Abstract

CAIVANO, José Luis. A Gradualist Perspective for the Semiotic Approach to Visual Images. Tóp. Sem [online]. 2023, n.50, pp.34-56.  Epub June 23, 2023. ISSN 2594-0619.

The visual world and its signs are essentially continuous, without oppositions or jumps. Colors vary gradually (in hue, lightness, saturation), as do forms, textures, cesias (transparency, darkness, gloss) and movements. Now, visual semiotics has often attempted to construct verbal categories, which reduce and simplify visual analysis into oppositions or closed categories, by means of a binary logic. But we do not need to verbalize visual situations to produce interpretants. Sign systems capable of representing gradual evolutions, changes, accumulations, and variations offer a richer knowledge of the visual world. From these points, we will argue that a semiotic perspective based on a gradualist conception —with antecedents in biology, geology, humanities, history, economics, etc.— allows us to face the complexities of visual analysis.

Keywords : visual semiotics; gradualism; visual categories; gradation vs opposition.

        · abstract in Spanish | French     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )