Iconic attitude and how similar is similarity

Pictures and other visio-spatial signs with iconicity diverge in expression, and in how they operate on meaning. Like all signs, pictures are polysemous (Groupe µ 1992) and have several layers of meaning - such as being perceptual objects and signs, having pragmatic and contextual meanings etc. (Medin et al 1993; Tversky 1977). Pictures also rely on iconic meaning (Sonesson 1989). Similarity is a predominant feature in iconic signs – however similarity is not a single kind of relationship. The relevance of similarities differs. Sometimes, but not always, perception of similarities is tightly coupled to the conception of a sign relation. Important in this presentation, is the point that via the sign relation one may gain insight into structurally different organizations of similarity relations. A concept of Iconic Attitude (Lenninger 2019) is presented and discussed as a Phenomenal outlook that responds to the qualities in the iconic ground and thus may “manifest” a visual generalization in a specific sign perception.

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