Chapter 3: Conceptual Representations

This chapter basically deals with conceptual representations, which, unlike narrative representations, concentrate on presenting relatively stable attributes of objects, events or situations (participants). The writer divides such representations into “classificational,” “analytic,” and “symbolic” processes.
Classification refers to the presentation of participants in terms of a class. All the objects or people belong to the same class in terms of certain characteristics. They are of same kind. Classification is often shown through the use of tree structure. The main item comes at the top and that is divided into subclasses, and that is further categorized into smaller classes. For instance, we can see any organizational structure.
“Analytical processes relate participants in terms of part-whole structure.” There one participant stands for the whole and the others are its parts. If we compare it to language, we can say that it conforms to descriptive kind of writing where we find a certain object described in terms of its parts and individual attributes. Analytical representation allows us to scrutinize the participants in terms of their possessive attributes.
Another process is symbolic. “Symbolic processes are about what a participant means or is.” It can be of two types: symbolic attributive and symbolic suggestive. In the first one there are two participants, one carrier and the other related to it. In the second one there is only one participant.

Narrative Representations

I found the chapter very interesting. It is wonderful in its theoretical proposition and practical information. As a beginner in visual communication, I found the interpretation of the certain shapes representing movement and certain characteristics very useful for me to understand images. I was not able to see image in terms of broader organization before reading this chapter. The idea that the image does not merely reflect but manipulates reality is what this books shares with the other book we have read. The interpretation of the encounter between the whites and the Aboriginals made me see picture in terms of the basic shapes.

Turner's Painting, "Founding Fathers."

A counter gaze.

Grammar of Visual Design

Grammar

I find the title of the book fascinating in relating visual communication with verbal communication. The particular point of interest for me is its claim that visual communication also has an independent structure and organization of its own like “grammar” of a verbal language: “In this book, by contrast, we will concentrate on ‘grammar’ and on syntax, on the way in which these elements are combined into meaningful wholes. Just as grammars of language describe how words combine in clauses, sentences and texts, so our visual ‘grammar’ will describe the way in which depicted elements – people, places, and things –combine in visual ‘statements’ of greater or lesser complexity and extension” (1).  

Social-semiotic approach

The second important aspect of the book is its “social semiotic approach” to the study of grammar, that “meanings belong to culture, rather than to specific semiotic modes” (2). So, the organization of images is largely culture specific.

Sign as motivated and conventional rather than arbitrary and conventional

Third use of ‘sign-making’ instead of ‘sign’ and its characterization as ‘motivated’ rather than merely ‘arbitrary’ is, I think, more appropriate to visual signs than verbal. This is again not something intrinsic to any of these signs but simply conventional. What I mean here is that due to the established system and conventions, the users of linguistic signs have to depend largely on the conventions, though they also have some possibilities of “sign-making” in some cases. Whereas in visual semiotics, the writers’ idea of “motivated” sign is more appropriate. This is due to more freedom and creativity possible in projecting new meanings and creating new signs. So, there is a lot of room for subjectivity in visual communication (blend of subjectivity with the communal). However, we need to be aware that this is only a relative thing. (Ex. “This is a heavy hill.”)

Visual and Verbal Modes

But I still cannot agree with the writers that “literate cultures have systematically suppressed means of analysis of the visual forms of representation.” This can be because I am still very poor in visual literacy so that I cannot see its immense potential. However, instead of placing so much of blame to literate cultures, we may need to see the essential difference in these two semiotic modes. Language (verbal) seems to me more systematic and closed whereas visual communication more flexible and thus more creative. The dominance of language is not only due to the demeaning of the visual mode by the elitists, it is also due to the relative directness of language and the ease with which the people can use it. It is true that an image can tell what a thousand words cannot, but equally true is the fact that it can cause thousands of confusion which the words are not vulnerable to. For instance, the markings of the child may mean almost anything, though the writers interpret them in a specific way. 

The Global Flow of Visual Culture

Since long, people have been talking about the hegemonizing of the “third world” by western media. That it makes the people of the third world assimilate the values of the west and offer themselves as readily available consumers for the transnational or corporate business. This is largely true. But at the same time, the western media also offers, especially in case of the societies where media is often owned by the state, perspectives alternative and sometimes counter to that of official state media. At the same time, media like BBC have produced programs specially produced for the different countries. And in those media we can find the voices and perspectives of the local people being represented to appropriate the culture and ideology of the dominant western (or in can be that of the dominant regional power, like India) media on the one hand and the monolithic discourse of the state. So, there is no one way flow of the culture from the center (west) to the margin. Internet, like the rise of private media channels, makes media more democratic.
As the writers have said, internet offers two (multi) way conversation and dialog. World Wide Web can provide space for the articulation of the voices of almost all the people. The state and the corporate world does not have the monopoly to disseminate information and hegemonize culture. In this regard, I remember a terrible event of my country few years back. All the members of the royal family were brutally massacred in the royal palace itself but none of the media were disseminating information. Only the rumor could be heard. It was internet through which we got the news. The information reached us (living 4/5 miles away from the palace) from the western media through internet. After that we could read and hear different versions of that gruesome event. Though the state brought an official report of the massacre, I believe, most of the people could not trust that. So, the rise of internet and different other forms of media have helped in avoiding the monopoly of any single form of media. Even the rebels or “terrorists” can have their own website and bring their voices to the public.
But again what we should not forget is that there are still millions of people who have not seen computer and who are totally ignorant about internet. So, the issue of whether the internet is democratic or not is quite controversial. I remember a communist leader talking about liberal democratic competition and dialog. There can be a competition and dialog between those with similar or equal access to the resources (of any kind). But how can there be a fair competition between a lion and a rabbit (exceptions are there like in a story about a lion and a rabbit in which rabbit wittily kills the lion). That is why, internet is also a powerful weapon but only to those who have resources. The ones who do not have may speak but often not to be heard (Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”).
So, there are always two sides of every story and the rise of internet and different other forms of media and visual culture are not exception. However, internet, due to its interactive and open space, may democratize culture more than many other forms we have used and seen in our history. But at the same time it can be an illusion masked by the pervasive ideology about technology of our time which the future generation will see. I believe that though every form of media is owned and run by the powerful institutions/people/society, there are always the possibilities of resistance and appropriation.

Man in Postmodern Age: A Desiring Machine

What is postmodernism? Let me define it as a perpetual shift of desire created by (late) capitalism and modern mass media. This shift of the desire is due to the multiplicities of the images served to us. You want to buy something, let me say an external drive. Then you don't know which is good for you. You don't know what capacity you may need. You visit amazon.com and search "external drive" and find hunderds of them. You find it difficult to chose, then you go to sleep. You are tired. But your desire is becoming still more intense. You again visit similar sites and decide to buy one. However, before it arrives to you, you are sent a host of the ads of external drives to your email. You find another one more attractive. You regret you ordered one. Is there any end to this process? Never. You will find the same object advertised with different names as the producers have to try to create desire: "In a consumer society, there is constant demand for new products and the need to constantly repackage and sell old products with new slogans and ad campaigns" (Sturken and CartWright 192). This is why Deluse and Guattarai call us "desiring machines." Or they means that postmodern man is schizophrenic. We can see the ad of the IBM. Does that child ever explore that "globe." He needs to buy one after the other but always to find himself desiring a new one.

Mass Media: Democratic or Hegemonic?

The role of mass media (culture industry) has been variously defined and hotly debated. There are two sides of the matter: one its democratic potential, and the other its use for hegemonic purpose. The idea is who produces and who consumes knowledge or information. What can be the effect of the rise of World Wide Web in information politics? What about the authenticity of the news? On the other side is the tendency in some intellectuals to question the information or knowledge produced and reproduced by the dominant media as they are in one way or the other appropriated by the rulers. So, some people think that rumors can be more truthful than the news in dominant news media or the information in official discourses. Can Internet or WWW provide a space for rumor and have some revolutionary(?) potential?
Mass media has the potential to shape the mind of the people. Very often people talk of the appropriation and distortion of information or knowledge by media to fulfill their vested interest. However, there are others who see an immense democratic potential in visual mass media as it opens up the avenues of mass media to the general public. For instance, people like Adorno and Horkeimer see mass media as a means of control and domination rather than freedom and liberation. Whereas people like Habermas and Rorty see a high potential in mass media (as public sphere) to keep watch on the activities of the rulers and to indirectly but very powerfully keep them on the right track.
The Marxists (like Adorno and Horkeimer) believe that the mass media is mostly owned by the big corporate houses and businessman or multinational companies and they do nothing more than providing consumers to those companies and corporate houses. The media, through various advertisements, instills the idea that “we buy therefore we are.” But as the writer in this book says, though that is partially true, media is not so much monolithic to propagate and promote the values of the single community and to fulfill its selfish interests. Now media has become diverse and both the forces work simultaneously. On the one hand, media like TVs have started participatory approach to the representation of voices of the diverse population. On the other hand, the rise of WWW has offered multiple forums to counter the hegemonic practices of the dominant media and the official discourses. On the one hand Internet offers an ample and incredibaly vast global reach for the dominant media, on the other hand, it can equally be used by any group to articulate their view and counter the hegemonic practices.
However, there is still another complexity. Do the people at the margin own the public sphere? I think the matter of access is again there. Second is the issue of authenticity. Though we question it, most of the public still believe that what CNN or BBC reports is authentic and what we see on the internet is either false or fictional. These big media houses have the resources and manpower to gather information, though screened through their orientation, and to disseminate it. Whereas the news or information served by individuals or a particular group is considered biased or one-sided or insufficient. Maybe we can never come out of this contradiction.

Question for discussion: How does Internet or World Wide Web affect the role of media in the present world? What can be the positive and negative aspects of it?