The structuralist tradition has accustomed us, since the 1960’s to see pictures as a sort of texts – by exporting linguistic approaches and terminologies to the study of images. The current development of multi-modal semiotics urges us to get a more plural view, going against the dangers of linguo-centrism of the structuralist view. Here, Peirce’s doctrine of propositions, “Dicisigns”, offers a multimodal alternative. According to this view, propositions are more basic than language and, what is more, propositions are inherently multimodal, immediately able to integrate very different sign modes: pictures, diagrams, gesture, text, etc. A functional, semiotic theory of propositions may understand how picture and text are prototypically connected, while their isolation should rather be seen as special cases, developed for special purposes.
Talk
Multimodal Propositions
Dr. Frederik Stjernfelt