Paper Presented at the International Association for Intercultural Communication Studies, Taipei, Taiwan. July 2005
It is a well documented fact that written language began as picture writing. These forms of writing began as visual metaphors. This is evidenced by a range of writing systems such as hieroglyphics and Chinese. What differs among these visual metaphors is their spatial organization. Egyptian hieroglyphics has a spatial marker that directs the reader on how to visually follow the iconic system. Chinese, on the other hand, has articulated visual space into a Cartesian graph of vertical and horizontal spaces and icons are placed in these spaces in accordance with implied directional markers. As writing instruments changed, the writing systems changed. Hieroglyphics was restructured into cuneiform writing (wedge-shaped writing), and eventually the brush gave form to discursive ideograms. The alphabet (CVCV) was based on a triconsonantal system of writing (CCC) common to the language of the Near East and it was this system that provided the rationale for alphabetic writing. The focus of this paper is on the organization of visual space and how this organization differs across cultures. The English writing system exists of an abstract alphabetic system that has been abstracted from an original picture writing system. Alpha and Beta were the first to pictures of the Alphabet. This paper will address how Modern English is structurally organized as a system. It will also discuss the iconic morphology of the Chinese writing system.
INTRODUCTION
Some cultures rely more heavily on visual thinking than others.
For this reason, it is necessary to distinguish between modern
industrial cultures that are based on the linear thinking of the
alphabetic writing system and the non-linear and visual thinking
of cultures that use iconographic and ideographic writing systems.
However, all writing systems began as picture writing (Coulmas,
1993). This means that these earlier cultures were more closely
connected to visual thought. The practice of seeing or the Habitus
of seeing was more closely linked to the theoretical expressions
of seeing. With the advent of the triconsonantal root writing
systems of Hamitic and Semitic writing systems, this connection
to the practice of seeing was divorced and more emphasis was placed
on theoretical models of representation (Olson, 1994). After the
renaissance, another shift away from the embodiment of experience
occurred with the rise of representational thinking. Foucault
(1970, 1972) demonstrated this shift in representation with the
rise of the novel (a literary depiction of real human experiences),
and the rise of theater (the depiction of life on stage). Although
the theater encourages visual thinking, the rise of the novel
did not. It led to linear thinking. It led to the organization
of concepts expressed in a linear system, a concatenation of signs.
Only recently, with the advent of the consumer culture in which
advertisements are processed simultaneously as visual symbols
and where computer screens provide visual models of human information
processing, can one argue that visual thinking is once again emerging
in linear cultural models. This new shift has been called the
renaissance of visual thinking (Sevaldson, web link).
Visual thinking is a part of a larger phenomenon known as visual
literacy. Visual thinking, however, has to do with the cognitive
processes involved in orchestrating visual information in the
mind. It differs from visual communication which has to do with
the creation and exchange of visual semiotic systems for the purpose
of conveying information, emotions, and episodic memories. The
focus of this paper is on visual metaphors and how they are embodied
into pictographic and ideographic writing systems.
VISUAL THINKING
Arnheim (1969) challenged the old distinctions between thinking
and perceiving and between intellect and intuition. According
to established tradition, words were the primary components of
thinking and language preceded perception. Arnheim (1969: 15)
contended that "all perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning
is also intuition, all observation is also invention." He
argued that the mechanisms by which the senses understood the
environment are identical with the operations that psychologists
refer to as "thinking." Artistic expression, he noted,
is a form of reasoning. Perceiving and thinking, he added, are
intrinsically intertwined. A person, who paints, writes, composes,
dances, he adds, thinks with their senses (Arnheim, 1969: 16).
What Arnheim is trying to say is that "visual perception
is a cognitive activity." Traditional psychology neglects
the gift of understanding things through the senses. They divorce
concept from precept. Thought is divorced from perception and
treated as abstractions. They eyes have been reduced to instruments
that identify and measure (Arnheim, 1974, 1 3). "The capacity
to understand through the eyes has been put to sleep and must
be reawakened." This capacity involves the creation and apprehension
of images by means of balance, shape, form, growth, space, light,
color, movement, dynamics, and expression. These are the very
elements referred to by Dondis (1973) as the components of visual
grammar.
Visual thinking is part of a larger concept that has been defined
as visual literacy (Dondis, 1973). Visual thinking, for example,
includes the creation of visual metaphors that can be readily
found in the use of commercial advertising, comic book strips,
religious art, and pictographs. These all involve the use of visualization,
the creation of new visual forms within the theater of the mind
(Rodríguez, St. Clair, and Joshua, 2005). Visual communication
is another aspect of visual literacy. It involves the use of a
given semiotic system for the expression of visual thinking. Among
modern industrialized nations, two basic types of expression systems
occur: linear orthography as evidenced in English, or quadrangular
pictography as evidenced in Chinese. Each of these writing systems
provides different constraints on expression of visual thinking.
VISUAL LITERACY
Dondis (1973) developed the concept of visual literacy. He wanted
to provide the basic grammar of visual communication. He argued
that there are certain basic elements that are arranged in a visual
space to produce art and other forms of visual communication.
These forms and the concepts that they embody are not new. They
are known to all practitioners of art. What is new is the claim
that they embody the basic grammar of visual communication. There
are other theoretical models of what kinds of elements constitute
visual grammar (Sonneson, 1989), but the grammar presented by
Dondis is consistent with traditional art theory.
The Basic Morphological Forms of Visual Grammar
Dot The dot is the minimal visual unit. It functions as a pointer
or a marker of visual space. If a dot is placed in the center
of visual space, it provides a balanced picture. If it is placed
either to the left or the right of the center, it needs to be
countered by another visual element (Arnheim, 1988). Centricity
stands for a self-centered attitude that is characteristic of
human beings. The infant sees himself as the center of the world
around him. A social group, a group or an organization, is also
compelled to recognize that it has a center. Things are organized
around that center.
Line A line is produced by moving a point in space. Lines may
be thick, thin, straight, curved jagged, or wiggly. Lines may
also be implied as when four dots are placed on a page and linearly
linked by the mind that searches for such recognizable patterns.
Lines also invoke feelings. Vertical lines imply tranquility and
rest; horizontal lines demonstrate power and strength; oblique
lines imply movement, action and charge; curved lines create calm
and sensual feelings (Szabaro, 1986).
Shape There are certain basic shapes that command visual space.
They are the circle, the square, the triangle, and their various
extensions. These shapes enclose a two dimensional area. Shapes
may be organic (curved edges, continuous) or geometric (sharp
edges or angles). Spaces that are determined by shapes and forms.
When these shapes and forms exist, the shapes are positive. When
they exist outside of these shapes and forms and lurk around them,
they are negative shapes.
Space Shape encloses a two dimensional area. Space can be created
by overlapping shapes or forms in front of each other by by using
holes and cavities. Space can provide the illusion of depth.
Color Color is light reflected from a surface. It can create emphasis,
harmony, emotions, unity, and dimension. Color has three distinct
qualities: Hue (color), value (from light colors to dark colors),
and intensity (from bright colors to dark colors).
Texture This is a quality that is closely related to touch.
Value This has to do with a range of shadows from light to dark.
It provides a sense of space and depth to an object and emphasizes
its tri-dimensional aspects.
Form This is a quality that encloses a volume or three dimensional
area.
These elements are arranged in accordance to visual principles that provide it with the syntax of a visual grammar.
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| Unity, Harmony | This relates to the oneness or the wholeness of visual space. Colors, shapes, lines, textures, and patterns are arranged to create a harmonious unity. |
| Variety | Variety is achieved by using different kinds of lines, colors, textures, and shapes. |
| Balance | Balance involves the equalization of elements in a work of art. Elements may be organized into symmetrical, asymmetrical or radial patterns. |
| Emphasis | This refers to placing greater attention to certain areas or objects in art. Emphasis can be created through the sudden or abrupt changes in poposing elements. |
| Rhythm | This is created by repeating objects or elements within a visual space. These repetitions may be either regular or irregular. |
| Movement | This refers to the arrangement of parts in a work of art to create a visual reaction that is either fast or slow. This is done by the use of patterns, contrasts, and lines. |
| Pattern | This involves the repetition of lines, shapes, colors, and textures. |
| Graduation | This is accomplished by combining elements in a series of gradual changes in shapes or color. Or darkness. |
| Proportion | This has to do with relationship of elements to each other within the whole of a visual space |
What one finds in the work of Dondis (1973) and Arnheim (1988) is the use of the principles of Gestalt psychology. This theoretical framework is behind their claims about how the mind orders and interprets visual space . Dondis (1973), however, goes on to explain why one needs to understand the grammar of visual space:
Visual expression is the product of highly complex intelligence, of which we have pitifully little understanding. What you see is a major part of what you know, and visual literacy can help us to see what we see and to know what we know. Dondis, 1973: 19
What is implied in this pronouncement by Dondis is the Gestalt claim that human beings organize images based on similarity, proximity, open direction and simplicity. For example, a collection of dots arranged in a circular motion should be perceived as a "whole." That is to say, it should be perceived as a circle (Chen, 2000). As Arnheim (1974) would say a person unable to conceive [of this] integrated structure of the whole "lacks the ability to create a genuine work of art."
ICONOGRAPHIC CULTURES
Not all print cultures are the same. Some print cultures are more
involved in visual thinking than others. Some cultures are more
involved in thinking with their senses than others. Hence these
different cultures evoke different cognitive repertoires of human
information processing. Anyone who has been to a bookstore in
Tokyo, for example, will notice how the design cover of all Asian
books in the shelves are works of visual art. The elements of
the language are aesthetically organized within visual space.
Each book cover makes an artistic morphological statement with
its careful placement of icons, color, shapes, forms, and other
elements of design. In the United States, by way of contrast,
the organization of language is linear and the design of book
covers is organized around words and the constraints of syntax.
There is no significant use of the elements of visual syntax.
Book covers are meant to be read linearly and not visually. Arnheim
commented on this very use of visual thinking when he visited
Japan under a Fulbright Scholarship (Verstegen, 1996: 208). In
Japan, he noted, one finds a country in which daily life "still
preserved the remnants of aesthetic form." It is a culture
in which a person thinks with his senses (Arnheim, 1969: v). It
is a culture in which one is immersed in the "company of
paintings, sculptors, architects, photographers and fil-makers"
which allows one to consign his attention to the psychology of
art.
With the advent of computer technology, it is argued that many
industrialized nations are is moving into the realm of an iconography
as a system of visual expression. They are becoming industrial
culture because of the advent of computer graphics and the uses
of hypertexts. The reason for this is obvious: the computer is
a visual medium. What needs to be added to this insight about
human information processing, however, is that television is also
a visual medium and the impact of television on the human psyche
is even more pronounced. Visual thinking is spatial thinking.
It involves the recognition of patter4ns and visual configurations
instead of verbal ideas. Visual thinking is also non-linear. It
involves radial connections between links and hypertexts. It provides
a new way of assessing information, prioritizing, and determining
criteria. Visual literacy is rapidly becoming the new literacy
in cultures that use mediated technology. As a consequence, it
is important that visual thinking become an important part of
document design in composition classes (Brizer, 2003). This claim
that visual thinking enhances current linear thinking models is
not new. Polya (1945) argued that visual thinking would enhance
mathematical problem solving. Arnheim (1969) has made similar
claims. What is new in the area of visual literacy is the realization
among architects and design engineers that they are immersed in
a renaissance of visual thinking (Sevaldson,
CHINESE WRITING AND THE ELEMENTS OF VISUAL
GRAMMAR
Cultures differ in the visual organization of their writing systems.
There are two dominant patterns: linear or quadrangular. English,
for example, is based on linear writing. The letters within a
word are organized linearly. Letters from a sequence of from left
to right. This system is called orthographical writing (straight
writing). The Romans distinguished between straight (Latin: rectus)
and slanted (Latin: obliquus) forms.
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The orthographical forms are written on a base line. Some letters rest on this line (a, b, c, d, e, f, h, I, k, l, m, n, o r, s, t, u, v, w, x, z). Others also have letters that were both above and below the base line (g, j, p, q, y). |
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In Chinese, however, the visual elements of a word are placed within a quadrangle and ordered both vertically and horizontally.
With a minimal syntax of basic strokes within a quadrangle, one
is able to generate a complex array of visual signs.
Through the use of these strokes, the language is able to portray
pictographs that are essentially visual metaphors. Many of these
pictographs were simplified and stylized into ideographs which
are graphical representations of compound ideas.
The next stage in the development of this visual thinking system involves the creation of compound pictographs and ideographs that contribute to the meaning of the compound characters. For example, ming2 means bright. It is a compound in which the sun is the sign on the left and the moon is the sign on the right. Together, these signs mean "bright." Writing systems involving pictographs and ideographs change with the advent of new writing instruments. The introduction of the brush as a writing instrument transformed the writing of Chinese characters into an art form known as calligraphy. Traditional Chinese calligraphy and painting provide demonstrations of the beauty of the line. In calligraphy, for example, lines of different direction, force, and speed are painted by brush to express the cadence of force (both horizontal and vertical), and these lines turn in direction. These lines are combined with a fluency that reflects the aesthetic achievements of the calligrapher or the painter.
THE PHYSIOLOGY OF VISUAL THINKING
The brain consists of two halves or hemispheres which are structurally
identical. Does this mean that human beings are born with two
brains? If they are born with two brains, are they different?
Do they perform different tasks? The answer to this question appears
to be impossible to answer because the two brains are connected
by millions of nerves by means of the corpus collosum and both
minds function in complete harmony. However, it has been known
for more than a century that despite their similarity and despite
of their close linkage, both hemisphere perform different functions.
The left hemisphere is specialized for speech which is a linear
system of expression. In cultures that favor verbal rhetoric,
the left hemisphere has been favored for its analytical abilities
and the right hemisphere has been relegated to a minor role. In
the beginning of the 1960s,
Sperry became involved in research conducted by Penfield and Roberts
(1959) in which the corpus callosum was severed in order to prevent
severe neurological misfiring in epileptic patients. Sperry designed
methods to demonstrate that the two hemispheres in these patients
had its own stream of conscious awareness, perceptions, thoughts,
ideas, and memories. In these patients, the right hemisphere was
cut off from the corresponding left hemisphere. Sperry (1961)
was able to demonstrate that the left brain was superior to the
right in abstract thinking, the interpretation of symbolic relationships,
and in performing detailed analysis. In other words, the left
brain is responsible for the operation of mathematical calculations.
The left brain hemisphere is also the dominant hemisphere in the
control of the motor system. Since the motor system is used in
phonation, the physiology of speech, it is evident that the left
brain plays a major role in the communication of speech.
What is surprising about Sperry's investigation is that the right
hemisphere is, in many ways, superior to the left. It has the
capacity for concrete thinking, the apprehension and processing
of spatial patterns relations and transformations. Hence, it is
superior to the left hemisphere in the perception of complex sounds.
It is also superior to the left in the appreciation of music and
recognizes melodies more readily. It can also more accurately
distinguish voices and tones. Face recognition and other kinds
of topographical information is also associated with the right
hemisphere.
What does this mean? It means that the left hemisphere is involved
with linear thinking and logic and the right hemisphere is the
imaginative and creative part of the brain. Those who argue that
visual thinking enhances the brain are really saying that they
live in a culture that is left brain dominant. Visual thinking
is about thinking with mental images (Robertson, 2003). The left
brain hemisphere categorizes and overlooks things that do not
fit into its categorical schemes. The right hemisphere, on the
other hand, has the capacity to remember vivid images. It goes
beyond the categories formulated by the left brain hemisphere.
One sees a scene with the right brain hemisphere. One also images
a scene with the right brain hemisphere. As a matter of fact,
they appear to make the same kind of neuronal firing within the
brain. This means that the right brain hemisphere resembles the
real experience. When one visualizes a scene, one is seeing in
the mind's eye. See the world with the left hemisphere of the
brain is tantamount to seeing a categorized world. Seeing the
mind with the right brain hemisphere is the equivalent of experiencing
the rich experience of being-in-the-world.
Robertson (2003) has hypothesized that those people who have difficulty
in mastering the analytical and sequential tasks of the left hemisphere
think in images. He argues that children and people with autism
and dyslexia have difficulty with language and as a consequence
they excel in visual thinking. What is missing from Robertson's
hypothesis is the fact that many of the great minds in the sciences
and the humanities are Bicognitive (Ramírez and Casteñeda,
1975). What is the significance of these findings with regard
to the focus of this essay? It means that linear orthographical
systems of writing are processed with the left hemisphere of the
brain. They are processed logically. Pictorial writing systems,
on the other hand, are processed with the right hemisphere of
the brain and use visual thinking. Those who embodied within visual
cultures live in a different world from those who are encased
in linear orthographical cultures. Those in visual cultures are
immersed in the details and the experiences of life. They are
immersed in the emotions of life. They exist in a special state
of being-in-the-world. Those in linear cultures are involved with
the linear processing of information. They exist in a rational
and logically organized world. They are divorced from their Habitus
(Bourdieu, 1977; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992).
CONCLUDING REMARKS
In the theory of societal types (Lenski, Nolan and Lenski, 1991),
it is argued that industrial nations make up a similar category.
They share the same kinds of social structures. This concept needs
to be modified. There are two different kinds of modernized societies.
One of them has a linear way of thinking and uses a linear model
of orthographical communication and the other has a non-linear
approach and uses the simultaneous mode of processing visual information.
They also differ in that linear industrial nations exist in a
world that is predominantly rational and concerned with abstract
logic and abstract theoretical models of reality. Societies that
use visual thinking, on the other hand, exist in the present and
are immersed in the vivid details and the emotions of life. Robertson
(2003) would add non-literate societies to this group. They use
visual thinking because they do not command linear thinking and
the demands of that kind of literacy system. Does this mean that
societies that use visual thinking are not also in command of
logic and abstract analysis? The answer depends on whether a society
is literate or not. There are many societies that use both visual
thinking and linear thinking. Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan,
the People's Republic of China, are among those nations. The majority
of its citizens are Bicognitive. They function well with both
hemispheres of the brain. Also, within societies that are predominantly
linear in their orientation to human information processing, there
are many individuals who are Bicognitive. These are the individuals
who excel within their own cultural domains. They are the creative
geniuses that command both logic and imagination.
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