Picturing Scripts: A Combined Narrative, Social Semiotic and Cognitive Approach to Visual Narrativity

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cindie Maagaard

Abstract This article explores visual narrativity through the case of prospective, or future-tense, narratives realized through visual images. Addressing the challenges of representing narrative elements of temporality, events and experience in a single, static image, it proposes an analytical framework combining social semiotic, contextual and cognitive perspectives. In doing so, it argues that a combined approach enhances our ability to understand the interplay between on the one hand the image-internal visual cues of temporality and modality that activate the viewer’s imagination and narrative inferences, and on the other, the processes by which such inferences are made, including the influence of the viewer’s contextual knowledge and cognitive processes in guiding them. The article uses architectural renderings as material for analysis, because they are exemplary of how visual images invite viewers to imagine the kinds of activities and experiences that can unfold in a future setting and thus make inferences about temporality, event and experience beyond the image’s isolated moment.

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thibaud Gruber

Abstract The debate on cumulative technological culture (CTC) is dominated by social-learning discussions, at the expense of other cognitive processes, leading to flawed circular arguments. I welcome the authors' approach to decouple CTC from social-learning processes without minimizing their impact. Yet, this model will only be informative to understand the evolution of CTC if tested in other cultural species.


2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary-Anne Shonoda

Scholars in children's literature have frequently commented on the humorous and ideological functions of intertextuality. There has however, been little discussion of the cognitive processes at work in intertextual interpretation and how they provide readers with more interpretive freedom in the meaning-making process. Drawing on research from the field of metaphor studies and the interdisciplinary area of cognitive poetics, this article suggests that the interpretation of foregrounded intertextuality is analogous to the interpretation of metaphoric expression. Current models of metaphor interpretation are discussed before I outline my own intertextuality-based variant. The cross-mapping model developed is then applied to literary intertexts in Inkheart and cultural intertexts in Starcross in order to show how the model might work with intertexts of varying degrees of specificity and that serve different narrative functions. The explanatory power of the cross-mapping model is not limited to cases where elements in the primary storyworld can be directly matched with those in the intertext, but extends to instances that involve a recasting of the intertext and thus retelling as in Princess Bride.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
William A. Callahan

This introduction outlines the main theoretical, methodological, and empirical goals of the book, which are argued in more detail (and with more references) in later chapters. It explains how visual images need to be appreciated not just in terms of their ideological-value, but also in terms of their affect-work: not just what they mean, but also how they make us feel, both as individuals and as collectives. It outlines the book’s original analytical framework, which juxtaposes (1) the social construction of visual meaning with (2) the visual provocation of social orders, world orders, and “affective communities of sense.” It introduces the image/artifact distinction to explain why the book looks at both images (photographs, films, and art) and artifacts (maps, veils, walls, gardens, and cyberspace). Since much critical analysis is dominated by deconstructions of “Western” visual images, the introduction starts to examine how visuals from Asia and the Middle East challenge our understanding of international politics. It concludes with a summary of what the chapters cover.


2000 ◽  
Vol 83 (3) ◽  
pp. 1677-1692 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zheng Liu ◽  
Barry J. Richmond

Anatomic and behavioral evidence shows that TE and perirhinal cortices are two directly connected but distinct inferior temporal areas. Despite this distinctness, physiological properties of neurons in these two areas generally have been similar with neurons in both areas showing selectivity for complex visual patterns and showing response modulations related to behavioral context in the sequential delayed match-to-sample (DMS) trials, attention, and stimulus familiarity. Here we identify physiological differences in the neuronal activity of these two areas. We recorded single neurons from area TE and perirhinal cortex while the monkeys performed a simple behavioral task using randomly interleaved visually cued reward schedules of one, two, or three DMS trials. The monkeys used the cue's relation to the reward schedule (indicated by the brightness) to adjust their behavioral performance. They performed most quickly and most accurately in trials in which reward was immediately forthcoming and progressively less well as more intermediate trials remained. Thus the monkeys appeared more motivated as they progressed through the trial schedule. Neurons in both TE and perirhinal cortex responded to both the visual cues related to the reward schedules and the stimulus patterns used in the DMS trials. As expected, neurons in both areas showed response selectivity to the DMS patterns, and significant, but small, modulations related to the behavioral context in the DMS trial. However, TE and perirhinal neurons showed strikingly different response properties. The latency distribution of perirhinal responses was centered 66 ms later than the distribution of TE responses, a larger difference than the 10–15 ms usually found in sequentially connected visual cortical areas. In TE, cue-related responses were related to the cue's brightness. In perirhinal cortex, cue-related responses were related to the trial schedules independently of the cue's brightness. For example, some perirhinal neurons responded in the first trial of any reward schedule including the one trial schedule, whereas other neurons failed to respond in the first trial but respond in the last trial of any schedule. The majority of perirhinal neurons had more complicated relations to the schedule. The cue-related activity of TE neurons is interpreted most parsimoniously as a response to the stimulus brightness, whereas the cue-related activity of perirhinal neurons is interpreted most parsimoniously as carrying associative information about the animal's progress through the reward schedule. Perirhinal cortex may be part of a system gauging the relation between work schedules and rewards.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Sami K. Khawaldeh ◽  
Wafa abu Hatab

The present paper investigates Anti-terrorism Ideology (ATI) in King Abdullah II of Jordan political discourse following a critical discourse methodology and focusing on three speeches delivered in 2015. The socio-cognitive approach is adopted as an analytical framework to decipher the underlying ideological attitudes and meanings that are encoded in these speeches. The study revealed that semantic aspects including lexical choices, repetition, and presupposition have been employed to construct (ATI) that aimed at creating a negative mental image of terrorists and a positive image of Islam.


Kybernetes ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 767-785 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergio Barile ◽  
Cristina Simone ◽  
Mario Calabrese

Purpose This paper aims to focus on distributed technologies with the aim of highlighting their economic-organizational dimensions. In particular, the contribution first presents a deeper understanding of the nature and the dynamics of the economies and diseconomies that arise from the adoption and diffusion of distributed technologies. Second, it aims to shed light on the increasing tension between the hierarchy-based model of production and peer-to-peer (p2p) production, which involves the pervasive diffusion of distributed technologies. Design/methodology/approach Adopting an economic-organizational perspective, which is deeply rooted in the related extant literature, an analytically consistent model is developed to simultaneously take into account the following variables: adoption density independent variable) and economies of knowledge integration and organizational diseconomies (the costs of a loss of control and the costs of organizational decoupling and recoupling) as dependent variables. Findings Distributed technologies allow access to a large quantity and a wide variety of cognitive slacks that have not been possible until now. In doing so, they are leading the transition towards p2p. This is an emerging production paradigm that is characterized – with respect to mass production – by a shift in the relative importance of cognitive slack in comparison with tangible slack. Nevertheless, the unrestrainable diffusion of distributed technologies is not neutral for organizations. On the one hand, these technologies allow for the integration of economies of knowledge, and on the other hand, they involve organizational diseconomies that should not be ignored by managers and researchers. Originality/value This paper fills a gap in the literature by developing a consistent analytical framework that simultaneously takes into account the economies of knowledge integration and potential organizational diseconomies (the costs of coordination and the loss of control) that arise from the adoption and diffusion of distributed technologies.


2008 ◽  
Vol 275 (1646) ◽  
pp. 2049-2054 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christelle Jozet-Alves ◽  
Julien Modéran ◽  
Ludovic Dickel

Evidence of sex differences in spatial cognition have been reported in a wide range of vertebrate species. Several evolutionary hypotheses have been proposed to explain these differences. The one best supported is the range size hypothesis that links spatial ability to range size. Our study aimed to determine whether male cuttlefish ( Sepia officinalis ; cephalopod mollusc) range over a larger area than females and whether this difference is associated with a cognitive dimorphism in orientation abilities. First, we assessed the distance travelled by sexually immature and mature cuttlefish of both sexes when placed in an open field (test 1). Second, cuttlefish were trained to solve a spatial task in a T-maze, and the spatial strategy preferentially used (right/left turn or visual cues) was determined (test 2). Our results showed that sexually mature males travelled a longer distance in test 1, and were more likely to use visual cues to orient in test 2, compared with the other three groups. This paper demonstrates for the first time a cognitive dimorphism between sexes in an invertebrate. The data conform to the predictions of the range size hypothesis. Comparative studies with other invertebrate species might lead to a better understanding of the evolution of cognitive dimorphism.


2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pascal Fischer

Conservatism is notoriously difficult to define. In the present study, conceptual metaphor theory is used to elucidate the nature of this ideology in its early phase when it emerged in England as a force struggling with the ideas of the French Revolution. It can be shown that conservative authors frequently do not conform to the pattern of orientational metaphors described by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980), according to which “up” is usually regarded as positive and “down” as negative. Conservatives often associate their own ideas with depth or a downward movement, whereas the loathed ideas of the political opponents are related to height or an upward movement. This dichotomy is closely connected to the polarity between solidity, stability and weight on the one hand and gaseity, volatility and lightness on the other. The study bases its analysis on numerous political tracts, pamphlets, and novels from the 1790s and early 1800s.


2000 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 561-566 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galit Bar-Mor ◽  
Yoram Bar-Tal ◽  
Tamar Krulik ◽  
Benjamin Zeevi

AbstractOur purpose was to examine the cognitive processes that influence involvement in physical activity among 100 adolescents, 55 boys and 45 girls, ranging in age from 12 to 18 years, with trivial, mild, or moderate forms of congenital cardiac disease. We hypothesized, first, that the severity of the congenital cardiac malformation itself has an indirect effect on self-efficacy regarding physical activity, and that the relationship between the two is mediated by the recommendations of the cardiologist and the attitude of the mother. Second, we argued that self-efficacy serves as a mediating variable between the recommendations of the cardiologist and the attitude of the mother, on the one hand, and involvement in physical activity, on the other. The results confirmed both hypotheses. In a population of adolescents with trivial to moderate congenital cardiac malformations, beliefs in self-efficacy, rather than severity of the disease, were the most influential factors in determining whether or not adolescents will engage in sports or other physical activities. We also demonstrated the importance of the role played by the recommendations of the cardiologist in determining both the attitudes of the mother and the belief in self-efficacy of the adolescents.


2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
May L-Y Wong

This article provides an exploratory study of a new analytical approach to examining visual imagery in relation to the underlying cognitive processes involved. The analytical approach combines social semiotic theory of representation with cognitive-linguistic studies on blending or conceptual integration. The author’s thesis is that visual-analytic tools suggested by the social semiotic approach perfectly complements the inward cognition of an image-viewer, a synergy which has rarely been envisaged by scholars from both disciplines. From this perspective, visual analysis is seen as both semiotically and cognitively relevant. The interdisciplinary approach developed in the article hopes to present new perspectives on the ways images are analysed and interpreted.


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