To thematize or tomatize. The iconic analysis.

Also from the iconic point of view, our bottle-and-tomato-picture constitutes, on the face of it, a minimal composition: to all appearance, it is made up of just two real-world objects, the bottle and the tomato. Thus, it would seem that all that remains for us to do, is to find a way of determining, if the bottle or the tomato is the principal theme of the picture, that is, if the picture is about the tomato, or about the bottle. This is no easy question: unlike verbal language, pictorial representation systems do not come equipped with a small number of explicit devices, like word order and intonation, for marking that member of a composition which occupies the thematic apex, and/or such items as are simply taken for granted or presupposed (cf. Halliday 1967-68 ) which is not to say that there are no devices of the kind. However, we must begin by recognizing that, put in this way, our problem has in any case been excessively simplified. Given two, relatively independent real-world objects, we are, to begin with, presented with three elements: in this case, the tomato, the bottle, and the relation between them. However, all three elements may in fact, as we have argued elsewhere (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.3.1.), be interpreted on a number of levels situated on at least two continuous scales: the extensional and intensional hierarchies. The first scale is concerned with part/whole relationships, or factoralities: the actual theme of the picture may be some particular part, or parts, of the tomato, and/or of the bottle; or even some relationship between such parts.58 As for the intensional scale, it contains an array of redescriptions of the same objects, as they are seen in relation to different contexts and/or collections of other objects. In fact, we have already employed a second, more generalized designation for the bottle above (in II.2.1.1.), when terming it a container;
58 This last case is certainly not some position on the extensional hierarchy as applied to the third
"element", i.e. the relation, but on the contrary, a relationship between positions on the extensional hierarchy as applied to the other two elements. It is not clear that there is a sense in saying that the theme of the picture may be some part of a relationship, perhaps because we have no criteria of autonomy for relationships, so that this will simply be another relationship.
109
and we have used a further abstract term for the tomato, when treating it as a vegetable, comparable to the carrot, and even, from another point of view, as a fruit, which may be rapproched to the cherry. But it is also possible to follow the same conceptual ladder downwards. Indeed, we did just that, in the case of the tomato, when we termed it a newly-harvested tomato. Two observations deserves to be made, before we go on. First, we know from the experimental researches of Rosch and al. (1976), that there are, at least on the intensional scale, as basic level, which is ordinarily that which is most immediately grasped, and which is found on some intermediate level of abstraction: the chair, for instance, not a piece of furniture, nor a kitchen chair. It seems reasonable to suppose that there is also an extensional base level, and we did just that, when we supposed that the bottle and the tomato occupied some privileged position in the picture (indeed, there is no higher extensional level present in this picture, if, shifting also the intensional level, we do not take it to be "container-with-its-content", "full container", or something of the kind). However, this does not resolve our problem by one stroke: it is conceivable that the picture may be organized in such as fashion, that other levels than the basic one are brought to the fore, both because of the particular constellation of objects in the scene, and because of the photographic angles chosen and other purely pictorial means of expression (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.3.1. and III.5.1-2.). In the second place, we should note that there is still a third way, in which even as simple a picture as the present one is susceptible of variation: different attributes of the tomato and/or the bottle may become thematic. Thus, for instance, Gauthier points to the attribute "freshness" of the tomato, as well as the attribute "transparency" of the bottle. Now, it is clear that attributes are linked to the intensional scale, just as what we have termed proper parts coincide with the levels of the extensional scale (see Sonesson 1988,I.2-3.), but in the former case, the relationship is less simple. We may say that what is thematic is the attribute "freshness" or the intensional level "tomato-beingprominently-fresh", but there is at least a difference of emphasis, that we may wish to retain. Now, in one respect, our picture is really close to being a minimal representation: its two autonomous objects do not possess very many proper parts, at least as they are represented here. Thus, apart from the tops, and perhaps, as a somewhat more independent part, the dew-drop, the tomato does not have any distinguishable parts, but just a round, undifferentiated body (if it had been cut up, the case would have been different). As for the bottle, is has the parts present in all bottles: a bottle neck, a bottom, and sides. It certainly appears less undifferentiated as a whole than the tomato, and we have already taken account of this fact plastically, in opposing the contouredness of the bottle to the compactness of the tomato (cf. II.2.1.1.). If we take the illumination to serve as a simple thematizing device, it would seem that the bottle neck and the extreme left and right vertical sides of the bottle are relatively more emphasized than are the bottom and in particular the side which is turned towards us as well as the side directly opposite to it. Indeed, this is what made it possible to perceive the bottle plastically as a rectangle.
110
In a picture like this, which, for all we know, contains only black and white (at least as reproduced in Gauthiers book), and where the black colour pervades the whole composition, the small white areas, which are clearly interpretable as light reflections, are naturally seen as circumscribing the most essential parts of that which is represented. However, when light falls on the bottle neck, as well as the tomato tops, these are not necessarily given importance as such: it may serve simply to highlight the parallelism of their forms. Nor is is obvious that the reflections transforming some parts of the bottles body into quasi-contours serve to mark out these areas, which are not even proper parts of the bottle; but they too may simply be functioning plastically, transforming the bottle into a rectangle in opposition to the roundedness of the tomato. Of course, we cannot a priori exclude the possibility of these details having also iconic tasks to accomplish. In any case, that highlight on the tomatos body, which Gauthier takes to be a dew drop, fails to have any obvious justification plastically; so Gauthier may be right in attributing to it an important iconical mission. We have already argued (in II.2.1.1.), that this part does in effect manifest, in its turn, the attribute of freshness, or rather, of having been recently harvested, though not for the reasons suggested by Gauthier. Before we pursue this line of reasoning any further, we will now return to our original question: which one, of the tomato and the bottle, is the picture about? Here, we may try to adduce some arguments to help decide the question. First, two in favour of the tomato, one from real-world knowledge, and another from the particular character of the photograph: of the container and the content, the latter is ordinarily taken to be essential, the entire function of the former being to contain, and to protect the latter; and the fact of the bottle being rendered on the photograph, so as to appear dark and flattened, and transparent to the point of losing its consistency, gives it a certain continuity with the homogeneous field behind it, and makes it appear as just another part of the ground (or as a secondary ground, as we suggested above, in II.2.1.1.), from which the tomato detaches itself as the figure. But there is also an obvious argument in favour of the bottle: it is the biggest object, and occupies most of the space in the picture. While suggestive, none of these arguments appears to be really decisive. Perhaps this is the point where we should attend to the fact, that the picture which concerns us is not just any picture, but an advertisement.59 We have noted
59 How, then, do we recognize this fact? Obviously from grasping the content of the verbal text. But
perhaps there are also further, less crucial but more immediate symptoms of the picture being and advertisement. One such symptom which we are unable to appreciate in this case, since we have only encountered the picture in Gauthiers book is the location of the picture on the pages of the review in which it is published, as suggested by Barthes (1964a). Another symptom, however, could be the peculiar integration of the verbal text, as a visual element, into the body of the picture. Of course, before the advent of advertisements, emblem books also organized verbal elements visually, together with pictures (cf. the numerous studies by Marin). But the integration of the verbal elements seems less complete, and in any case, emblems are hardly a living pictorial category. There are also dadaist and surrealists montages, which combine elements of language with picture fragments; but while the latter seek to promote the impression of the outermost haphazardousness and chaos, advertisement generally opts for a harmonious and symmetrical incorporation of the linguistic components. For a case in point, cf.
111
elsewhere (in Sonesson 1988,II.1.1.), commenting on the conceptions of Koch, Nth, and Baudrillard, that at least four principles of relevance determine all (or most) publicity: 1) the product most be shown, for later identification; 2) the product must be presented in such as way, as to be maximally differentiated from other objects which are essentially similar; 3) positive valuations must be transferred to the product, usually from some object closer to the core of Lifeworld values; 4) there should be an exhortation to consume. This last point is perhaps the most problematical; such exhortations are often implicit, taken for granted once the maximal differentiation and positive valuations are established. Both the tomato and the container are shown; in fact, in the case of the tomato, this is only rendered possible by the container being made out of glass. However, the tomato is certainly not shown in a way, which admits of a maximal differentiation from other tomatoes; instead, as we noted above, its differential properties are underplayed. Indeed, the only property of the tomato which stands out is the light reflection on its watery surface, and the ensuing suggestion of the tomato having been recently harvested; but if this is an argument for consumption, it is of little aid in identifying the product in the store, and no other identifying features are given us in the picture. This would seem to exclude the tomato as the theme of the picture. On the other hand, as a prominently "natural" product, and a relatively traditional ingredient of Western diets, it certainly contains an array of intrinsic values, which might be taken over, through contiguity indexicality, by the container. Indeed there is no need to exhort us to the consumption of the tomatoes, since the ingestion of these vegetables in one of the historically most acceptable ways of satisfying a basic need of humankind, viz. hunger. There is no such basic need for bottles, or containers generally: if need there is, it is derivative, as we noted above. Now, it is not clear that the container is here maximally differentiated, nor unmistakably identified as a product. Neither is there any indication, that the tomato-hood is meant to be transferred, in any simple way, from the vegetable to the bottle, as we found it to be the case in a number of other publicity pictures (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.2.5.). In connection with the latter observation, it must be remembered, that tomatoes do actually appear inside containers (though not in this state, in this kind of container); but real fruits do not form a crown, nor are real marmalade jars made out of orange slices, to choose just a few of the examples earlier analyzed. The container has a paradoxical role to play in this advertisement. Since it is the product to be sold, it must be staged in the principal part; but since it is of the essence of a container to accomplish a derivative function, that of containing something which has a value in itself, and since it must be presented as accomplishing this function in the most adequate manner, it is impeded from looming too large in the composition. To resolve this apory, transparency becomes the sole attribute of the glass container which is singled out, as Gauthier (p.59) also notes. There are really two aspects to this, both operated by a judicious arrangement of the incident light: on the four extreme sides
also Flochs (1981a) analysis of the advertisement selling the cigarette brand "News". No doubt much more comparative study of different pictorial categories is needed in order to decide this issue.
112
of the bottle, the highlights become clearly visible, as quasi-contours of a somewhat deviant rectangle (cf.II.2.1.1.); and in front of the tomato, and in the background, the very consistency of the matter fades out in thin air, leaving the tomato as if the bottle had never existed. Gauthier (ibid) rightly notes, that "comme la transparence nest pas un argument de vente, cest qu son tour, elle signifie autre chose". But unfortunately, his analysis leaves us wondering what that is. It is when we relate the focus on transparency internal to the pictorial composition to what we know about value relationships obtaining between container and content, that we can see that the lone property of the bottle which is singled out is meant to stand for a whole set of properties characteristic of good containers: just as this container, through its transparency, does not impede us from seeing the tomato as it is, so it is also, the picture suggests, subservient to the content in all other respects, simply offering a space inside which the tomato may be what it is.60 There is, of course, another aspect to this, as the already noted above (in II.2.1.1.): because of the narrow bottle neck, the tomato would, in the real world, either have to be as it is in the picture, and still outside the bottle; or it could be inside the bottle, but then having being crushed, together with many other tomatoes, into an amorphous, reddish pulp. There is a contradiction between the state of the tomato, and its position. We may now add to this a further suggestion in the same sense, contained in the picture. We noted above that one aspect of the containers transparency is that its front and back walls appear to be non-existent; but on the same time their presence is certainly suggested by contiguity indexicalities from the bottle neck and bottom of the container. Thus, there is even contradictory evidence for the tomato being inside or outside the container; or perhaps rather for the very existence of the container. It was mentioned above, that the container is not clearly identified as a product, nor perhaps maximally differentiated. This is related to the fact, that the tomatos presence in the container is only, on the most general intensional level, an realistic condition. Tomatoes do appear in containers: but there would not normally be just one in each container; nor would it be placed in such as symmetrical position. These two facts together suggest that the tomato is really made to represent tomato-hood, or perhaps the nature of vegetables generally, or even more generally: the domain of ephemeral freshness. But there is also a curious aspect to the container, more elemental than the disproportionate width of the bottle neck: that it is a bottle, for we would not normally expect tomatoes to be found in container of this type. This again suggests that the bottle is not meant to be identified as a particular product; it just serves to highlight the relatively abstract property of being a glass container. The lack of product identification is therefore no doubt due to the fact that this advertisement does not have the function of
60 In Peircean terms, this in a typical abduction, which is of the essence of indexicality. Cf. Sonesson
1988, I.2.
113
selling a particular brand name; it opposes one type of product to others, that is, glass containers to, for instance, tin cans. Elsewhere (in Sonesson 1988,I.4.1.), we have suggested that much of what structuralists have treated as logical oppositions can be analyzed as what we called antitypes, and conceived of as the inversion of Roschs prototype. Indeed, one of Roschs description of the prototype is that is is "a high correlational structure"; we expect a being that has feathers to be able to fly and to lay eggs, although this is not always true. As against this, the antitype has the effect of attributing to the same objects properties which are not expected to occur together, always in fact they may do so: we expect objects of nature, like trees to be irregular, but cultural objects like houses to have a certain amount of regularity, but the trees in the Versailles garden are as symmetrical as its houses. In the present case, however, we are confronted with something which comes closer to being a logical contradiction: the state of the tomato, as presented, and its position inside the bottle, appear to be totally incompatible. On the other hand, the picture is a photograph, which means it conveys a connotation of truthfulness; and indeed, there is nothing to indicate that the picture is a trick photograph. So the tomato must really have got inside the bottle; but not through the bottle neck, perhaps. Instead, the authors of the picture may have made use of the same method which is employed in Tepito in Mexico City to substitute cheaper liquids for real whisky: they may have cut off the bottom, put the tomato inside, and then put the bottom back again. Thus, the combination of the state and the position of the tomato is no logical contradiction; it is only highly improbable, given ordinary presuppositions. Nor is there any real contradiction between the presence and non-presence of the bottle walls: perception largely involves the filling-in of missing details, as perceptual psychology informs us; and this is particularly true about picture perception. When the walls fade out in thin air, it is easy to explain this phenomenon, as indeed we did, from the particular conditions under which the photograph was taken. What we recognize here, in any case, is the ideological system which Williamson (1978:103ff) terms the "cooking of nature" into "the natural":
"thus the `raw, the natural object, becomes in this context a symbol, not of nature , but, ironically, and in alienation from its original place, of the culture that has worked it over" (op.cit.:104).
Indeed, the whole point of the bottle-and-tomato-picture, is to present the tomato just as is always has been, in its perennial freshness, in spite of the fact that is has been subjected, though perhaps not as radically as in the cases considered by Williamson, to a process of transformation. Though is has been culturalized already by being placed in the glass container, the tomato ideologically remains at least as natural as ever. Indeed, it is because of the container that the tomatos condition of being newly harvested may be turned, from having been ephemeral, into a perennial state. We may now connect up the present analysis with our interpretation of the plastic level. It will be remembered, that also plastically, the tomato was equipped with
114
a series of traits, which are often understood to indicate an elementary, unelaborated, and generally natural state, such as is also ideologically attributed to women and children; while on the other hand, the bottle contains traits pointing to its serious, elaborated, masculine, and, in short, culturalized character (see II.2.1.1.: for these meanings, cf. also II.2.2.2. below). However, it will also be remembered, that we found the bottle, but not the tomato, to contain, on a secondary levels, also such features as were typical of the other object; that, is the bottle also possessed some tomatoproperties, but not the reverse. This means that, plastically, it is the bottle, but not the tomato, that embodies an antitype, combining together traits which would not be expected to co-occur in the same object. Thus, the antitypical character of the tomato, on the iconical level, is somehow prepared beforehand by the antitypical character of the bottle, on the plastic level: the bottle cannot rob the tomato of its natural conditions, because is has already been half naturalized. Before bringing our analysis to a close, we must pause to consider, to what extent we have found something which can be called iterable elements, and rules for their combination. There certainly are good reasons to believe that plastic elements may recur with more or less the same meanings, and we will return to this question below (in II.2.2.2. and in chapter III). Also, we have confirmed, once again, the existence, on what must probable be taken to be the referential level, of an "ideology of the natural". For the rest, the meaning of the picture, if indeed we have been able to grasp it adequately, seems to result from rather singular combinations of elements of both pictorial levels. So far, then, rather few really iterable elements and relations have come to the fore. In the next section we will take up for analysis another picture, which at first seemed to us to be similar to the bottle-and-tomato-picture, in essential respects: the analysis actually reveals a number of interesting differences. We must therefore ask ourselves if the practice of executing numerous analyses of different, but apparently similar pictures, suggested by the structuralist approach, is really profitable for quite opposite reasons than those we took for granted: that is, if instead of the similarities, it serves to bring out the differences.
II.2.2. The girl with a hat and a watch.

We decided to embark upon our second study, in order to investigate the possibilities of finding elements which repeat from one picture to another, since the text analytical method of semiotics leads us to expect that there should be such elements (cf. II.2.1.). The problem, as we noted above, is the decide, already before beginning the analysis, if two pictures are of the same general kind, and also from what point of view such pictorial kinds should be determined (that is, if we should attend to the picture type, the picture function, or the pictorial circulation channel, kin the sense of chapter I; or the some pictorial genres, and so on). In the present context, our intention was to scrutinize a picture, which was similar to the bottle-and-tomato picture plastically: in being built around a series of oppositions subsumed by the terms angularity vs roundishness. In addition, the picture selected for analysis turned out to accomplish the same pictorial function: that of being an advertisement.
115
Fig.17. The girl -with-a-hat-and-watch (advertisement picture, taken from Marie Claire, no.363, November of 1982). Our second selection, then, which we will from now on designate as the girlwith-the-hat-and-the-watch, is extracted from the French womens monthly Marie
116
Claire, no 363, published in November of 1982 (fig.17.). It seems immediately clear, that this publicity picture centers around oppositions of angularity and roundishness, though in a much more intricate manner than the bottle-and-tomato-picture. Indeed, as we suggested above, the differences between this picture and the earlier one stand out more clearly than the similarities, and since this will prove to be true, also as our analysis develops, we are forced to conclude, that this must be the real gain of the comparative method. In any case,we will start out from the assumption, that, on the level of plastic language, there are indeed some important similarities between the two pictures, while admitting, that the fragmented way, in which these meanings are distributed in the present picture, makes up for a quite different impression. First, however, we must of necessity attend to some of the more glaring differences. Contrary to our approach in the bottle-and-tomato analysis, we will first first be concerned with the iconic analysis, and then take up the plastic analysis only as a second stage. There are a number of reasons for this. Whereas it was immediately obvious, that the bottle-and-tomato-picture displayed a tomato placed inside a bottle, it is somewhat more problematical to account for the iconic layer of the present picture. Moreover, of the three autonomous real-world objects which are contained in the picture, none is shown in full, nor are, in general, any of the parts of these objects. This means that the iconic signs themselves will turn out to have indexical signs and, in general, indexicalities, as their content planes. Indeed, an organization in terms of parts pervades the whole picture, not only in the sense of proper parts, but also as attributes and perceptual noemata (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.2.). There is another way in which the present analysis is essentially different from the earlier one. While in the bottle-and-tomato study, we could rely on some observations made before by Gauthier, and on our own earlier effort to extend that analysis, we must now start out from zero. This, together with the greater number of details contained in the present picture, and the absence of all simple, easily recognizable elementary configurations, such a the full circle or the rectangle, has stimulated a more systematic approach, in particular as the plastic layer is concerned. Indeed, while building essentially on procedures familiar from the work of Floch (as analysed in Sonesson 1988, II.3.), we have found it necessary to recast them in a more orderly and, it must be admitted, more tedious fashion. It must remain an open question, for the time being, to what extent also the bottle-and-tomato picture could have profited from such a systematic approach.
II.2.2.1. A love-affair with a wrist-watch. Iconico-indexical analysis.

From an iconical point of view, our picture undoubtedly involves three or four independent real-world objects, together with a background which lacks the homogeneity which is necessary for it to play a completely passive role. In fact, there are three real-world objects: the girl, the watch, and the hat; and there is a false suggestion, sufficiently persistent to fool at first most observers, of the presence of a
117
forth object: a man, manifested through his arm. Since this presence is almost certainly an illusion, though perhaps an intended one, we will take care of it later; first we will attend to the three objects actually embodied in the picture. Our analysis is further complicated by another consideration: that all the objects depicted are represented in the picture by some of their parts only, this being so from the threefold point of view of proper parts, attributes, and perceptual noemata (differently put, extensionally, intensionally, and as far as visual perspective is concerned 61). This is to say that the entire organization of the scene depends on the presence in the picture of a series of indexicalities, more precisely, of a set of abductive, factorial indexicalities, which, in terms of our discussion in Sonesson 1988,I.2., means that we must rely on our common-sense knowledge of Lifeworld regularities, to conclude from the parts given to our perception to such wholes as are intended to be signified. Thus, in order to make sense of the present picture, we must have recourse to at least approximate interpretational schemes pertaining the the human (and, in particular, female) body, a watch, and a hat (cf.II.1.3. above). According to this same study, the indexicalities with which we are concerned here are not really indexical signs, since they fail to fulfil one requirement on signs, suggested by our discussion of Piagets conception, according to which there must be a kind of discontinuity between a signifier and a signified (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.2.5. and I.4.2.). Indeed, the three real-world objects present in the picture are represents only by some of their parts due to at least two rather different reasons. In the first place, some parts do not appear in view, because they are hidden behind some other parts, either of the same object (the breasts occulted under the arms) or of some other object (the upper part of the face concealed by the hat). Secondly, most parts are interrupted somewhere in their internal extension (often rather near, but never coinciding with a "natural" limit, as these are prescribed by the schemes involved) by the picture frame. In both cases, border lines present in the picture may be drawn out continuously, so as to suggest at least a rough equivalent of the parts lacking or hidden from view. Thus, there is no real discontinuity: we have something similar to the perceptual contexts, which are all the time discovered and covered over again in the perpetually on-going business of perceiving the environment. The difference is, obviously, that the ever changing constellations of the real environment have been halted by the photographic act and petrified into a static image. This does no doubt introduces a kind of hiatus, which has a more severely impairing effect on the expected perceptual nexus in the case of the parts interrupted by the picture frame than when as far as the parts hidden behind other parts are concerned, where all normal protentions and retentions of real-world perception may still occur, although they can no longer be
61 Logicians (for instance Chisholm and Hintikka) treat perceptual parts as intensional attributes, but this
is impractical here. Any serious attempt to justify this distinction from a more theoretical viewpoint would unfortunately take us to far from our present concerns .
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics substantiated in later perceptual acts.62
118
In the following, we will have a look at the three independent Lifeworld objects of the picture, attending in turn to the perceptual parts, the attributes, and the perceptual noemata.
A)
PROPER PARTS:
In order to conclude from the parts to the integrating whole, we need to have access to a kind of labeled tree-diagram, which accounts for the way the parts are related to the respective whole. Three such schemes are relevant here: that of the hat, that of a watch, at that of a female human being. In the analysis which follows, we will try to differentiate the two kinds of indexicalities mentioned above, those occasioned by the limitations of the static view, and those which are due to the interruption of the picture frame. Parts which are abduced from inside the scene will be rendered in italics; those which lie beyond the frame will be recorded in boldface.
AA)
THE HAT SCHEME.
HAT-BRIM PART
FRONTAL HAT-BRIM
HAT-BRIM
ONE WING OF HAT-BOW WITH PART OF SECOND
CROWN OF HAT HAT-BOW PART OF RIBBON TO THE RIGHT OF BOW HAT-RIBBON
LOWER-FRONTAL PART OF CROWN
(WOMANS) HAT
No parts are hidden here by other parts (apart from small area of hat-brim and crown being concealed by hat-ribbon and hat-bow, and the like); however, a third factor intervenes here, for the part of the hat-brim which is to the left of the picture, and most of the hat-bow, lie in a shadowy area. However, we will refrain form formalizing also this factorality device here. Ab) the watch scheme. CLOCK-FACE BACK-SIDE OF WATCH
LATERAL SIDES OF WATCH
WATCH PROPER WRISTWATCH
SMALL PART OF UPPER BRACELET LARGE PART OF LOWER BRACELET
UPPER BRACELET
BRACELET SNAP
BRACELET
LOWER BRACELET
62 We will ignore for the time being the meaning carried by the frame itself, which has been interestingly
discussed, in the case of paintings, in an article by Marin (1979), and quite independently, as applied to photographs, by Dubois (1983). It will therefore by convenient to return to this issue in our study of photographic semiotics, in chapter III, where other aspects of indexicality will also be addressed.
119
This may be too simple a scheme for the ordinary wrist-watch, even according to every-day understanding. However, as before, we are only interested in proposing a very rough model of the tree-structure, just so that we will be able to indicate how little of the object is actually present in the picture. Ac) the human being scheme, female variant. MOUTH
CHIN
FACE
NECK HAIR
1/3 LOWER FACE
HEAD
SHOULDERS CLOSE TO NECK
SHOULDERS
BOSOM
UPPER TRUNK HUMAN LEGS

BODY
...
BELLY SEXUAL ORGAN ... WRIST

PALM FINGERS
LOWER TRUNK
HAND
FRONTAL-MIDDLE PART OF
LOWER ARM
UPPER ARM ARM

ELBOW
ARMS
SMALL PART OF
SECOND LOWER ARM
SECOND ARM
Clearly, most of what is "seen" in this picture is really reconstructed from rather limited evidence, together with that kind of knowledge of the body scheme which is commonly possessed. In order no to make our overview too difficult to survey we have left out some of the lower levels of the full tree-diagram illustrating the body scheme, but only such parts as are in any case invisible in the picture. Also, some of the levels closest too the apex have not been particularly noted (such body in the strict sense for upper and lower trunk, etc.). For a more complete analysis of the body scheme, see also Sonesson 1988, I.3.2. and III.5.1-3.). Here we have attended only to the factoralities; there are, of course, also contiguities. Some of these, to which we will return later, are also of the abductive kind. but most of them are performative, that is, produced in the picture (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.2.5. ); thus, the closeness of the arms to each other, and of the arms to the upper trunk; the neighbouring of the chin, both to one of the lower arms, and to the superior part of the upper trunk and, of course, to the neck. The case of the neck, nevertheless, is problematic on two accounts. First, we do not mean to note down here those contiguities which follow already from the body scheme; instead, what should be indicated is that the chin is close to the neck, not only through being situated near the place where the
120
head is attached to the neck; but also by approaching the neck at the opposite point, where the latter opens up onto the trunk, that is, at a position in which contiguity, that is to say, such extreme contiguity, is not prescribed by the body scheme. In the second place, the neck is not actually visible on the picture, as we noted above; therefore, we have to supply it imaginatively, building on our common-sense knowledge of the body scheme (cf. the case of Matisses Blue body, discussed in Sonesson 1988,III.5.2. ). Thus, it by means of an abduction that we conclude that there must be a neck between the head and the trunk; we then attend to the contiguity, given in the picture, between the chin and the trunk, and, adding the two indexicalities together, we derive the information about the closeness of the chin to the neck. A particularly important nexus to establish in the picture is the one which connects the arm (or arms) in the foreground to the body and the face which appear behind it (or them). Indeed, in order to show that there is such a connection, it will be necessary to attend to an array of minute abductive contiguity cues. But since it is only when we later go on to consider the attributes manifested in the picture, that we will discover reasons for doubting such a connection, it will certainly be more convenient to suspend our discussion of the counter-arguments until then. Returning briefly to those contiguities which are performative, in the sense of being "performed" by the picture itself, we will note, for later reference, the contiguities obtaining between elements of different schemes: the one between the watch and the arm, which is trivial; the one between the lips and the watch, which is less so; and finally, the one which connects the hat-brim with the lower part of the face, which, while trivial in itself, gains importance by its extremity.
B) ATTRIBUTES.
Objects, and parts of objects, have a great number of properties. The claim here is that, through the choice, combination, and presentation of object parts, certain of these properties are more clearly predicated of the objects than others. Below we will indicate, for each one of the three independent objects, which parts of them tend to suggest which particular attributes (Italics will be used to indicate particularly important factors). Ba) the hat.
HAT-BRIM
HAT-BOW
+femininity
COLOUR OF HAT Bb) the wrist-watch.

WATCH ITSELF:
angularity +masculinity
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics small size +femininity

BRACELET:
121 i.e., an ANTITYPE.
+femininity (?)
Bc) the body. Bca) the face. In most cases, we can immediately identify an individual, from the face alone, as being a man or a woman. It so happens there are some objective cues, are rather central tendencies, which account for this ease of identification. According to Liggitt (1974), womans complexion is lighter and smoother; the size of the face is only 4/5 of that of a man; the nose is smaller, even proportionally; the bridge of the nose is wider, more concave, and sunken down, like that of a child; the mouth is smaller; the upper lip is shorter; the jaw and the eye-brow bridge are less salient; the eye-brows are are thinner; the eye-lashes are longer and stronger; the iris and the eye region generally are darker; the muscles are smaller and hidden under the tissues. Although this description is highly interesting, it does not go a long way to account for our immediate recognition of the person on the picture as being a woman. Of the cues listed by Liggitt, only the size of the mouth and the upper lip, and perhaps the relative size of the entire face, the jaw, the muscles, and the lightness of the skin are open to inspection in our picture. Indeed, because of the general darkness of the composition, even these factors are difficult to assess:
LIGHT COMPLEXION (?)
SMALL FACE SMALL MOUTH

SHORT UPPER LIP NOT VERY SALIENT JAW (?) MUSCLES HIDDEN (?) PAINTED LIPS
+femininity
(cultural feature of femininity)
+femininity (that is culturalized femininity)
In conclusion, it is a culturally defined feature of femininity which really plays the main part in establishing the feminine sex of the person appearing on our picture. Bcb) the shoulders: rounded shapes Bcc) the arm: hairiness porousness big size muscles and/or bones visible +femininity
+masculinity
122
This does account for the first interpretation given the picture by the present author, as well as by a number of other persons seeing the picture for the first time: the arm (for at this stage only one arm is seen) appears to belong to another person, a male, which clings it around the girl whose face is seen behind it, in a familiar gesture of protection and dominance. But this reading cannot stand up to closer analysis. In fact, there is a second arm, a fragment of which is seen on the right lower corner of the picture. That this is an arm, and not, for example, a part of the chest, must be concluded from the particular vertical pattern formed by the hairs on its surface. Thus, the arms have been crossed over each other on the chest; and this would be a strange gesture to execute on someone elses body. In addition, at the point where the girls left shoulder is interrupted by the right border of the frame, and above the wrist of the right hand, something bulky, which disturbs the roundish shoulder line can be observed: from its position, it can be abduced to be a bundle of skin which has been pressed out from the arm-hole when the arm was raised. There are, on the other hand, a series of contiguity cues, which seem to contradict this interpretation. The arms seem to be too close to the body to be able to connect with it. Also, there is nothing on the photograph to indicate the different distances which, for anatomical reasons, must obtain between the chest and the upper end of the lower arm, near the elbow, on the one hand, and the lower end of the arm, near the wrist, on the other hand. Finally, the single arm which is largely visibly on the picture seems over-sized in relation to the other visible parts of the girls body. We could add all the features of masculinity recorded above. None of these reasons is decisive, however. If we leave to one side, for a moment, our naive interpretation of the scene, and attend to the photographic connotation, we at once realize that the employment of a wide-angle lens is sufficient to account for all the strange effects mentioned above: it tends to efface depth and distance, and the differences in size and detail become exacerbated. However, an illusion that can only be dispelled after so much tortuous explication, and when provision is made for the effects of the visual medium, cannot be counted for mere delusion: an ambiguity remains, and may even be intentional. At last we should note a curious fact, which however remains, how ever we choose to assign the arm to a body: that the watch is placed in such a way, that the possessor of the arm, and consequently of the watch, would have to consult the latter upside-down. On the other hand, the watch is of course placed, so as to be easily read by us, that is by the observers of the picture; but probably not because the time shown on the dial is taken to be of importance; but to show up a prototypical clock-shape.
C) PERCEPTUAL
Ca) the hat.
NOEMATA
(PROTOTYPICAL
POSITIONS).
There are some indications, in the work of Rosch (1973;1978), that not only are
123
some objects more prototypical than others, but there are also angles of vision on one and the same object which are particularly prototypical: thus, animals and vehicles are preferably seen from the side, but human beings from the front. We have no information for the case of hats: perhaps we should see them from above, as in the classical droodle of a Mexican; or from the side, as in childrens drawings. But in fact, the whole of the the droodle is that the well-known Mexican hat cannot be so easily identified; and the kind of scribble children use for a hat could hardly be recognized, if it had not been placed above something which must be taken to be the head of a human being. Thus, a more elaborated visual angle may be nessessary, for the hat to be identified as such, in particular if we also want it categorized as a womans hat, and rather "feminine" in character at that - that is, if we want more intensional levels to be read off. Here then, we get a 3/4 angle frontally, and a smaller angle to the side. Vision is assured of all essential elements (brim, bow, crown, etc.), but none is shown in full. The resulting position is not, however, a particularly typical way of wearing a hat. Cb) the wrist-watch. Only the frontal side of the watch, the clock-face, is seen, and parts of the two sections of the bracelet disappearing in the "horizon". This would seem to be a very prototypical position for a watch. As we noted above, the clock-face is placed so as to be correct turned for our observation, although this means that it must be upside-down for the possessor of the watch. This may have been done to have the watch in a perfectly prototypical position. Indeed, since the watch is the product which the advertisement purportedly sells, it must be correctly identified (cf. II.2.1.2. above). Cc) the body. Cca) face and neck. The perspective on the face seems fairly prototypical, as it is close to being taken from directly in front; but it is modified in order to let the neck also come to the fore, though laterally, but this is perhaps unimportant in the case of the neck, which varies little from different angles. Of course, the face is far from prototypical in other respects, since so little is shown of it, but this is not directly a question of visual angle. Ccb) shoulders. Here we no doubt have a very prototypical shape for the shoulders, seen from straight in front; and for a womans shoulders, because of the roundish sloping lines. However, since the scene is cut so close-by, we are impeded from seeing that the shoulders are not broad like those of a man. Ccc) arms. These are not particularly prototypical. Indeed, one arm is almost completely hidden, and the other is cut off just before its more characteristic parts, the elbow and the hand with its fingers. However, the position of the watch on wrist is culturally
124
characteristic. In fact, there are many other cues, as for instance the arrangement of the hair, which we took advantage of above, when discussing who was the owner of the arms.
INTENSIONAL
LEVELS AND INTERACTIONS.
Before concluding this section, we will also briefly take note of a number of modifications of the three independent objects as they are interpreted on different intensional levels, as well as of an array of interactions between the three objects. Intensional levels: WOMANS "FEMININE", "ROMANTIC", "GIRLISH", ETC.
B) WATCH A ) HAT
WOMANS HAT
HAT IN A STYLE WHICH IS DECIDEDLY
"CLASSICAL" WATCH (VS QUARTZ WATCH, ETC.) MANS WATCH

NUDE WOMAN YOUNG WOMAN
C) (PARTS OF) HUMAN BEING
WOMAN
"FEMININE" WOMAN ( lips, etc.) Against this, there is of course the arm, which must either be taken to be a mans arm, a rather masculine womans arm, or just an ordinarily female arm seen in a too extreme close-up. Interaction hat/face. The fact that the hat is tipped over to the front results in the face being largely hidden. Both the position of the hat and its effect can be interpreted, but are hard to distinguish. We may expect timidity, secret, and even, in certain contexts, sexual provocation. Interaction face/arm. Taking the arms to be the girls own, the fact that they are crossed over the chest may be interpreted as a gesture of protection (of the breasts, perhaps), or as a support provided for the head. To sustain the head on the arm, in particular with the arm in this vertical position, would appear to be a peaceful , reposing position Interaction watch/arm/head. What is most remarkable here is the close position of the lips and the watch, but this relationship cannot be readily interpreted. We will see that there are reasons grounded in plastic language for taking this connection seriously, and we will return then to its meaning.
125
II.2.2.2. Loves labour not lost. Plastic analysis.

We will now proceed to carry out the plastic analysis of the girl-with-a-hatand-a-watch-picture. Unlike the bottle-and-tomato-picture, the present one does not contain any clearly demarcated elementary configurations or Gestalten, which immediately impress themselves on perception. Thus, it sets a much more arduous task for plastic analysis. Since there could be any number of different plastic properties manifested in the picture, there is, it would seem, no immediately obvious basis for picking up just a small array of such properties and declaring them to be the relevant ones. As a result, we have been forced to adopt an appreciably more systematic approach than in the earlier analysis, similar to that employed by Floch (1981a) in that it starts out from a segmentation of the total surface, and then builds on a series of contrasts between attributes picked up from among the properties of the different areas; but different in that it more clearly accounts for the segmentation of the total area into sub-areas in terms of particular plastic attributes; in examining all potential contrasts resulting from the oppositions obtaining between the sub-areas; in constructing the properties of the areas from the poles of the oppositions falling within them; as well as in assigning meanings to the relevant plastic properties on the basis of the results of psychological research, when such are available. Our method, then, will proceed along four separate steps: 1) we will suggest a segmentation of the picture into three horizontal bands, the middle one of which may also be segmented further into two vertically demarcated portions; and we will argue that they can be correlated two-by-two, with the aid of attributes which dominate the attribute hierarchies of the respective areas. 2) Inside each correlation, we will oppose one of the areas to the two others, in order to derive such contrastive pairs as characterize them; but on the background of these differences we will also attend to similarities, as long as they may be read as continuities from one area to the other (that is, as isotopies, in the strict sense; cf. II.1.3.6 above and also Sonesson 1988,I.3.3.). We will then also note contrasts obtaining between two areas singly, and the deviations between the two sub-sub-areas of the middle band. 3) We will ascribe properties derived from the different oppositions to the areas inside which fall the poles of the oppositions; and we will derive meanings for each one of the fields, relying on findings from psychological research and to some extent on personal intuitions.
126
4) At last, we will attend to the meanings generated by the textual block, also considered as a visual elements; and we will confront the meanings derived iconically and plastically for the different areas.
Fig.18. Segmentation of the girl-with-a-hat-and-a-watch picture
The segmentation chosen is the one which is recorded in fig.18. below. We will use A,B, and C, to refer to the different horizontal bands, and Ba and Bb to indicate the two sub-fields of field B. There is a colour correlation (beige vs yellowish brown) which opposes field A to B+C; and a shape correlation (rounded vs angular shapes), which accounts for the primary opposition between fields A+B, on the one hand, and field C, on the other; and a correlation of homogeneity (the characterization of which will be given below, as it is more complex) differentiating field B from fields A+C. We will now first list the different oppositions, according to the correlations in which they are found. Features which are considered to serve as demarcative traits of the different fields, that is, in a sense, to top the respective feature hierarchies, are recorded in boldface; and italics are used to mark such features as are continuities ("isotopies") from one field to another, again in opposition to the third field.
127
a ) colour
correlation
(A vs B + C ) :
A
beige a few, almost parallel lines quasi-horizontality no verticality divergent detail to the left (in Aa)
vs vs vs vs vs vs
B+C
yellowish brown (+black) lines forming angles several directions
vertical in Ba continued in Cb (neck/watch)

divergent detail to the right (Bb,Cb)
b) shape
correlation
(A+B
vs C ) :
A+B
roundish shapes continuous upward movement direction upwards from displaced middle axis
vs vs vs vs vs
C
angular shapes genuine horizontality slight movement upward from the left to the right no symmetry to other fields
rough mirror symmetry of the respective lower curves (particularly in Ba) connectivity of the configurationsi n the two fields (head+hat) common projectivity downwards
vs
rupture of configurations (head/arm)

no projectivity
vs
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics c) correlation of homogeneity (A+C vs B ) :
128
A+C
figure reaching the border homogeneous field shallow depth(close to surface) predominant horizontality predominant parallelism (including concentric circles)
vs vs vs vs vs vs
B
figure in the middle against a background heterogeneous field relative depth (further back) predominant verticality relative symmetry around the vertical axis; and around the horizontal axis with a change in size (shoulders/face) apparent smooth texture detail (mouth) has a horizontal axis and reproduces in smaller size and different interrelations shapes present in the larger field (shoulder+chin curves) detail (mouth) in extremely divergent colour
apparent rough texture details placed on a divergent axis from that of the field (watch and bow are obliquely vertical)
vs vs
details in colours close to that of the larger field
vs
a) deviations from the symmetry axis Ba/Bb (somewhat to the right of the middle line):
Ba
relative darkness sharp border lines genuine vertical in half Ba
vs vs vs vs
Bb
relative lightness partly diffuse border lines no genuine verticality
129
a) differences A vs B (apart from those of the correlations):
A
half-circles middle point of circle obliquely situated relative to visible part middle point of circle somewhat to the left of middle line all roundish shapes have their centre in the superior part of the scene (also outside the picture frame horizontal dominance in ratio horizontality/verticality
vs vs vs
B
semi-ovals middle point of circle straight inside the picture middle point of circle to the righ of middle line also roundish shapes having their centre in the inferior part of the scene (shoulders+upper lip) vertical dominance in ratio horizontality/verticality as applied to the central figure (the chin line)
vs
vs
vs
a) differences B vs C (apart from those of the correlations).
B
darker brownish nuance more yellowish nuances more black sub-fields genuine vertical to the left(in Ba)
vs vs vs vs vs
C
skin colour (with exception of the colours of watch and bracelet)
genuine vertical (somewhat oblique) to the right (in Cb)
130
g) the textual textual field)]
field
( vs = picture
field
vs
varying colour scale multitude of shapes continuous shapes varying axes immediate balance
vs vs vs vs vs vs
black-and-white (except trade mark) few compositional blocks discrete blocks predominant horizontal parallelism balance between the blocks
Some remarks are in place here. The traits recorded in boldface are taken to dominate the hierarchies, in the sense that they account for the separation into fields. That these, and not other traits, justifying other segmentations, are dominant, can be demonstrated only be pointing to the picture, and asking for assent. We encounter one of the limits of our metalanguage. As in all translation, in the present one there comes a point were we must give up all efforts as justification, and beg for the agreement of the "native speaker" - that is, in our case, of that native observer that we all are, more or less.63 There is a more general point about the metalanguage embodied in the traits listed above which deserves to be made here. We have no common consensus in pictorial semiotics for the setting-up of a small number of traits, as there are now, more or less, in linguistics. For this reason, it would really have been necessary to comment extensively on each one of the traits. However, for lack of space (and time), we must instead ask the reader to report himself to the picture, as reproduced above (fig.17), and to try to make sense of the traits, as they are described. Indeed, we have tried to formulate the traits so as to the self-explanatory, even though this may not always have been possible. Instead, we will now proceed to carry out the third step of our procedure, which
63 However, there may be some relatively plausible grounds for rejecting some segmentations, and we
will take up this issue in the chapter on photographic semiotics, where it will be possible to compare a number of segmentations of the same picture.
131
consists, at the same time, in putting together all those attributes predicated of one and the same field, and in translating these plastic predicates into psychological ones. Here, we will treat the plastic properties as expressions, the content of which are the psychological meanings; but this is of course only relatively valid, for, as analyzed above, the plastic properties are contents of visual shapes and colours, and the psychological properties may generate further layers of meaning. Our sources for the psychological predicates, when available, have been: Arnheim (1966); Hoffmann (1943); Jessen (1983); Lindekens (1971) ; Perkins (1981); Sander/Volkelt (1962); Volkelt (1963).
Expression
beige (vs B+C) a few, almost parallel lines (vs B) relative parallelism quasi-horizontality (vs B+C) relative horizontality (vs B) horizontally-dominated ratio of horizontality/verticality (vs B) no genuine verticality (vs B+C) half-circles (vs B) roundish shapes (vs C)
Content
smooth, calm colour (?) simple, calm, uncomplicated (?) order, very little "noise" neither up nor down, i.e. equilibrium, but no genuine horizontality, so rather underdetermined
incomplete, "halved" calm,etc.(?) Urform, something elementary (Volkelt, SanderHoffmann), femininity (Jessen), calm, lazy, tranquil (Arnheim/Lundholm), calm (Perkins), perfection (Groupe ). strength, energy, force (Arnheim)(?) but the gradual and displaced character of the movement would probably bluntthe effect.; that is, at least no weakness, depression, etc. connection, continuity downwards
gradual movement upwards (vs C) upwards from displaced middle axis (vs C)
connectivity of the configurations (vs C) mirror symmetry of lower borders (vs C) projectivity downwards (with B; vs C
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics figure touches border (vs B) homogeneous field (vs B) shallow depth (vs B) rough texture (vs B) detail having divergent axis (vs B) detail to the left (vs B+C) detail in colour similar to field (vs B) middle point of circle oblique relative to visible part (vs B) middle point of circle to the left of central axis (vs B) only roundish shapes having their centre in superior part (vs B)
132 continuity inwards and outwards no ruptures closeness to observer roughness detail stands out detail fuse with background, not thematized. small divergence from basic order/equilibrium
simplicity, order
Expression
yellowish brown (vs A) streak of black (vs A) more black, yellow, brown (vs C) lines forming angle to each other (vs A) lines in several directions (vs A) vertical to the left (vs C) elements of genuine verticality (vs A) relative verticality (vs A+C) vertically-dominated ratio of horizontality/verticality
Content
smoothness, warmth, romantic ambience contrast (to yellowish brown) , secrecy variation (of colours) exciting, powerful (Arnheim/Lundholm) variation, a certain disorderruptures, discontinuity, verticality in the background (outside centre of attention) the dimension strength vs weakness, energy vs no energy, force vs depression (Arnheim),
133
roundish shapes (vs C) semi-ovals (vs A) roundish shapes having centre in upper or lower parts gradual movement upwards (vs C) direction upwards from displaced middle axis (vs C) relative connectivity of configurations (vs C) mirror symmetry in the lower border curves of the field (vs C) projectivity downwards (from A) figure in the centre against background (vs A+C) heterogeneous field (vs A+B) depth effect (vs A+C) smooth texture (vs A+C) relative symmetry to vertical axis (vs A+C) symmetry to horizontal axis, with change of size and distribution (vs A+C) detail parallel to axis (vs A+C) circle centre straight inside picture (vs A) circle centre to the right of middle axis (vs A) detail to the right (vs A) detail in divergent colour (vs A+C)
something elementary, order, femininity, etc. cf. A above! ruptures in the correlation of roundness variation, integrated disorder closer to strength, energy, force, than the opposite; cf. A above! continuity, connection upwards (to A)
right in the thematic centre discontinuity, rupture, lack of connections distance, less known or accessible smoothness, tenderness, femininity order, equilibrium, on a higher level of integration
equilibrium divergence form equilibrium, approach to thematic centre closer to thematic centre
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics detail repeats in smaller size larger shapes of the field + has the same axis as the field (vs A+C) Ba dark sharp contours Genuine vertical vs Vs vs vs Bb light fuzzy contours No angular lines
134
detail fuses with field, is a synecdoche for the field variation, ruptures, contrasts
C Expression
yellowish brown (vs A) skin colour (vs B) less of black, dark brown, etc (vs B) lines forming angle with each other (vs A) lines in several direction (vs A) vertical to the right (vs B) straight, angular shapes (vs A+B) genuine horizontality (vs A+B) relative horizontality (vs B) relative parallelism (vs B) direction upwards left to right (vs A+B) simplicity, order to the thematic centre (i.e. tends to displace thematic centre inwards, in direction to the mouth) vertical right in the thematic centre hard, powerful (Arnheim/Lundholm); strength (Arnheim) equilibrium, calm
Content
smoothness, warmth, romantic ambience bodily character, carnality more continuity variation, discontinuity (less pronounced than in B?)
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics No symmetry to other fields (vs A+B) no connectivity of configurations (vs A+B) no projectivity (vs A+B) figure reaches border (vs B) homogeneous field (vs B) shallow depth (vs B) rough texture (vs B) detail to the right (vs A) detail on a divergent axis (vs B)
135
discontinuity relative to other fields
continuity outwards and inwards, no ruptures close to observer roughness in thematic centre in fact in right angle to this axis, i.e. similar but also dissimilar in other respects merging with field
detail in kindred colours (vs B)
Expression
few blocks discrete blocks black-and-white horizontality parallelism balance between the blocks
Content
Spartan, simple, matter-of-fact discontinuity Spartan, serious, sober equilibrium, calm simplicity, calm equilibrium
Something must now be said about the verbal message. In fact, at the same time as we have applied the second and third operations to the picture, we have also been somewhat concerned about their consequences for the visual aspects of the verbal part. Now, however, we must ask what it verbally conveyed by this message. In this respect, the denotative layer, which is trivial, is less important than the connotative one, in the strict Hjelmslevian sense of that latter term (see Sonesson 1988, II.1.2. and II.4. for an interpretation). Of the four blocks, that on the top contains the single phrase "signe particulier"; the one to the centre left contains a list of technical specifications of the watch, in the most telegraphic style possible; the block to the centre right is constituted of the trade
136
mark, together with the single sentence "Habiller lheure est ma passion"; finally, the fourth block below gives information about the guarantee and the retailers. Now, it is clear that all of these texts connote properties such as laconicism (nothing in excess), matter-of-fact-ness, and seriousness; and at least the leftmost block also connotes technicalness. This accords perfectly with the traits which we derived above from the analysis of the typographical styles, and from the arrangement of the blocks on the page. These are of course traits traditionally associated with masculine characters in our culture. But we have seen that, in the same culture, the picture contains ambiguous traits of masculinity and femininity, with a certain preponderance of femininity. The phrase "signe particulier" no doubt refers to the watch; but it also refers to the connotative traits of seriousness, matter-of-fact-ness, and technicalness mentioned above. We will see later how this fits in with the larger picture (also literally). The other sentence, which is less compatible with our analysis, seems less important, for it is written in very small letters, and seems to go with the trade mark. However, since the girl on the picture seems to be naked, apart from the watch and the hat, passion may be required to dress her.
CONCLUSION
OF THE ANALYSIS.
a) iconical statements. Putting together the different fragmentary elements of our analysis, should we now go on to formulate a message which is, translated into verbal forms, what the picture is out to tell us? As we know (from chapter I), Eco explicitly, and Floch by implication claims there to be something which could be termed an iconic statement; and pre-semiotical authorities like Arnheim and Ivins take it for granted. However, Gombrich, Worth, Kjrup, and others reject this conception. For our part, we have concluded that the picture certainly conveys some state of affairs; though it does not affirm it in a way comparable to that of verbal language (and we could say that is affirms something in its own peculiar pictorial mode; or we may prefer to say that it does not affirm anything at all); and that we as yet do not have (and may perhaps never come to possess) a metalanguage adequate for rendering such a pictorial state of affairs in writing. At the end of this long analysis, we can now also conclude, that the metalanguage in question can never take the form of a deductive argument, ending in a short sentence which sums up everything which has resulted from the analysis; but that it must rather be co-extensive to the analysis (More will be said about this issue in chapter III). However, this does not necessarily mean that all features which we have been able to detect in the picture are of equal importance and occupy the some level in the feature hierarchy. We will therefore now proceed to give a somewhat more organized form to our findings. First, we should note that features present in the picture may be overdetermined which means that one and the same feature may participate in different systems, and thus carry several meanings. This is a phenomenon which is not comparable to synonymy and homonymy in verbal language Here we are concerned
137
with meanings which are conveyed at the same time, that is, not by different tokens of the same type occurring in different "texts", but by the same token in the same "text". Now, some features may simply accomplish the function of border signal; that is, they may have what Trubetzkoy termed a demarcative function (like those traits which marks the beginnings and ends of words and sentences in verbal language). These same features may or may not also carry meanings of other kinds, for instance participate in the direct message. Again, some features may be requisitioned by the thematic operations (accomplished in verbal language by word-order, cleft-sentences, intonation, etc.), and then may or may not also participate in other system in which meaning is constituted. When it comes to the explicit message, it may be different at the iconic and the plastic level, or the two may concur; and in a picture like the present one, we should also expect the different fields to carry separate messages. In the following, we will have a look at these different aspect, without claiming in any way to give a complete treatements of the problems which emerge. Rather, what we intend to do is simply to raise some issues of interest for further inquiry, to which we will return in later chapter, and no doubt also in later publications.
CONNECTIVITY CONTINUITY
Connectivity of Gestalten Mirror symmetry of borders Projectivity downwards
b) the demarcative function. One of the earliest results of our inquiry was, that there are certain properties held in common by the fields A and B and by the fields B and C, as well as by the fields A and C. Now, the first two of these similarities, since they concern continuous fields, may be described as isotopies, in the strict sense; as a redundant iteration of the same traits all through the compound area covered by the two fields. (cf. II.1.3.6.above). Whatever else their contribution to the over-all meaning of the picture, the traits responsible for this effect may thus be described as accomplishing a demarcative function.
DISCONTINUITY
FRAME VS NON-FRAME
PICTURE VS WRITING
Fig.19. Demarcations of the fields in the girl-with-a-watchand-a-hat-picture. More properties of the isotopies are listed below.
20,0 9,5 19,5 9,8 4,3 10,0 5,7 5,0 9,2
c) the thematic operation. There seems to be a traditional consensus among those working in the business of advertisement confection, that the centre of attention of a picture, when published in a revue format, is located to the lower right of the page. We will take this for granted here, but then go on to study a series of operations, which has as their effect to displace this centre of attention, or thematic centre, as we shall call it. The first of these displacements will be rather commensensical too: it says that the thematic centre will fall on the picture part, rather than on the text block, at least when, as here, the latter has no particular properties tending to attract attention
29,9
21,6 Fig.20. Measurement of the girl-with-a-watch-anda-hat-picture.Numbers in boldface are those of the entire page; those in italics concern the pictorial part; and the others pertain to the fields distinguished in our analysis..
Another factor to which we must attend here are measurements though the numbers listed in fig.20 are of course not relevant in an absolute sense, but rather as central tendencies, as "physiognomic quantities" (cf. Sonesson 1988,I.1.4.). First, the picture dominate over the text, not only for being a picture, but because it occupies so much more space of the advertisement (19,5 cm out of 29,9). More importantly, however, we can observe some interesting relations between the regular portions of the space, and the fields distinguished in our analysis: field A comes close to fill up half of the pictorial space (9,5 cm out of 19,5) or almost a third of the entire advertisement space (a third being 9,96 cm); field C occupies more than the half the remaining pictorial space (5,7 cm, when half of the remaining space is 4,9 cm); and although field B overlaps somewhat the upper half of the pictorial space, it is smaller than a fourth of the entire picture, when measured along the central vertical axis (4,3 cm. out of a potential 4,9 cm). When taken together, however, fields B and C attain a little more than half the pictorial area (10 cm, when half the area would be 9,8). Also, field C has more variable vertical dimensions than any of the others: it reaches 8 cm to the left, and 8,7 cm to the right. Now what shall we make of all this? In the first place, it seems reasonable to think, that the most important area will attract most attention; here, field A is sure to win. On the other hand, according to well-known Gestalt principles, shapes which
nearly attain a certain ideal are judged to be defective in relation to the more perfect shapes ; while shapes exaggerating the ideal may be seen as particularly satisfactory (cf. Arnheim 1969, Sander & Volkelt 1962 ). If we apply this to sizes, field C, which somewhat exceeds the limits of its potential area, a fourth of the pictorial space, should be more imposing than field A, which fields to attain its potential half. B, on the other hand, loses out on both counts. If we attain a few more conventional factors of interest, on of a predominantly plastic nature, viz. variation, and another which is iconical in nature, the hierarchy of interest, where human beings are known to attract most attention, we will arrive at the following list: A PLASTIC absolute size relation to prototype inside conventional thematic centre variation ICONIC human interest 2 -1 0 0 0 1 B 0 -1 1 2 2 4 C 1 +1 2 1 1 6
The values assigned here to the different factors are here very tentative indeed. We thus arrive at the somewhat surprising result, that the total area occupied is of little import, when weighted together with more substantial factors. Of course, it is possible, that we should have given a higher value to absolute size to begin with. We have in any case for the moment no basis for arguing for or against such a modification. It is also possible that we should have interpreted our result in a different manner. Perhaps the total area is what attracts attention on first viewing the picture, but later other factors come to dominate. Here we will be content with having posed the problem. There is, in any case, a further factor which we cannot ignore in the determination of the thematic centre of the picture, and that is the vectors, or implied directions, created in the pictorial space by such features as the verticals, projectivities, and connectivities present on the plastic levels, and which we have mentioned in our plastic analysis above. Fig. 21, here to the left, resumes all such vectors, which were discovered in our analysis. It is clear from all this, the all attention in the picture is concentrated to the watch, on the one hand, and to its closeness to the lips, on the other. We have arrived at last to our love-affair with a watch. Indeed, the middle axis of the picture has been displaced to the right, accentuating the location of the thematic centre to the far right. Most vectors also points downwards (though one in C is rather indefinite), and somewhat to the left, displacing the centre in that compound direction. And although field B in itself is not heavily weighted, as the saw above, its divergent details is, from its participation in the vectors leading on to the watch.
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics d) explicit message: details. There is a remarkable fact about our three analytical fields: they all contain a details, which, plastically as well as iconically, stand out from the rest of the field. However, as we noted in our analysis above, the details diverge from the basic characters of the field to different degrees. We are now going to resume and interpret the facts about the details. In field A, the detail, that is the hat-bow, tends to fuse with the field. Its colour is the same, or similar to that of the field, and it almost disappears in a shadowy area. Its principal axis somewhat diverges from the main axis of the field; it points to the thematic centre, but lays definitively outside of it. The detail in field B, which is the mouth, or more precisely the lips, lies close to the centre of attention. It has the same axis as the field itself, but its colour is widely divergent. The latter fact is a part of its being a synecdoche for the whole field, which it depicts in smaller size, and with a redistribution of the several curves in relation in each other. The colour, which is the colour traditionally
chosen to attract attention, viz. red, has the effect of making the detail stand out, and so the detail itself contributes to enlarge the thematic centre so that is may full within its scope.
Fig. 21. Vectors in the girlwith-a-watch-and-a-hatpicture, as derived from the the plastic analysis above.
The detail in field C, which is the watch, is placed directly in the thematic centre. The fact that is main axis forms a right angle to that of the field renders is easily perceptible, but, at the same time, since a right angle is a simple, regular transformation, it is not perceived as divergent very much from the field in character. The colours are not completely assimilatable to those of the field, but neither do the stand at by themselves, as the red colour of the detail in field B. In conclusion, then, detail A does not have any value of its own, but its
divergent axis contributes to the vector pointing to the thematic centre. The detail B is more similar to the field in certain respects, but further from it in others; it forms a kind of plastic antitype. The detail in B can more easily be identified with the field than that in C, which is a transformation of it, although a simple one. Going from B to C, we approach the thematic centre. At the same time, there is, for all the reasons we have cited, a thematically focussed contiguity between the details of B and C - but it is not clear in which direction a meaning is meant to be transferred. However, since the detail C is more clearly included in the thematic centre, and since it is the object which is to be sold (for which see section f below), we may conclude, that is is it which should acquire additional meanings from detail B, rather than the reverse. Because of the relative closeness of the detail in B and its field, we may think the former is able to absorb meaning the field in its totality. It remains to ask, what the meaning of this, and the other fields are. e) explicit message: the fields. It remains for us now to put together the results from the iconical and the plastic analyses, and to emphasize the points of convergence, and also such features of one level which may in other ways be related to those of the other. As before, it will be convenient to make this rapprochement in the form of tables.
ICONIC
LAYER
PLASTIC
LAYER
FEMININITY, TRADITIONAL FEMININITY, ROMANTICISM GIRLISHNESS LEISURE/SUMMER
calm, tranquillity, Indefinite
EQUILIBRIUM,
CONTINUITY (outwards and inwards
ROUNDNESS (FEMININITY) simplicity, elementary shapes, ORDER at low level of integration However, the equilibrium is somewhat upset, and the roundness is only manifested in halves of roundish shape. NEARNESS, intimacy(?) ROUGHNESS, coarseness(?)
3
LAYER
ICONIC
LAYER
PLASTIC
FEMININITY, TRADITIONAL FEMININITY, EROTICAL SUGGESTIVENESS NUDENESS
SOFTNESS, warmth, DISTANCE, VARIATION, contrast, ruptures, DISCONTINUITY ROUNDNESS (FEMININITY) simplicity, elementary shapes more ROUNDEDNESS, because of circles having their centre in both directions. EQUILIBRIUM because of the circle centre, but as DISTURBED EQUILIBRIUM, because of displacement to the right ORDER ONLY ON A HIGH LEVEL OF INTEGRATION (symmetry, etc.) some VERTICALITY (direction), but only in the background; some ANGULARITY
ICONIC
LAYER
PLASTIC
LAYER
calm, PROTECTION MASCULINITY/FEMININITY
SOFTNESS, warmth, ROUGHNESS, coarseness(?) NEARNESS, intimacy (?) , a certain VARIATION and DISCONTINUITY However, predominance of CONTINUITY inwards/outwards ANGULARITY (masculinity), strength, power, force but simplicity, ORDER (because of parallelism), equilibrium, calm.
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics genuine VERTICALITY
VERBAL
CONNOTATION
PLASTIC
LAYER
LACONICISM MATTER-OF-FACT-NESS SIMPLICITY,SERIOUSNESS TECHNICALNESS that is, MASCULINITY
LACONICISM MATTER-OF-FACT-NESS SIMPLICITY,SERIOUSNESS EQUILIBRIUM, CALM that is, MASCULINITY
No doubt the most remarkable tendency here is the coincidence of plastic and iconic values for masculinity and femininity. Indeed,the whole advertisement may be read, from above to the bottom, as a transformation of femininity to masculinity. To begin with, femininity is suggested, both plastically and iconically, in field A and B; but there is more plastic evidence for femininity in B, and iconically, the feature is manifested indirectly, through feminine apparel, in A, but directly, by a womans face, in B. However, field C is plastically on the side of masculinity, but iconically it is highly ambiguous. The textual field, finally, is almost totally masculine in character, and in addition presents a perfect coincidence of the values conveyed verbally, at the level of connotational language, and plastically, through the arrangement of the textual blocks. It should be noted here, for the case that it is not already obvious, that the notions of femininity and masculinity invoked here are cultural prototypes, pervading the traditional Lifeworlds of Western society. Thus, while it is a fact, demonstrated in numerous experiments, that round shapes are associated with femininity, and angular forms with masculinity, this may really reflect a more basic association of these forms with some general factor like softness and hardness, which, in their turn, are culturally assigned to the respective sex roles. As for the relation of technicalness, matter-of-factness, and so on, with masculinity, the ideological character of it is quite straightforward. However, it is as ideological factors that meanings are operative in the perception of pictures. To get a more complete idea of the transformation occurring from one field to another in the girl-with-a-hat-and-a-watch- picture, both as far as masculinity and femininity are concerned, and having reference to other properties, the table above may be consulted: It should immediately be noted that the table, as given above, is not meant to be
comparable to the kind of feature charts employed in linguistics, the rules of which our table variously transgresses (thus, alternatives are not exclusive; there can more more or less of each property, etc.). All that was intended was to suggest the way in which the present advertisement may be read, from above to below, as a series of transformations, bringing us from an undecided state of femininity, over its explicit embodiment, which is later confronted with male values, reaching at last downright masculinity.
A
ICONICAL:female/male PLASTICAL: roundness/angularity order/disorder equilibrium/disequilibrium calm/variation continuity/discontinuity nearness/distance softness/roughness + ++() + (+) ++
B
(+) (+) (+) +
C
++ ++ +
++ +++
+++ ++
+ + ++ + ()
(+) +
(+) ++
+ ++ ++ +
+ (+) ++ + +
(+) (+) +
+ +
++
What the picture seems to tell us, then, is that somehow femininity is also masculinity, while still remaining femininity. However, it is possible that the mere contiguity of the watch and the lips conveys much the same idea, in a more clear-cut way. But in order to see this, we must now also attend to the advertisement function of our picture. f) the advertisement function. We must now have a look at the four conditions on the realization of the advertisement function (cf.II.2.1.1.), which, so far, we have not studied in its application to the girl-with-a-hat-and-a-watch-picture, although we have occasionally referred to this functionality. In the picture itself, the wrist-watch is easily identified as the product which is for sale. As we have already noted, the watch, being the divergent detail of field C, stands out from the rest in colours, shape, orientation, and so on.(cf. section d above). Indeed, together with the lips, the divergent details of field B, the watch is the only object on the picture having a variety of colours, while the remaining surface is
dominated by larger areas possessing just a few different nuances (cf. plastic analysis above). Also, of the three real-world objects present in the picture, only the watch is seen in full, if we take account only of the dominating part of the whole, the clock-face; for while most of the bracelet parts are hidden, as are the back and the sides of the body of the watch, their functionality is only derivative on that of the clock (see indexical analysis in II.2.2.1.). Furthermore, the watch is placed directly inside the thematic centre, both as this would be delineated on conventional grounds, and as it results from weighting a number of additional factors. Also, it appears exactly at the point where most of those vectors converge which are embodied in the plastic layer of picture itself (cf. thematic analysis, section b above). It would however be much more difficult to identify the watch outside of its pictorial context, for instance, in the shop. As seen in the picture, it is hardly remarkable for the originality of its appearance. Because of its shape, it would naturally be considered a mans watch; and yet, because of its relatively small size, it could possibly also be considered feminine. In any case, since the plastic details, which coincides with the iconic element identified as a watch, is related to its field by a simple transformation, is easily communicates with its field, taking on its abundant values of masculinity. But the maximal differentiation of the product from other, similar ones, takes place at another level. In fact, it is operated twice, and in different directions, by the picture and by the text. At the textual level, the watch is presented as a work of technical precision, having no need to justify itself by outer trappings. In the picture, on the other hand, the watch is embedded in an ambience of femininity, softness, and erotical provocation. The latter is brought about by making thematic the contiguity of the watch with the lips, whose red colour, standing out in a field having no other strong colours, not only gets the attention, but is a conventional symbol of women and love. It is clear from the above, that there is a contradictory transference of values in our advertisement, of masculinity on the textual level, and of femininity in the picture; but both technicalness and matter-of-fact-ness, on one hand, and beauty and romance, on the other hand, are positive values of our culture, and so both could, in principle, be conveyed to the watch, in order to transform it ideologically into a more desirable object, the trophy of a more noble quest. There is, it would seem, an unresolved contradiction between what is transferred to the watch textually and pictorially: it is as if the advertisement was saying to us, that femininity may be masculinity, while still remaining femininity. That is, it says that we can have it both ways: both the highest technical precision and elegance and beauty (and it is not certain that this way of resolving the paradox is more ideological than the paradox itself). More specifically, since Marie Claire, where the advertisement was published, is a womans magazine, what the picture is out to tell us (or rather: women), is that they may choose a watch which is first of all an adequate technical instrument for the
measurement of time; and still remain absolutely feminine a curious affirmation, for the assumptions it starts out taking for granted in order to deny them, but not so far from many a young Frenchwomans mind. If there is something to this interpretation, then there certainly are much more insidious ways than those detected by Umiker-Sebeok (1981;1986) and Millum (1975), in which the transgression of traditional sex roles may be employed in advertisement, in order better to leave things as they are. As is often the case, the exhortation to consume is not made explicit. But then who could resist such an ambiguous temptation?
II.2.3. Methodological appraisal and conclusions.

In this second chapter of part II, we have been concerned to investigate the possibilities of an analytical method, which safe-guards a restricted set of assumptions derived from structural linguistics, still sufficient for analytical procedures to be meaningfully applied to an array of texts judged to be similar in some particular respects, with the professed aim of reaching conclusions which can be generalized to an underlying system. Our interest in such an study derived, on one hand, from the recognition that the linguistic model in semiotics, though it passed out of fashion in the beginning seventies, was never transferred in an adequate way from linguistics to other semiotic disciplines. and so was never really disproved; and, on the other hand, from an interest in the use of "text analysis" to derive at least preliminary hypotheses which could then be tested by other methods, in order to comply with the nomological aim giving to semiotics status as a science. Our investigation has taken the form a two analyses of different pictures, whose similarity consisted in their being, first, both advertisements, and, in the second place, in that they both rely to some extent on plastic values associated with an opposition between roundish and angular shapes. In particularly, we tried to account for these pictures as fully as possible, taking account of the plastic and iconic meaning layers, and of the advertisement function. It follows from the nature of the method itself, that it can neither be proven nor disproved by and application of its procedures to just two objects, but that such as test would require the study of an extensive array of similar "texts". In view of the nature of pictorial "texts" themselves, and of the little we know about their construction principles so far, this requirement cannot be realized in the near future. Yet some observations can be made on the basis of the experience. It seems clear that what general facts there are can only be found on higher levels of abstraction, not, that is, in the form of elementary constituents, but rather as principles or rules: thus, the ideological system presenting culture as another nature, which is much more natural for being so very cultural; and ways in which angular and roundish shapes are made to convey some very vague meanings opposing nature and culture, woman and man, child and adult, simplicity and elaboration, and other values going culturally together.
While the possibility to generalize appears limited under the conditions described, we have discovered another use for a method which consists in studying one picture taking advantage of earlier picture studies: its comparative value. The idea that our approach really gains meaning only when considered as a comparative method will be developed further at the occasion of our studies pertaining to the semiotics of photography and painting, which we will take up in the following parts.
II.3. General conclusion to part II.

Few general conclusions seem warranted at this point. In the first chapter of this part, we have been looking at a number of models, which have been used, or could have been used, in the analysis of pictorial meaning. In particular, we dedicated a fair amount of space to the rhetorical model in its systematic model, criticizing it, developing it, and applying it so reelaborated to the analysis of some different kinds of pictures, as, for instance comic strips and caricature. Then, in the second chapter of this part, we tried to account, as fully as possible, and using all analytical means at our disposal, for two selected pictures, both of which where advertisements, and embodied some particular plastic values. The rhetorical model, when reinterpreted in terms of expectancy schemes, rather than isotopies, certainly seems a valuable instrument for the elucidation of pictorial construction; and so are the elements emerging from our considerations on the Laocoon model. These models, together with the analytical instruments developed in our pictures analyses from the structural-dichotomous model, will be employed, and further tried out, in the pictorial analyses which accompany our inquiries into the semiotics of photography, and the semiotics of painting.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Whenever possible, references are to original language editions. Year quoted in the text is that of the original edition. When another date is given in the bibliography after the place of publication, this is the year of the edition to which page references apply. Similarly, when a translated title is indicated in the bibliography after the title of the original, the translation is the edition which has
Methods and models in pictorial semiotics been used.
Adam, Jean-Michel, 1984 : Le rcit. PUF, Paris. Argyle, Michael, 1969: Social interaction. Tavistock & Methuen, London. Arnheim, Rudolf, 1966: Towards a psychology of art. Faber & Faber, London. *** , 1969: Visual thinking. University of Californa press, Berkeley & Los Angeles. Asplund, Johan, 1970: Om undran infr samhllet. Argos, Kalmar. Barthes, Roland, 1957: Mythologies. Seuil, Paris. Page references to pocket edition 1970. *** , 1961: Le message photographique , in Barthes 1982, pp. 9-24. *** , 1964a: Rhtorique de l image, in Communications 4, pp. 40-51. Page references to Barthes 1982, pp. 25- 42. *** , 1964b: Elments de smiologie , in Communications 4, pp. 91-135. Page references to Barthes, Roland, Le degr zro de lcriture - Elments de smiologie, Gonthier, Paris 1965. *** , 1967: Systme de la mode. Seuil, Paris. Pocket edition 1983. *** , 1972: Smiologie et mdicine, in Bastide, Roger, ed., Les sciences de la folie, Mouton, Paris & The Hague; pp. 37-46. *** , 1980: La chambre claire. Seuil & Galllimard, Paris. *** , 1982: Lobvie et lobtus. Seuil, Paris. Bartlett, F.C., 1923: Psychology and primitive culture. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. *** , 1932: Remembering. A study in experimental and social psychology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Reprint 1967. *** , 1958: Thinking. An experimental and social study. Allen & Unwin Ltd., London. Bastide, Franoise, 1979: Le foie lav. Approche smiotique dun texte de sciences exprimentale (Documents de recherche du Groupe de recherches smio-linguistiques, 7). Baxandall, Michael, 1972: Painting and experience in fifteenth century Italy. The Clarendon Press, Oxford. Bayer, Udo, 1975: Lessings Zeichenbegriffe und Zeichenprozesse im `Laokoon und ihre Analyse nach der modernen Semiotik. Diss., Stuttgart. *** , 1984: Laokoon - Momente einer semiotischen sthetik, in Gebauer, ed., pp. 58102. Bengtsson, H., Bondesson, L., & Sonesson, G., in preparation: Facial expression from different viewing positions. A study in experimental semiotics. Benveniste, mile, 1969: Smiologie de la langue, in Semiotica I:1, pp. 1-12; and I.2, pp. 127-135. Bouissac, Paul, 1976: Circus and culture. A semiotic approach. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Bremond, Claude, 1973: Logique du rcit. Seuil, Paris. Bucher, Bernadette, 1977: La sauvage aux seins pendants. Hermann, Paris. *** , 1979: Les fantasme du conqurant, in Bellour, R., & Clment, Ch., eds., Claude Lvi-Strauss, Gallimard, Paris; pp. 321-359. Bousfield, John, 1979: The world seen as a colour chart, in Ellen, R., & Reason, D., eds., Classifications in their social context. Academic Press, London, New York, & San Francisco; pp. 195-220. Bhler, Karl, 1934: Sprachtheorie. Fischer, Stuttgart . Pocket edition: Ullstein, Frankfurt/M. 1978. Bky, Bela, 1983: The system of metaphors semiotically considered , in Borb, T., ed. Semiotics unfolding. Proceedings of the second congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. Mouton, Berlin, New York, & Amsterdam; pp. 783-790. Canter, D., & Lee, K.H., 1974: A non-reactive study of room usage in modern Japanese apartments , in Canter, D., & Lee, K.H., eds., Psychology and the builit environment. Architectural Press, Tombrdige; pp. 48-55. Casalis, Matthieu, 1975: The discourse of Penthouse: rhetoric and ideology, in Semiotica,
10
15:4, pp. 355-391. Cebrin Herreros, Mariano, 1978: Introduccin al lenguaje de la televisin. Ediciones Pirmide S.A., Madrid . Chafe, Wallace, 1977: The recall and verbalization of past experience, in Cole, R.W., ed., Current issues in linguistic theory, Indiana University Press, Bllomington & London ; pp. 215-246. Clark, Kenneth, 1956: The nude. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1960. Coseriu, Eugenio, 1958: Sincrona, diacrona e historia. Universidad de la Repblica, Montevideo. *** , 1977: Principios de semntica estructural. Gredos, Madrid. Doll, Genevive, 1975: Rhtorique et supports de signification i cononographiques , in Revue des sciences humaines, 159:3, pp. 343-357. Douglas, Mary, 1972: Deciphering a meal , in Daedalus 101:1, pp. 61-82. Downs, R., & Stea, D., eds., 1973: Image and environment. Arnold, London. Durand, Jacques, 1970: Rhtorique et image publicitaire, in Communications 15, pp. Dubois, Philippe, 1983: Lacte photographique. Nathan/Labor, Paris & Bruxelles. Dyer, Gillian, 1982: Advertising and communication. Methuen, London. Eco, Umberto, 1976: A theory of semiotics. Indiana University Press, Bloomington. Fischer-Lichte, Erika, 1983: Semiotik des Theaters, I-III. Narr, Tbingen. Fiske, John, & Hartley, John, 1978: Reading Television. Methuen & Co., London. Floch, Jean-Marie, 1979: La spatialisation et son rle dans la mise en discours du rcit: Analyse dun rcit en images de B.Rabier, in Canadian Journal of research in semiotics, VI,3/VII,1, pp. 123-137. *** , 1981a: Smiotique plastique et langage publicitaire (Documents de recherche du Groupe de recherches smio-linguistique, III, 26, Paris ). *** , 1981b: Kandinsky: smiotique dun discours plastique non-figuratif, in Communications, 34, pp. 135-158. *** , 1982: Liconicit: enjeu dune nonciation manipulatoire, in Actes smiotiques: le Bulletin, V, 23, pp. 19-38. *** , 1984: La photographie en flagrant dlit, in Fabula, 4, pp. 47-57. Foucault, Michel, 1976: Histoire de la sexualit 1: La volont de savoir. Gallimard, Paris. Fresnault-Deruelle, Pierre, 1977a: La chambre bulles. UGE, Paris. *** , 1977b: Rcit et discours par la bande. Hachette, Paris. Fullard, W., & Reiling, A., 1976: An investigation of Lorenz "Babyness" , in Child Development, 47:4, pp. 1191-1193. Gardner, Howard, 1970: From mode to symbol, in The British Journal of Aesthetics, 10:4, October; pp. 359-375. *** , 1984: Frames of mind. The theory of multiple intelligences. Heineman, London. Garroni, Emilio, 1973: Progetto di semiotica. Laterza, Bari. Page references to Spanish translation: Proyecto de semitica. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 1975. Gauthier, Guy, 1979: Initiation la smiologie de limage. Les cahiers de laudiovisuel, Paris (Earlier version in different parts between 1965 and 1979). *** , 1982: Vingt leons sur limage et le sens. Edilig, Paris. Gebauer, Gunter, ed., 1984: Das Laokoon-Projekt. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart. *** , 1984: Symbolstrukturen und die Grenzen der Kunst, in Gebauer, ed., pp. 137-165. Gibson, Eleanor, 1969: Principles of perceptual learning and development. Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York. Gombrich, E.H., 1960: Art and illusion. Phaidon Press, London. Second edition 1962. *** , 1963: Meditations on a hobby horse. Phaidon Press, London. *** , 1982: The image and the eye. Phaidon Press, Oxford. Gomez de Liano, Ignacio, 1982: El idioma de la imaginacin. Taurus ediciones, Madrid. Goodman, Nelson, 1968: Languages of art. Oxford University Press, London. Goody, Jack, 1977: The domestication of the savage mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. *** , 1982: Cooking, cuisine, and class. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Gopnik, Myrna, 1983: The cognitive aspects of style change , in Borb, T., ed. Semiotics
11
unfolding. Proceedings of the second congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies. Mouton, Berlin, New York, & Amsterdam; Volume III, pp. 13191327. Greimas, A.J., 1966: Smantique structurale. Larousse, Paris. *** , 1970: Du sens. Seuil, Paris. *** , 1972: Pour une thorie du discours potique , in Greimas, A.J., ed., Essais de smiotique potique, Larousse, Paris; pp. 5-24. Groupe , 1970: Rhtorique gnrale. Larousse, Paris. *** , 1976: La chafetire est sur la table, in Communication et langage, 29, pp. 36-49. *** , 1977: Rhtorique de la posie. Editions Complexe, Bruxelles. *** , 1978: Douce bribes pour dcoller en 40 000 signes, in Revue dsthtique, 3-4, pp. 11-41. *** , 1979: Iconique et plastique: sur un fondement de la rhtorique visuelle, in Revue dsthtique, 1-2, pp. 173-192. *** , 1980: Plan dun rhtorique de limage, in Kodikas/Code, 3, pp. 249-268. *** , 1984: Artes de la imagen y lecture de los mensajes visuales, in Revista de esttica, 2, pp. 15-22. *** , 1985: Structure et rhtorique du signe iconique, in Parret, H., & Ruprecht, H-G., eds., Exigences et perspective de la smiotique. Recueil dhommages pour A.J.Greimas. Benjamins Publishing Co., Amsterdam . Volume I, pp. 449-462. Gubern, Roman, 1972: El lenguaje de los comics. Ediciones Pennsula, Barcelona. 2nd edition 1979. Gurwitsch, Aron, 1973: Perceptual coherence and the foundation of the judgment of predication , in Kersten, F., & Zann, R., eds., Phenomenology: continuation and criticism, Nijhoff, The Hague; pp. 62-89. Hage, Per, 1972: Mnchener Beer categories , in Spradley, J., ed., Culture and cognition. Chandler Publishing Co., San Francisco; pp. 263-278. Halbwachs, Maurice, 1925: Les cadres sociaux de la mmoire. PUF, Paris. Second edition 1952. *** , 1950: La mmoire collective. PUF, Paris. Second revised edition 1968. Hall, E.T., 1966: The hidden dimension, Doubleday, N ew York. Halliday, M.A.K., 1967-68: Notes on transitivity and theme in English , in Journal of linguistics, III:1, pp. 37-81; III:2, pp. 199-244; IV:2, pp. 179-215. Heslin, Richard, & Alper, Tari, 1983: Touch. a bonding gesture, in Wiemann, John, & Harrison, Randall, eds., Nonverbal Interaction, Sage Publications, Beverly Hills, London, & New Delhi; pp. 47-76. Hess, Thomas, & Nochlin, Linda, eds. 1972: Woman as sex object. Newsweek, Inc., n.l. Hess-Lttich, Ernst,1984: Medium - Prozess - Illusion. Zur rationalen Rekonstruktion der Zeichenlehre Lessings im Laokoon, in Gebauer, ed., pp. 103-136. Hjelmslev, Louis, 1943: Omkring sprogteoriens grundlggelse. Akademisk forlag, Copenhagen. Reprinted 1966. *** , 1959: Essais linguistiques. Nordisk Sprogforlag, Copenhagen. Minuit, Paris 1971. *** , 1973: Essais linguistiques II. Nordisk Sprog- og Kulturforlag, Copenhagen 1973. Hoffmann, Lotte, 1943: Vom schpferischen Primitivganzen zur Gestalt. C.H. Becksche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Mnchen. Reprinted 1961. Hunt, Morton, 1982: The universe within. Harvester Press, Brighton. Husserl, Edmund, 1928: Zur Phnomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins. Halle. Republished in Husserliana X, Nijhoff, The Hague 1966. Hckstedt, Brbel, 1965: Experimentelle Untersuchungen zum "Kindchenschema" , in Zeitschrift fr experimentelle und angewandte Psychologie, XII:3, pp. 421-450. Hnig, Wolfgang, 1974: Strukturen des Comic Strip. Olms Verlag, Hildesheim & New York. Jakobson, Roman, 1942: Kindersprache, Aphasie, und allgemeine Lautgesetze, Uppsala University, Uppsala. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M. 1968. Janet, Pierre, 1928: Lvolution de la mmoire et de la notion du temps. Chahine, Paris. Jessen, Edelgard, 1983: Die Zuordnung von Mann und Frau zu einfachen geometrischen Formen im interkulturellen Vergleich, in Borb, T., ed. Semiotics unfolding. Proceedings of the second congress of the International Association for Semiotic
12
Studies. Mouton, Berlin, New York, & Amsterdam; volume III, pp. 1443-1452. Kaemmerling, Ekkat, 1971: Rhetorik als Montage, in Knilli, F., ed., Semiotik des Films, Hanser, Mnchen; pp. 94-109. Kintsch, Walter, 1974: The representation of meaning in memory. Erlbaum Ass., Hillsdale. *** ,1977: Memory and cognition. Wiley, New York. Kjrup, Sren, 1978: Pictorial speech acts , in Erkenntnis 12, pp. 55-71. *** , 1985: [contributions to] Cornell, P. et al., eds., Bildanalys. Gidlunds, Malm. Koch, Walter, 1971: Varia semiotica. Olms Verlag, Hildesheim & New York. Koenig, Otto, 1970: Kultur und Verhaltungsforschung. Dtv, Mnchen. Koestler, Arthur, 1964: The act of creation. Hutchinson & Co, London. Pocket edition: Pan books, Ltd., London 1966. *** , 1978: Janus. A summing up. Hutchinson, London. Kolers, Paul, 1977: Reading pictures and reading text, in Perkins, D., & Leondar, B., eds., The arts and cognition. The Hopkins University Press, Baltimore & London, pp. 136164. *** , & Perkins, D., 1975: Spatial and ordinal components of form perception and literacy, in Cognitive psychology 7:2, pp. 228-267. *** , & Smuythe, W., 1979: Aspects of picturing, in Nodine, C., & Fisher, D., eds. , Perception and pictorial representation, Praeger Publishers, New York; pp. 328-341. Krauss, Rosalind, 1977: Passages in modern sculpture. The Viking Press, New York. Kuntzel, Thierry, 1972: Le travail du film, in Communications, 19, pp. 25-39. Langholz Leymore, Varda, 1975: Hidden myth. Structure & symbolism in advertising. Heinemann, London. Laurie, Alsion, 1981: The language of clothes. Heinemann, London. Lechuga, Ruth D., 1982: La indumentaria en el Mxico indgena. Fonart, Mxico D.F. Lee, Dorothy, 1977:Lineal and nonlineal configurations of reality , in Dolgin, J., Kemnitzer, D., & Schneider, D., eds., Symbolic anthropology, Columbia University Press, New York; pp. 151-164. Lee, Terence, 1973: Psychology and living space , in Downs & Stea, eds., pp. 87-108. Leondar, Barbara, 1977: Hatching plots: genesis of storymaking, in Perkins, D., & Leondar, B., eds., The arts and cognition. The Hopkins University Press, Baltimore & London, pp. 172-191. Lessing, G. E., 1766: Laokoon -- oder ber die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie. Berlin. Philipp Reclam Jun., Stuttgart 1964. Lewis, M.M., 1947: Language in society. Nelson & Sons, Ltd., London. Liggitt, P., 1974: The human face. Lindekens, Ren, 1971: Elments pour une smiotique de la photographie. Didier/Aimav, Paris & Bruxelles. Lyotard, Jean-Franois, 1971: Discours, figure. Klincksieck. Major, Brenda, 1981: Gender patterns in touching behavior, in Mayo, Clara, & Henley, Nancy, eds., Gender and nonverbal behavior, Springer Verlag, New York; pp. 1538. Marin, Louis, 1979: The frame of the painting or the semiotic functions of boundaries in the representative process, in Chatman, S., Eco, U., & Klinkenberg, J.M., eds., A semiotic landscape - Panorama smiotique. Actes du premier congrs de lÀssociation internationale de smiotique, Milan, juin 1974. Mouton, The Hague, Paris & New York; pp. 777-782. Medvedev, P.N. 1978: The formal method in literary scholarship. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore. Republished by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., & London 1985. Originally published in Russian in 1928. Meltzoff, Stanley, 1970: On the rhetoric of vision, in Leonardo 3:1, January, pp. 27-38. *** , 1978: Rhetoric, semiotics, and linguistics, in New Literary History, IX: 9, Spring, pp. 561-580. Miller, G.A., & Johnson-Laird, Ph., 1976: Language and perception. The Belnap Press, Cambridge, Mass. Millum, Trevor, 1975: Images of woman. Advertising in Womans magazines. Chatto & Windus, London.
13
Minguet, Philippe, 1979: Lisotopie de l image, in Chatman, S., Eco, U., & Klinkenberg, J.M., eds., A semiotic landscape - Panorama smiotique. Actes du premier congrs de lÀssociation internationale de smiotique, Milan, juin 1974. Mouton, The Hague, Paris & New York; pp. 791-794. Mitchell, W.J.T., 1986: Iconology. The Univeristy of Chicago Press, Chicago & London. Momprad, E., & Gutirrez, T., 1976: Indumentaria tradicional indgena. Editorial Hermes S.A., Mxico D.F. & Buenos Aires. Morris, Desmond, 1971: Intimate behaviour. Jonathan Cape, London. Neisser, Ulric, 1976: Cognition and reality. Freeman & Co., San Francisco. *** , 1985: Amusing ourselves to death. Sivton Books/Viking, New York. Nth, Winfried, 1975: Semiotik. Niemeyer Verlag, Tbingen. *** , 1977: Dynamik semiotischer Systeme. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Stuttgart. Orfali, Ingrid, 1983: Fiction rogne partir de Klossowski. Etudes Romanes de Lund 38. CWK Gleerup, Lund. Peirce, Charles Sanders, 1931ff: Collected Papers. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. Perkins, David, 1975: A definition of caricature; Caricature and recognition, in Studies in the anthropology of visual communicaiton, 2:1, pp. 1-24. *** , 1981: The minds best work. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. *** , & Hagen, Margaret, 1980: Convention, context, and caricature, in Hagen, Margaret, ed., The perception of pictures. Vol. I: Albertis window. Academic Press, New York; pp. 257-286. Piaget, Jean, 1967: Biologie et connaissance. Gallimard, Paris. Pocket edition 1973. Pike, Kenneth, 1967: Language in relation to a unified theory of human behavior. Second, revised edition. Mouton, The Hague & Paris. Postman, Neil, 1979: Teaching as a conserving activity. Delacorte Press, New York. *** , 1983: The disappearance of childhood. E.H.. Allen, London. Prieto, Luis, 1975a: Pertinence et pratique. Essai de smiologie. Minuit, Paris. Page references to Spanish edition: Pertinencia y prctica. Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 1977. *** , 1975b: Essai de linguistique et smiologie gnrales. Minuit, Paris. Page references to Spanish edition: Estudios de lingstica y smiologa generales. Editorial Nueva Imagen, Mxico D.F. 1977. Prince, Gerald, 1982: Narratology. Mouton, Berlin, New York & Amsterdam. Rastier, Franois, 1972: Systmatique des isotopies , in Greimas, A.J., ed., Essais de smiotique potique, Larousse, Paris; pp. 80-106. Rey, Alain, 1978: Les spectres de la bande. Essai sur la B.D. Minuit, Paris. Ricur, Paul , 1965: De linterpretation. Seuil, Paris. *** , 1980: Pour une thorie du discours narratif, in Ricur ed. , pp. 3-68. *** , ed. 1980: La narrativit. Edition du CNRS, Paris. Rosch, Eleanor, 1973: On the internal structure of perceptual and semantic categories, in Moore, Th., ed., Cognitive development and the acquistion of language. Academic press, New York & London; pp. 111-144. *** , 1978: Principles of categorization, in Rosch, E., & Lloyd, B., eds., Cognition and categorization. Lawrence Erlbaum Ass., Hillsdale; pp. 27-48. *** , Mervis, C.B., Gray, W., Johnson, D., & Boyes-Braem, P., 1976: Basic objects in natural categories, in Cognitive psychology, 8:3, pp. 382-439. Rumelhart, David, 1975: Notes on a scheme for stories , in Bobrow, D., & Collins, A., eds., Representation and understanding. Academic Press, New York; pp. 211-236. *** , & Norman, D., 1978: Accretion, tuning, and restructuring, in Cotton, J., & Klatzky, L., eds., Semantic factors in cognition, Erlbaum Ass., Hillsdale; pp. 37-54. Sahlins, Marshall, 1977: Colors and cultures, in Dolgin, J., Kemnitzer, D., & Schneider, D., eds., Symbolic anthropology, Columbia University Press, New York ; pp. 165-180. Sander, Friedrich, & Volkelt, Hans, 1962: Ganzheitspsychologie. C.H. Becksche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Mnchen. Saussure, Ferdinad de, 1968-1974: Cours de linguistique gnrale. Edition critique par Rudolf Engler. Tome I & II. Harrossowitz, Wiesbaden. Schank, Robert, 1975: The structure of episodes in memory , in Bobrow, D., & Collins, A.,
14
eds., Representation and understanding. Academic Press, New York,; pp. 237-272. Scheflen, Albert, 1974: Quasi-courtship behavior in psychotherapy , in Weitz, S., ed., Nonverbal communication, Oxford University Press, New York & London; pp. 182198. Schuster, Martin, & Beisl, Horst, 1978: Kunst-Psychologie. DuMont, Kln. Schtz, Alfred, 1932: Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt. Springer, Vienna 1932. New editiion Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/M.1974. *** , 1967: Collected papers I: The problem of social reality. Nijhoff, The Hague. Segre, Cesare, 1979: Structures and time. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London. Sempere, Pedro, 1976: Semiologa del infortunio. Lenguaje e ideologia de la fotonovela. Ediciones Felmar, Madrid. Sjlin, Jan.Gunnar, 1986: En modell fr studiet av bilder. Utkast, version 2. Mimeographed from the Institute for Art History, Lund. Sonesson, Gran, 1973: Anteckningar kring en teori fr diskursanalysen. Unpublished manuscript from the Institute of Linguistics, Lund. *** , 1978a: Tecken och handling. Doxa, Lund. *** , 1978b: Une machine signifier: lhomme. EHESS, Paris. *** , 1983-84: Semiotiken mot Zemiotiken, in Hjrnstorm 17, pp. 42-46; and 18, pp. 39-46. *** , 1987: Notes sur la macchia de Kandinsky; le problme du langage plastique, in Actes Smiotiques: le Bulletin X, 44, dcembre; pp. 23-28. *** , 1988: Pictorial concepts. Inquiries into the semiotic heritage and its relevance for the analysis of the visual world. ARIS, Lund. Steiner, Wendy, 1982: The colors of rhetoric. Problems in the relation between modern literature and painting. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London. Tardy, Michel, 1975: Communication iconographique et smiognses , in Revue des sciences humaines, 159:3, pp. 327-341. *** , 1979: Semiognses dencodage, smiognses de dcodage , in Canadian Journal of research in semiotics, VI:3-VII:1, pp. 111-122. Thrlemann, Flix, 1980: Fonctions cognitives dune figure de perspective picturale, in L e Bulletin du Groupe de recherches smio-linguistiques, 15, pp. 37-48. *** , 1981a: La double spatialit en peinture - espace simul et topologie planaire , in Le Bulletin du Groupe de recherches smio-lingusitiques, 20, pp. 34-46. *** , 1981b: Uberlegungen zur Bedeutungskonstitution in der Malerei - Am Beispeil von Paul Klees Bauhauskarte "Die erhabene Seite", in Sturm, H., & Eschbach, A., eds., sthetik & Semiotik, Narr Verlag, Tbingen; pp. 59-70. *** , 1982: Paul Klee. Analyse smiotique de trois peintures. LÀge dHommes, Lausanne. Todorov, Tzvetan, 1977: Thories du symbole. Seuil, Paris. *** , 1978: Les genres du discours. Seuil, Paris. Umiker-Sebeok, Jean, 1981: The seven agen of woman: a veiw from American magazine advertisements, in Mayo, Clara, & Henley, Nancy, eds., Gender and nonverbal behavior, Springer Verlag, New York; pp. 209-252. *** , 1986: Growing signs: from firstness to thirdness in life and art, in Bouissac, Paul, Hensfield, Michael, & Posner, Roland, eds., Iconicity. Essays on the nature of culture. Festschrift for Thomas A. Sebeok on his 65th birthday., Stauffenburg Verlag, Tbingen; pp. 527-573. van Dijk, Teun, 1980: Macrostructures. Erlbaum Ass., Hillsdale. *** , & Kintsch, W., 1978: Cognitive psychoiogy and discourse , in Dressler, W., ed., Current trends in textlinguistics, de Gruyter, Berlin & New York; pp. 61-80. Vilches, Lorenzo, 1983: La lectura de la imagen. Paids, Barcelona. Volkelt, Hans, 1963: Grundfragen der Psychologie. C.H. Becksche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Mnchen. Vuillemin, Jules, 1984: Bemerkungen ber Lessings Laokoon, in Gebauer, ed., pp. 164182. Watson, O.M., Proxemic behavior. Mouton, The Hague & Paris.
15
Wellbery, David E., 1984: Lessings Laocoon. Semiotics and aesthetics in the Age of Reason. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Williamson, Judith, 1978: Decoding advertisements. Marion Boyars, London. Winner, Ellen, 1982: Invented worlds. The psychology of the arts. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., & London. Worth, Sol, 1974: Seeing metaphor as caricature , in New literary history, VI:1, pp. 195209 (also in Worth 1981). *** , 1981: Studying visual communication, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadephia. *** , & Gross, Larry, 1974: Symbolic strategies , in Journal of Communcation, 24:4, pp. 27-39 (also in Worth 1981). Yates, Frances, 1966: The art of memory. Routlege & Kegan Paul, London.

Methods and Models in Pictorial Semiotics

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Methods and Models in Pictorial Semiotics

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Methods and Models in Pictorial Semiotics

By Gran Sonesson, Lund University, 1988

Report 3 from the Project Pictorial meanings in the society of information

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and Models in Pictorial Semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

II.1. A review and appraisal of models in pictorial semiotics.

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

II.1.2. The narrative model.

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

discussion in Sonesson 1988, I.3.1.

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

II.1.2. The rhetorical model in its taxonomic mode.

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

II.1.3. The rhetorical model in its systematic mode.

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

II.1.3.1. All we need are schemes. Sources of the scheme concept.

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

II.1.3.2. How to dine and dress. Syntagms and paradigms.

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Fig.1. The clothing scheme: Western variant.

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

means the zero element, i.e. the selection of nothing.

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Figure 2. Huipil and quechqumitl (from Lechuga 1982:39)

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

II.1.3.3. Memory for the ground. Requirements of a concept of scheme.

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

II.1.3.4. The hermeneutics of Ellery Queen. Layers of the sign.

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

review and critique of some usages, see Sonesson 1988, III.4.

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

II.1.3.5. The notion of isotopy. Greimas tells a joke.

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

II.1.3.6. Monk(e)y business. Disconfirmed expectancies in pictorial schemes.

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

28 Indeed, Hnig 1974

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics

Methods and models in pictorial semiotics