Presumptive Meanings (original) (raw)

Word to Image – Image to Word The Contribution of Visual Communication to Understanding and Dialog

2016

Translation, understood as an interpretation of experience, opens a broad field of inquiry into a variety of disciplines. Hans-Georg Gadamer’s description of hermeneutics as a language-based methodology to develop understanding, insight, and agreement within a group, serves as the starting point to analyze the practice of visual communication as a form of interpretation, negotiation, and insight. In a first step, the paper discusses the process of drawing and its relationship to interpretation. The classification of drawing as a gestural activity establishes a link to recent anthropological theories, which see gestures as precursors of the human language. Through an analysis of processes in the field of corporate design, we can strengthen the hypothesis that images follow a logic that is only partially accessible through words. In respect to interpretation, the images of an identity visualization follow a convention held in our collective memory or derived from preconceptions and pr...

Meaning in Speech and in Thought

Whether or not the neo-Gricean is correct that p-meaning can be defined in terms of t-meaning and then t-meaning defined in terms of the causal-functional roles of mentalese expressions, it's apt to seem obvious that separate accounts are needed of p-meaning and tmeaning, since p-meaning, unlike t-meaning, must be understood at least partly in terms of communication. Paul Horwich, however, claims that his "use theory of meaning" provides a uniform account of all meaning in terms of "acceptance properties" that, surprisingly, implicate nothing about use in communication. But it turns out that the details of his theory belie his claim about it.

Seeing and Hearing Meanings

A. Nes with T. Chan (eds.), Inference and Consciousness, New York: Routledge., 2022

In this paper I provide empirical and theoretical considerations in favor of a non-inferential view of speech comprehension. On the view defended, we typically comprehend speech by perceiving or grasping apparently conveyed meanings directly rather than by inferring them from, say, linguistic principles and perceived phonemes. “Speech” is here used in the broad sense to refer not only to verbal expression, but also written messages, including Braille, and conventional signs and symbols, like emojis, a stop sign or a swastika. Along the way I define what I mean by ‘inference’ and provide an account of what it means to say that we perceive apparently conveyed meanings.

Wittgenstein's Bridge A Linguistic Account of Visual Representation

JOLMA. The Journal for the Philosophy of Language, Mind and the Arts, 2021

This paper uses structure-mapping to bridge the divide between the analytical and visual culture traditions of image interpretation. Wittgenstein's analytic 'picture theory of meaning' from his early period, and his cultural theory of 'meaning as use' from his later period are used to show that the terms similarity, analogy and metaphor can be applied to both image and linguistic interpretation. As a result, by the mapping of similarity and analogy onto the analytic approach, and by the mapping of metaphor onto the visual culture approach, a common linguistic ground for the comparison of these two approaches to image interpretation can be established.

Slippages in meaning: the influence of context in scripto/visual communication

2012

My research investigates the relationship between context and the interpretation of signs within 'scripto/visual' communication processes. I focus on the belief that no interpretation is context free. I have experienced that context is not consistent as it is based on the cultural, social and personal backgrounds of each individual. As there is always a context that serves to anchor the sign to our experiences, we construct a specific meaning when we interpret a sign. This specific meaning is, however, not necessarily the one originally intended by the sender. Central to my project is the argument that the choices made which affect the interpretation of signs when encoding and decoding them are influenced by the context of both the sender and the receiver, as well as the specific context within which the exchange takes place. I have chosen, amongst many other modes of sign interpretation, the operational processes of similarity and association. I investigate why both of these processes, in relation to the unfixed nature of context, are problematic and result in miscommunication. I have chosen to include discussions on specific artworks by two South African artists: Joni Brenner and Willem Boshoff as I feel that both artists make work in response to the fact that interpretation does not produce a 'fixed truth'.