EXPLORATIONS IN THE SEMIOTICS OF TEXT: A METHOD FOR THE SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF THE PICTURE BOOK PETER TRIFONAS

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1 EXPLORATIONS IN THE SEMIOTICS OF TEXT: A METHOD FOR THE SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF THE PICTURE BOOK by PETER TRIFONAS B.A., University of Toronto, 1983 B. Ed., University of Toronto, 1984 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of Language Education) We accept this thesis as conforming to Jfehe required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA August 1992 Peter Trifonas, 1992

2 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of LAMAJA*4T ETPL'/ATI'..Y\i The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada DE-6 (2/88)

3 ii ABSTRACT The premise for the study is based upon the observations of Lewis (1990), Kiefer (1988) and Landes (1987) who identify the bifurcate nature of the picture book form to be its most unique characteristic and express the need for a structural analysis of the textual dimensions of representative works within the genre. This study, therefore, addresses how textual form of the picture book works, both lexically and visually, as a system of signs and codes to create meaning. Dependent upon two systems of signification, lexical and visual, the picture book possesses "high semantic or semiotic capacity" (Landes, 1987, p. 30). In order to understand how the bifurcate nature of textual form in the picture book functions to convey meaning in the presence of a reading/viewing consciousness, the epistemological, theoretical and methodological principles of semiotics (after Eco, 1976; 1979; Greimas, 1983; Barthes, 1964; Saint-Martin, 1987 and others) are utilized within the context of the study to develop a method for the semiotic analysis of the picture book which is identified, defined and applied in the study to representative works within the genre. The findings of the study demonstrate in semiotic terms how the formal dimensions of text in the picture book work to guide the reader/viewer through the circumstances of its lexical and visual production, or structure, from the recognition of elements and levels below the sign (e.g., semes or coloremes) (Greimas, 1983; Saint-Martin, 1987) to elements and levels above the sign (e.g., possible worlds or fabula) (Eco, 1979). Meaning-making is shown to be dependent upon the reader/viewer's ability to actualize intensionally and extensionally motivated responses (cognitive, affective and aesthetic) according to individualized systems of conceptual apparati based upon real world experience(s).

4 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii LIST OF TABLES viii LIST OF FIGURES ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS x CHAPTER ONE - INTRODUCTION 1 Dimensions of Text and the Picture book 1 Problem and Purpose of the Present Study 3 Summary of Purposes 4 Significance of Present Study 4 Outline of the Thesis 5 CHAPTER TWO - AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL, THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK FOR SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF THE PICTURE BOOK 6 Overview 6 The Ontology: Prelude to the Faithless word 6 Language Sign and Meaning 7 Images and Sign: Iconicity and Language 9 Writing Reading or Reading Writing 10 Semiotics and the Autonomy of the Pictorial Text 13 A Question of Articulation 15 Structuralism, Semantics and Text: A Metholological Study 17

5 iv Discourse and Narrative 22 Isotopy 24 Function and Actantial structures 25 Summary 27 CHAPTER THREE - A METHOD FOR THE SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF THE PICTURE BOOK 29 Overview 29 Definitions and Features of the Semiotic Model 29 The Reader: Textual Codes and Subcodes 31 Basic Lexical Dictionary 31 Rules of Co-reference 33 Contextual and Circumstantial Selection 33 Rhetorical and Stylistic Overcoding 34 Inferences by Common Frames 34 Inferences by Intertextual Frames 35 Ideological Overcoding 35 The Reader as Viewer: Visual Codes 36 Basic Visual Dictionary 36 Rules of Visual Co-reference 36 (Visual) Contextual and Circumstantial Selections 36 Visual Stylistic Overcoding 37 Inferences by Common Visual Frames 37 Inferences by Intervisual Frames 38 Visual Ideological Overcoding 38 Actualized Content: Lexical Overcoding 38 Discoursive Structures 38

6 V (Bracketed) Extensions 39 Narrative Structures 39 Forecasts and Inferential Walks 40 Actancial Structures 40 Elementary Ideological Structures 40 Textual World Structures 41 Visual Intensions and Extensions 41 Plastic and Perceptual Variables 41 Visual Anaphoric/Deictic Extensions 42 Visual Metaphorical Structures 43 Visual Indexes 43 Visual Actantial Structures 44 Visual Ideological Structures 44 (Visual) Veridiction 45 Summary 45 CHAPTER FOUR - THE SEMIOTICS OF LEXICAL TEXT 46 Overview 46 Intensional Semiotics: Discoursive Structures to Semantic Disclosures.. 46 Extensional Responses: From Paradigms to Possible Worlds 53 Cognitive and Occurential States: Doing and the Subject 57 Lexical Actants and the Modality of Discourse 60 Functions, Motives and Thematic Roles 62 Actantial Structures and the Level of Fabula 65 Archetype Genre and the Hero 67 The Semiotics of a Possible World 69 Summary 75

7 vi CHAPTER FIVE - THE SEMIOTICS OF VISUAL TEXT 76 Overview 76 The Elements of Visual Text 76 Microstructures: Plastic and Perceptual Variables 77 Plastic Variables: Color, Value, and Texture 77 The Semiotics of Color 77 Color and Human Perception 78 Properties of Color Formation: The Color Wheel 81 Color and Value 83 Intensity and Luminosity 84 Haptic Aspects of Vision: Textural Inscapes 86 Optic Aspects of Vision: Line, Shape and Form as Outscape 88 The Word as Visual Text: Typography and the Shape of Form 90 Vectoriality (Focal Points and Directional Tensions) 92 Implantation (Positioning in the Plane and Balance) 94 Visual Anaphoric/Deictic Extensions 96 Visual Metaphorical Structures: Cross-medial Agreement 100 Visual Indexes: Within and Without Culture 105 Visual Ideological Structures in Actantial Structures 109 Aspects of Visual Veridiction 112 Summary 114 CHAPTER SIX - SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 116 Summary 116 Conclusions 118 Recommendations for Further Research 121

8 vii NOTES 122 REFERENCES 123 APPENDIX A - Hjelmslev's (1943) Sign Model 128 APPENDIX B - Propp's (1928) Inventory of Functions 129 APPENDIX C - Narrative Functions in Effie 130 APPENDIX D - Temporal Sequence of the Narrative 131

9 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. A method for the semiotic analysis of the picture book 32

10 ix LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Types and levels of semantic analysis 18 Figure 2. The two levels of the theory of narrativity 19 Figure 3. The semiotic square 21 Figure 4. A "mythical" model of actantial structure 26 Figure 5. Bremond's narrative cycle 27 Figure 6. The deep level of /Effie/ 48 Figure 7. A semic conjunction and disjunction based upon spatialization. 49 Figure 8. Textual actors in a relation of disjunction 50 Figure 9. Temporalization of the possible world 51 Figure 10. The figurativiztion of actors according to the textual topic 52 Figure 11. The thematization of the actors in terms of the textual topic 53 Figure 12. Possible denotation of/line/ actualized by the reader 57 Figure 13. A representation of the levels of a subject's doing 59 Figure 14. Thematic roles of the subjects in terms of cognitive and occurential doing 63 Figure 15. The narrative as determined by actantial and thematic roles 64 Figure 16. The motivation for doing in the narrative 70 Figure 17. Contrasting properties of the subject in two world structures... 72

11 X ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is dedicated to Elefteria whose love, energy, intelligence and forebearance inspire me and give me the freedom to carry on my dreams. My sincere thanks to Dr. Wendy Sutton for her generous contribution of time and her many insightful comments which were truly invaluable. Thank you also Dr. John Willinsky, Dr. Joe Bélanger and Dr. Kenneth Reeder for their careful reading, thoughtful questions and many helpful suggestions.

12 1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Dimensions of Text and The Picture Book The term "text" has evoked various meanings according to particular disciplinary perspectives. In cognitive psychology, it has been represented as the sum total of the author's propositions; in semiotics, as the set of lexical, or visual, signs which act as cues to guide the reader's mental decoding operations. Structuralist theory determined the text to be "an object endowed with precise properties, that must be analytically isolated" and by which the "work can be entirely defined on the grounds of such properties" (Levi-Strauss cited in Eco, 1979, p. 3). Some proponents of poststructuralist theory have examined the "text" as the substantive equivalent of the author's productivity in the process of communication as a social exchange of thought (Kristeva, 1969). Others (see Eco, 1976; 1979; Peirce, 1931; Derrida, 1974) have cultivated a notion of "text" where meaning making on the part of the reader is considered to be a generative movement embodying a semantic process of infinite regression which negates objective meaning and renders the written word indeterminant in relation to a seemingly uncontrollable non-metaphysical networking of interpretations (Noth, 1990). The picture book genre offers an interesting non-transcendental case for illuminating the dimensions of textual structure and for exploring the meaning-expressive potential of the lexical and visual forms of signification embodied in such texts (see Kiefer, 1988). Even though the picture book possesses the propensity to be a highly unconventional and experimental literary form (Kiefer, 1988; Lewis, 1990) employing both lexical and visual systems of signification, the dominant paradigm in educational research of the picture book genre reflects three types of analyses: 1) pedagogic, where the printed word supersedes the pictorial aspects of the text as the focus of examination in the meaning-

13 2 making process; 2) aesthetic, where the rationale for research is drawn from art criticism and/or art history toward the pictorial aspects of the text at the expense of the lexical aspects of the text; and 3) literary, where the picture book is subsumed in the vast oeuvre of children's literature "as a marginal genre, or a larval stage of literature proper" (Lewis, 1990, p. 140). David Lewis (1990) has identified the metafictive, postmodernist, or nonmainstream features of the picture book which belie any staid and stagnant notions that might be possessed about the minimal inventiveness of its authors and illustrators and the lack of boundary-breaking within the genre. The picture book is essentially an open and fluid form (Eco, 1979) embodying lexical and visual signs and codes in an unceasing interaction of word and image and reader (see Lewis, 1990; Kiefer, 1988). Lewis notes that "An adequate theory of the picture book must directly address the bifurcated nature of the form (word and pictures) and must account for the whole range of types and kinds including the metafictive" (1990, p. 141). Because the picture book as a genre is dependent upon the interaction of two integrated systems of signification, lexical and visual, it is a unique combination of literary and visual forms which possesses "high semantic or semiotic capacity" (Landes, 1987, p. 320) and facilitates the creation of personal cognitive, affective and aesthetic meaning for the reader. It is this semiotic capacity of the picture book genre which makes it ideal for the purpose of teaching young children by establishing "contexts for literary and real world understandings" (Kiefer, 1988, p. 260) that merits the focus of educational research. In reconstituting the picture book (see Lewis, 1990; Kiefer, 1988), it is necessary to step back from the well-worn research paradigms discussed previously and take another vantage point which, in itself, will fuse the sometimes disparate pedagogical, literary, and aesthetic aspects of the genre by explaining the levels of semiotic interaction both within the lexical and visual components, or "texts", of the picture book and between the picture book and the reader (see Kiefer, 1988; Lewis, 1990; Eco, 1976; 1979). How does the textual form of the picture book work, both lexically and visually, as a semiotic system of signs and codes to create meaning?

14 3 Problem and Purpose of the Present Study The present study supports the thesis that the textual form of the picture book, as in any literary or visual artistic work, functions to create meaning (Kiefer, 1988; Lewis, 1990; Landes, 1987; see also Eco, 1979; Greimas, 1983; Arnheim, 1974). In order to understand how meaning is created through the unique artistic form of the picture book, it is essential to identify the basic lexical and visual textual components in the picture book to create a structural basis for the analysis of their interaction within the medium in the presence of a reading/viewing consciousness which actualizes the text's meaning potential. An explanation of the relationship between the reader and the text is concomitant to isolating the structural aspects of textual form that function as a vehicle to facilitate the reader/viewer with visual cues upon which to furnish cognitive, affective and aesthetic hypotheses thereby allowing the researcher to analyze in semiotic terms the cognitive, affective and aesthetic as well as conscious and subconscious responses required or initiated during the reading/viewing process as a meaning-making activity. For the purpose(s) of the present study, a method of textual analysis incorporating traditional semiotic techniques (see Eco, 1979; Greimas, 1983; Barthes, 1964) utilized for the examination of lexical and visual texts has been developed in order to answer the question: How does the textual form of the picture book work, both lexically and visually, as a semiotic system of signs and codes to create meaning? The various 'boxes' in Table 1 denote the method of textual analysis described in Chapter Three and are used to identify the levels of semiotic interaction between the picture book and the reader as well as to isolate the unique structural aspects of lexical and visual texts within the picture book. With specific reference to the structural semantics of semiotic techniques for analyzing lexical and visual texts identified in the method, the emphasis of the analysis is twofold: 1) upon the examination of the syntactic composition of the picture book as integrated lexical and visual text(s); and 2) upon the mental operations (cognitive and affective, conscious and subconscious) required by, or initiated in, the reader by the text as a set of lexical and visual signs in order to facilitate the creation of meaning and aesthetic response(s).

15 4 Summary of Purposes 1) To identify the structural aspects of lexical and visual systems of signification, as signs and codes within the picture book which work syntactically and semantically to create meaning. 2) To explain, in semiotic terms, the interaction between the reader and the picture book so as to furnish pragmatic (Peirce, 1931) and theoretical explanations of the reader's (cognitive, affective and aesthetic/conscious and subconscious) reactions for lexical and pictorial hermeneutics (or acts of interpretation). 3) To identify, explain and demonstrate the use of a method of textual analysis designed specifically for the research problem which is applicable to the picture book genre as a whole. Significance of the Present Study A recent study of the picture book as "event" focused upon the semiotic dimensions of the interaction between the reader, or performer, of a text and the listener, or spectator, of the performance during a class reading (Golden & Gerber, 1990). The researchers were primarily concerned with studying the effects of paralinguistic cues (performance and instructional) by the performer upon the subjects' interpretation of the text as an interactive "social event", rather than utilizing semiotic methodology to explore the dimensions of the picture book genre, or to identify and explain how the interaction of lexical and visual signs and codes in the textual form of the picture book functions to create meaning for the reader/viewer. The present study addresses the need expressed for a structural analysis of representative works within the genre which would account for the meaning-generating potential of an overall text comprised of lexical and visual systems of signification that characterize the bifurcate nature of picture book form (see Lewis, 1990; Kiefer, 1988). To this end, semiotics offers a highly developed epistemological, theoretical and methodological framework for deconstructing the structure of lexical and visual signs embodied in picture books as communicative sign systems, or codes, which function to convey meaning, thereby affording the researcher the opportunity to examine the text as a

16 5 medium for exchanging or disseminating knowledge. This is an essential area of research if we hope to understand the role of texts in the learning process. Semiotic analysis allows the researcher: 1) to take into account levels above and below the sign (Greimas, 1983); 2) to examine the means of signification as well as the content of signification (see Hjelmslev, 1943); 3) to ground the analysis in the text itself and to examine how the structures of signification are engendered "globally" in codic terms to form systems of signification (Eco, 1979); and 4) to examine the roles of both the sender (e.g., a text) and of the receiver (e.g., a reader/viewer) in a pragmatic act of communication (Eco, 1976; 1979). Outline of the Thesis Chapter Two reviews literature reflecting areas of epistemological, theoretical and methodological concern which are relevant to the present study and provides: 1) a definition of semiotic theory in relation to language, image, and cognition; 2) a discussion of the similarities and differences between lexical and visual systems of signification as texts and the key issues of debate regarding the semiotic autonomy of each codic milieu; and 3) a methodological study of the role of structuralist semantics (see Greimas, 1983) in semiotic inquiry as required for the study of narrative texts. In Chapter Three, the characteristic features of the semiotic method of textual analysis are identified and explained according to its uses for examining reader/viewer cognitive, affective and aesthetic responses to the picture book as a total lexical and visual textual form (see Table 1). Chapter Four is a formal semiotic analysis (based upon the method detailed in Chapter Three) of the lexical component of the picture book relative to the visual text and the role of the reader/viewer to make sense from the signs and codes which engender the work with meaning (see Eco, 1979). Chapter Five completes the formal semiotic analysis by examining the visual text in relation to the lexical text and the total elements of signification comprising the picture book which the viewer/reader must actualize as meaning-maker. Chapter Six summarizes and concludes the study.

17 6 CHAPTER TWO AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL, THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK FOR SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF THE PICTURE BOOK Overview The purpose of this chapter is to facilitate an epistemological, theoretical and methodological framework for the construction of a method of textual analysis which is used in the present study to isolate, define and explain the levels of semiotic interaction, both lexical and visual, between the picture book and the reader. The first half of the discussion will review the main epistemological and theoretical implications concerning semiotics, language and pictorial text and will reconcile them in the second half of the discussion with what has been recognized to be a viable semiotic methodology for textual analysis. The second half of the discussion, which deals with semiotic methodology, refers primarily to lexical narrative text; however, the same analytic principles and methodological rigor can be applied to pictorial text as linear visual narrative (as is also stated in the chapter). The Ontology: Prelude to the Faithless Word The Gospel according to John asserts, In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The statement concretizes the relationship between language and faith, hence meaning, since the embodiment of meaning lies ultimately in the oneness of divinity and language, as

18 7 an affirmation of faith. Faith in the Word was faith in God. Implicit in this logic is the absoluteness of truth in the word, and the unequivocal and univocal nature of meaning. Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of logos was a philosophical consequence of a lapsed faith in God in an age demarcing spiritual uncertainty and moral relativism, regarding the true nature of truth. Yet, the ramifications of this declaration strike at the very heart of human order. Derrida ( 1974) writes, All the metaphysical determinations of truth, and even the one beyond metaphysical ontotheology that Heidegger reminds us of, are more or less immediately inseparable from the instance of the logos, or of a reason thought within the lineage of the logos, in whatever sense it is understood... Within the logos the original and essential link to the phone has never been broken... As has been more or less implicitly determined, the essence of the phone would be immediately proximate to that which within "thought" as logos relates to "meaning", (p. 11) Traditionally, theology did not and has not questioned God's ordained and absolute power. How could the church deny faith in the voice of God, as manifest in the Word, to dispute creation and truth? Theologically, the logicality of the world is seen as preordained and limited only by the self-contradiction of an omnipotent God. Therefore, no knowledge is certain because it is out of the realm of the empirical and contingent on God's will: a matter of faith. What Nietzsche was expressing was essentially a lack of faith in the existence of God because of a lack of absolutes, or underlying relations of signs, or order, in reality discernible through reasoned inquiry. For the twentieth century, trusting the Word is divorced from the reality of what is left a semiotic limbo. Language, Sign, and Meaning The word, whether written or spoken, is a vehicle for the acts of creating meaning performed in the exchange of thought. What is suspect is the competence of language to convey meaning. To formulate theories of communication, as is a theory of semiotics or of

19 8 literature, one must explore the mechanics of human perception and the affect of language as referent, accurate or inaccurate, upon the perception process. Man is a meaning-making animal, ordering and comprehending reality through language. Cassidy (1982) states, It is axiomatic that mankind's greatest accomplishment is language axiomatic in a semiotic sense. Language permits... communication about objects and events temporally and spatially distant. If not a prerequisite of thought, it is an exhaustive tool of thought. Language is a sign system. It re-presents and does so systematically. In written language, through the application of syntactic, semantic,and pragmatic rules, arbitrary markings assume meaning on a number of levels, for example, semantic, phonemic, expressive, (p. 78) The object, sign production and sign perception (interpreter) constitutes the basic unit of a semiotic communication model which clearly operationalizes the exchange and coding of information transactionally. Inherent to the re-presentality of language is the notion of inference, or as C.S. Peirce (1931) postulated, the concept of interprétant : A sign stands for something to the idea which produces, or modifies... That for which it stands is called its object; that which it conveys, its meaning; and the idea to which it gives rise, its interprétant. (p.339) The interprétant validates the sign, even in the absence of an interpreter, because it is a construct arising from contact with an object in the external world. Theorists with an interest in Semiotics (Hjelmslev, 1943; Peirce, 1931; Dewey, 1922; Greimas, 1983; Eco, 1976; Barthes, 1964; Derrida, 1974; Lotman, 1990) have asserted the belief that perception in itself is the interpretation of disconnected sensory data and the creation of cognitive hypotheses based upon individual experience. Yet, above simple cognition as the physical mechanisms underlying thought and symbol manipulation, or mechanics of thought (Hunt, 1978; 1979), lies the representational level of theorizing content of thought (Hunt and Agnoli, 1991). Piaget (1970) has given a

20 9 semiotic rendering of the mental image as the "interiorized imitation" (p. 14) and transformation of reality and stresses that "without semiotic means it would be impossible to think at all" (Piaget & Inhelder, 1966, p. 381). The ability to represent mentally an object in the external world as an inner image, or interprétant, becomes a semiotic instrument necessary in order to evoke and to think what has been perceived. The sign presupposes a mental differentiation between its signifier and the signified. Signs are not things or objects, but correlations between expression and content, so that we are essentially concerned with sign-functions instead of signs (Hjelmslev, 1943; Eco, 1976; Greimas, 1983). A sign-function occurs when a certain expression is correlated to a particular context and these correlations are culturally created, thus, implying artificiality or convention. The issue of similitude between sign and object is misleading because univocality is an unrealistic expectation in semiosis, which is unlimited and multivariate (Eco, 1984; Peirce, 1931). There are no universal truths because meaning is transitory and often provisionally bound in culturally determined semantic fields. For example, a signfunction operates in every lie to signify something not of or true to the external world. The given code enables the interpreter to understand sign-functions that are false. Ultimately, the content of an expression is not an object but a cultural unit. If we know the proper code of correlations between expression and content, we can understand signs. Language, then, is a semiotic system embodying artificial and conventional sign-meaning correlations (Hjelmslev, 1943; Barthes, 1970; Greimas, 1983; Eco, 1976; Lotman, 1990). Images and Signs: Iconicity and Language A semiotic typology of images includes five distinct classes: 1) graphic (pictures, statues and designs); 2) optical (mirrors and projections); 3) perceptual (sense data) 4) mental (dreams, memories and ideas); and S)verbal (metaphor and descriptions) (Mitchell, 1986). The traditional semiotic definition of an image is rooted in distinguishing its features based on resemblance:

21 10 The sign brings separate instances (subject-object on one hand, subjectinterlocutor on the other) back to a unified whole (a unity which presents itself as a sentence-message), replacing praxis with a single meaning and difference with resemblance... the relationship instituted by the sign will therefore be a reconciliation of discrepancies, and identification of differences. (Kristeva, 1969, p.26) The concept of image, defined semiotically as resemblance, however, refers to "visual" phenomenon and their mental representations (as defined above) and does not cover a broader spectrum of sign production including transmission through non-visual channels (e.g., spoken language) (Nôth, 1990). In order to account for resemblance beyond visual representation, iconicity, or the extent to which a sign vehicle is similar to its denotatum, or referent, is a criteria for examination. According to Morris (1946), A sign is iconic to the extent to which it itself has the properties of its denotata... Iconicity is thus a matter of degree... A portrait of a person is to a considerable extent iconic, but it is not completely so since the painted canvas does not have the texture of the skin, or the capacities for speech and motion, which the person portrayed has. The motion picture is more iconic, but again not completely so. A completely iconic sign would always denote, since it would itself be a denotatum (pp ). Can language represented graphically be iconic according to Morris' (1946) definition? WRITING READING or READING WRITING Literary competence (meaning linguistic competence as Iser, 1978, defines it) is a natural prerequisite for deciphering written text; however, the superficiality of this type of competence is that it lacks a reasoned explication of meaning-making. It is an ends-means, means-ends dichotomy. The demise of logocentricity, the deflation of the spoken word and the inflation of the written, places undue emphasis upon written text. 1 Derrida (1974) comments,

22 11 I believe... that a certain sort of question about the meaning and origin of writing precedes, or at least merges with, a certain type of question about the meaning and origin of techniques. That is why the notion of technique can never simply clarify the notion of writing (p. 8). The understanding of technique, as graphic linguistic expression, cannot therefore ensure the understanding of writing. For, if literary competence were the sole proprietor of meaning, language would be self-referential and the sole-appropriator. Is the reading process mere mental mimesis of the language itself expressed as literary competence, or the decoding of signs of signs, semiotically unlimited through free and variated association? Eco(1984) explains the generative function of the linguistic sign within a text, A text is not simply a communicational apparatus. It is a device which questions the previous signifying systems, often renews them, and sometimes destroys them... The ability of the textual manifestations to empty, destroy, or reconstruct preexisting sign-functions depends on the presence within the sign-functions (that is the network of content figures) of a set of instructions oriented toward the (potential) production of different texts (p.25). A dialectical relationship between reader and text is suggested, since, the words, divorced from the writer as marks on paper devoid of meaning, demand a reader to actualize their meaning potential. It is not however a rewriting of the text. The act of reading is the recreation, or synthesis, of constructs referential to certain artificial and conventional signs, which in themselves, have no meaning or function, until assimilated through a reading consciousness. In essence, a reading act is a re-reading act striving to reformulate, in personal terms, an already reformulated reality. The problem of meaning and essence of a written text arises. The intangibility of objective meaning renders the literary work an imaginary object. Ineffable and non-static, it does not occupy the same spatio-temporal domain of ordinary experience and is to some extent metaphysical in that it exists as a mental state, event or construct in the mind of a reader. Consequently, the accessibility of the work determines aesthetic analysis and is the basis for critical perspectives. This is a

23 12 given in critical enquiry. We experience related ideas, emotions, and psychic states through the act of reading, but are distanced from authorial purpose, or intervention, as incorporated in the work. Iser (1978) attempted to reconcile the notion of iconism and the graphic representation of language in literature: The iconic signs of literature constitute an organization of signifiers which do not designate a signified object, but instead designate instructions for the production of the signified... The iconic signs fulfill their function to the degree in which their relatedness to identifiable objects begins to fade or is even blotted out. For now something has to be imagined which the sign has not denoted though it will be preconditioned by that which they do denote. Thus, the reader is compelled to transform a denotation into a connotation (p.65-66). The connotative terms Iser (1978) alludes to are recreative concepts aiding the grasp of similarities among particulars perceived in reality, not objects. Knowing the terms of signification of a written expression is not infallible because truth, or knowledge, is based in a perception of reality and not reality itself (see Dewey, 1922; Eco, 1976). Yet, the denotative function is an unfortunate choice of terminology by Iser because denotation commands as a codifying equivalent the "rigidification and death of all sense" (Eco, 1984, p. 25). To universalize meaning denotatively, as referred to in resemblance, supreme responsibility for meaning signification rests in the text, and not in the reader; since, the sign-function, or correlation between the content-form and the expression-form of a sign, must determine the response (Hjelmslev, 1943) and denote one meaning. Ultimately, this is a limitation upon intertextuality, or experiences of different texts, and extratextuality, or external experience, which nourish the generation of new contexts from which meaning is created (Eco, 1984). In Iser's (1978) argument, it is implied that words are the equivalent of iconic signs. If the iconic sign is evaluated in the context of a true sign, there can be no analogous, motivational or natural relationship between the object and the signifier (Eco, 1976: 1984). If indeed words are icons, as Iser (1978) suggests, what are they icons of other words? The notion of iconism is tautological in this case; since, the sign can

24 13 never truly and completely possess the same properties as the object which it signifies, and of which we have no true knowledge, only perception. The relatedness and nonrelatedness of the iconic sign is contradicted in the argument Iser (1978) puts forward and the implication is that words are stimuli for conditioned responses to specific "signifieds", as expressed by the definite article in "the signified". Furthermore, it is assumed we all perceive the same objective reality. Semiotics and the Autonomy of Pictorial Text Given that pictorial texts are no less polysemous, or able to generate more than a single meaning (Barthes, 1964; Prieto, 1966; Eco, 1968), than lexical texts, semiotics has functioned to limit the interpretive openness of pictorial texts (Nôth, 1990). The central question regarding semiotics and pictures (in its broadest sense) has been focused on the extent of autonomy of pictorial text in relation to linguistic text: "Is an autonomous semiotics of pictorial perception possible, or does the semiotic analysis of pictures always require recourse to the model of language?" (Nôth, 1990, p. 450). The suggestion for a pictorial grammar (Metz, 1968; Eco, 1976; Saint-Martin, 1987) has been derived from the fact that pictures have no unique visual metalanguage and, therefore, require language as an instrument for pictorial analysis. Arguing from a logocentric viewpoint, Barthes (1964) has focused the question on the relationship between lexical and visual elements incorporated into the same text: Images... can signify... but never autonomously; every semiotical system has its linguistic admixture. Where there is a visual substance, for example, the meaning is confirmed by being duplicated in a linguistic message... so that at least a part of the iconic message is... either redundant or taken up by the linguistic system... Does the image duplicate certain of the informations given in the text by a phenomenon of redundancy or does the text add a fresh information to the image? (p. 10; 38)

25 14 The lexical-visual relationship in a text is more complex than is suggested in the question; however, Barthes' (1964) concepts of anchorage and relay are useful in considering how this "combined code" type of text may generate and guide meaning semiotically. In anchorage "the text directs the reader through the signifieds of the image, causing him to avoid some and receive others... It remote-controls him toward meaning chosen in advance", whereas, in relay "the text and image stand in a complementary relationship; the words in the same way as the images, are fragments of a more general syntagm and the unity of the message is realized at a higher level" (Barthes, 1964, p ). In order to facilitate meaning, the message as a whole involves both the lexical-visual dependency of anchorage and the complimentarity of both textual constituents found in relay. With reference to an advertisement for pasta, Barthes (1964) demonstrated the interdependence of lexical and visual signs within the same text. The objects depicted in the advertisement (spaghetti, tomato sauce, grated Parmesan cheese, onions, peppers, and a string bag) can be grouped under the one lexical term used as a label /Panzani/. Not that these products are exclusive to a particular ethnicity, but in culinary terms, the ingredients for the "complete spaghetti dish" are represented in the photograph as uniquely Italian. Since the advertisement was designed for the French consumer, and not the Italian consumer, the ethnic connotation of the name is particularly effective in establishing a thematically meaningful context for the intended audience. The "Italianicity" of the products depends chiefly on a contiguous, or adjoined, relation between the word /Panzani/ and the products depicted in order to achieve the transference of connotation from the lexical to the visual text, thereby, resulting in anchorage and relay. "Is there any semiotically relevant preverbal level of visual perception and analysis?" (Noth, 1990, p. 450). Proponents for the semiotic autonomy of pictures (see Sonesson, 1989) have objected that the commentaries of multimedia contexts (such as Barthes' analysis of the Panzani advertisement) have not asserted the semiotic priority of the lexical over the visual message. The theory of visual perception, or Gestalt Theory, has been cited to justify the belief in language-independent entities interpreted as semiotic elements of visual cognition (Sonesson, 1989; Krampen, 1973; Mateescu, 1974; Arnheim, 1974). According to the

26 15 Gestalt theory of perception, the perceiving organism obtains visual data from the environment by scanning the visual field. Gestalten, or organized forms, are generated as holistic perceptual structures of invariant shapes, or figures, which tend to contrast against the larger background of a visual field. Interpreting gestalten as signs and extending the argument from the expressive plane, concerning form, to the content plane, concerning meaning, Arnheim (1974) stated that "no visual pattern is only itself. It always represents something beyond its own individual existence which is like saying that all shape is the form of some content" (p. 65). The implication being that pictorial signs are autotelic in creating meaning independently without recourse to language, and unlike lexical signs, through the form of their expression. Can a semiotics of visual language be developed in accordance with the levels of grammar of language and reveal essential structural components of pictures? A Question of Articulation Articulation means structuring and it has often been considered to be the main distinguishing feature of language. In language, there is a two-fold structuring, or double articulation (Hjelmslev, 1943; Martinet, 1949; Prieto, 1966), by two unit types: morphemes, or minimal units of meaning within a message (e.g., syllables or words) and phonemes, or differentiating phonetic signifiers (the corresponding units of written language are graphemes ). For example, a word such as in-act-ive is composed of distinguishable units of meaning at the level of first articulation. The second level of articulation structures the phonetic (or graphic) signifiers of the morphemes into nonsignifying but differentiated units. Hjelmslev (1943) went further in separating the two planes of articulation into expression and content where the expression plane combines both phonemes and morphemes while the content plane is comprised of conceptual units of sense (Noth, 1990), or semes. Extralinguistic variables, or purports, such as the phonetic potential of the human voice (on the expression plane) and the amorphous mass of human thought (on the content plane) are considered by Hjelmslev

27 16 (1943) as substantive influences on the form of expression and content in language (see also Greimas, 1966; Eco, 1976; 1984). Thus, the form and content of language are inextricably bound to those human variables which determine its substance and the circumstances of its production and perception. The case for second articulation in pictorial text has been a point of contention among semioticians. Gestalten have been interpreted as supersigns (Krampen, 1973), or holistic elements which are products of information processing, consisting of integrated subsigns within a pictorial whole (Saint-Martin, 1987). Hierarchical levels of perception in supersigns are postulated to extend "from a differential optical element, a geometrical morpheme, a partial image of a signifying object to an iconic phrase and discourse" (Noth, 1990, p.451). On a more esoteric level, the possibility of pictorial second articulation has also been argued and identified in terms of figurae (Barthes, 1964; Prieto, 1966; Eco, 1968; Metz, 1968), or distinctive but not meaningful units of visual perception corresponding to phonemes (or graphemes) on the expression plane. These stimulus invariants to visual perception are defined by natural laws in relation to the environmental sources of their production and the resulting effect upon the psychology of the viewer (e.g., figure-ground relations, light contrast, geometrical elements, etc.). Figurae in turn aggregate to constitute signs (comparable to the morpheme) and form semata (or visual "propositions") as total iconic statements. The presence of double articulation in pictures at the second level has been questioned by citing the argument that the figurae level merges with the sign level and the sign level with the semata level to create pictorial meaning (see Sonesson, 1989). Further research on pictorial texts (see Eco, 1976) has proposed that specific rules of pictorial segmentation can only be determined within individual pictorial contexts and that "iconic text is an act of code-making " (Eco, 1976, p. 213). This approach emphasizes the differences and the similarities between pictorial and verbal representation (Goodman, 1968). Saint-Martin (1987) presents a convincing case in support of a visual syntax of pictorial language by incorporating features of the arguments posed to the contrary within a semiotic theory of visual text. For example, the coloreme is postulated as the basic visual element (corresponding to the phonemic level in language)

28 17 which functions to differentiate meaningful visual elements, even though, meaning signifying potential is absent. The aggregate of coloremes, on a more surface than "deep" level, constituting the dot, the line and combinations of the two elements, are considered to lack intrinsic meaning, however, as particular constituents of a pictorial text these elements (as aggregates of color agglomerations) form distinctive features of an object, or objects, within the pictorial plane (Prieto, 1966; Saint-Martin, 1987; Sonesson, 1989) and gain meaning as formal gestalten. Ultimately, the syntactic analysis which Saint-Martin (1987) provides attempts to furnish hypotheses for a scientific analytical approach to large aggregates of coloremes as non-linear but correlational schemata based upon constant interaction of plastic and perceptual variables found in a pictorial text and the viewer. The result is effective because Gestalt Theory, colorematic analysis and semiotic principles are combined to examine the visual language of pictorial text, at once, as structural entity and a supersyntagm, or a total unit of sense. Structuralism, Semantics and Text: A Methodological Study Structuralism in linguistics (see Saussure, 1916) has influenced A. J. Greimas' semiotic methodology of text analysis as detailed in Structural semantics (1983). The method itself has become the core technique of semiotic text analysis of the influential "School of Paris" (see Barthes, 1970; Greimas, 1983; Derrida, 1974). The theory is founded upon the premise of the existence of a semantic universe or "the totality of significations, postulated as prior to articulation" (Greimas & Courtes, 1982, p. 361). The semantic universe embodied in a natural language is too vast to conceive in its totality; thus, any discourse presupposes a semantic universe, on a micro-scale, that is actualized in part as discourse and that "can be defined as the set of the system of values" (also p. 361). Meaning is achieved through articulation of such a micro-scale semantics and can be described "by means of elementary axiological structures according to the categories of life/death (individual universe), or nature/culture (collective universe)" (Greimas, 1970, p.

29 18 xvi). These arbitrary universals are the starting point for analysis of the semantic universe yet can never be isolated in pure form, but only when articulated. Greimas (1970) explains,... the production of meaning is meaningful only if it is the transformation of a meaning already given; the production of meaning is, consequently, in itself, a signifying endowing with form, indifferent to the contents to be transformed. Meaning, in the sense of the form of meaning, can thus be defined as the possibility of transforming meaning (p. 15). Defining the text as a discoursive micro-universe, places the text in the position of autonomy excluded from extralinguisitic phenomena in text analysis. The organization of discoursive structures as narrative creates a distinction between two levels of representation and analysis: a manifest, or surface level and an immanent, or "deep" level. IMMANENCE MANIFESTATION SEMANTIC SIGNIFICATION seme lexeme sememe minimal content unit (deep level) lexical manifestation (surface) meaning signifier (polysemous) Figure 1. Types and levels of semantic analysis. This principle can be applied to other systems not necessarily dependent upon natural language (e.g., cinema, painting, architecture, sculpture, etc.) in order to isolate and explain the structural aspects of the medium as text. For example, in attempting to bring to light the interrelations between the structural elements constituting a pictorial text (e.g., color, texture, form, composition, etc.) and, thereby, isolate and explain the means of signification as well as the content, it is possible to avoid speculation and ground the

30 19 analysis within the structural aspects of the text itself. The analysis can then be extended to examining the role of the viewer in relation to the production of the text (Eco, 1976; 1984). Greimas' linguistic framework is based on Saussure's (1916) concept of difference (see Derrida, 1974), or the notion of binary oppositions and distinctiveness of functional phonology as presence and absence, and the glossematic sign model (see Appendix A) of Hjelmslev (1943). Structural lexicology forms the basis for the semantic analysis of textual structures (Noth, 1990). Semiotics, according to Greimas and Courtes (1979), is operational as a theory of signification "when it situates its analyses on levels both higher and lower than the sign" (p. 147). Generative Trajectory Syntactic Component Semantic Component Semiotic and Deep level FUNDAMENTAL SYNTAX FUNDAMENTAL SEMANTICS narrative structures Surface levels SURFACE NARRATIVE SYNTAX NARRATIVE SEMANTICS DISCOURSIVE SYNTAX DISCOURSIVE SEMANTICS Discoursive structures Discoursivization Actorialization Thematization Temporalization Spatialization Figurativization Figure 2. The two levels of the theory of narrativity.

31 20 On the lower level, semes, or the minimal unit of semantic componential analysis, function to differentiate significations and form semic systems subdivided into semic categories. On the higher levels, are textual units which produce semantic entities greater then signs. Perron (cited from Greimas, 1988) explains the model of generative discourse analysis as defined by generative trajectory,... generative trajectory designates the way in which the components and sub-components fit together and are linked together. Three autonomous general areas: semio-narrative structures, discoursive structures and textual structures have been identified within the general economy of the theory first to construct the ab quo instance of the generation of signification where semantic substance is first articulated and constituted into a signifying form, and then to set up the intermediate mediating stages which transform the semantic substance into the last instances ad quern where signification is manifested (p. xviii). Discourse production through developing stages, each containing a syntactic and a semantic subcomponent (see Figure 2), is postulated as beginning at a "deep" level with elementary structures and extending over more complex structures at higher levels "which govern organization of the discourse prior to its manifestation in a given natural language" (Greimas & Courtes, 1979, p. 85; see also Hjelmslev, 1943). Manifest textual structures of expression (linear or spatial, phonetic, written or visual) are external to generative trajectory. At the level of discoursive structures, the seme forms the "deepest" and most elementary structure of signification, however, it is a theoretical postulate and must be considered as such. Greimas (1983) explains, This minimal unit, however, which we have called seme, has no existence on its own and can be imagined and described only in relation to something that is not, inasmuch as it is only part of a structure of signification. By situating the seme within perception, in a place where significations are constituted, we noticed that it received there a kind of existence because of its participation in two signifying ensembles at the same time: the seme, indeed is affirmed by disjunction within the semic categories, and it is confirmed by junction with other semes within semic groupings which we have called semic figures and bases (p. 118).

32 21 It is a minimalist definition of structure where primacy is given to relations between elements based on difference (Noth, 1990). For example, the difference between son and daughter at the lexical level is due to the disjunction characterized metalinguistically by the features male and female as part of a semic hierarchy of the content-substance sense (see Appendix A). The common semic category of the two features, sex, presupposes any semantic resemblance or conjunction between the two features and sets the ground from which the articulation of signification emerges (Greimas, 1983). A linear semantic axis with the differential terms male and female would represent the semes involved as elementary structures of signification. A semantic axis may have different articulations, or lexical fields, in different languages, thus, transforming the content-form at the word level. The "deep" level is organized in the visual representation of the semiotic square "where the substance of content is articulated and constituted as form of content" (Perron cited from Greimas, 1988, p. xviii): (Assertion) (e.g. male) (Negation) (e.g. female) contrariety (Non-assertion) (e.g. non-female) (Non-negation) (e.g. non-male) Figure 3. The semiotic square.

33 22 The oppositions constituting semantic axes may be represented in the semiotic square as two types of logical relations: contradiction, or the relation existing between two terms of the binary category assertion/negation, and contrariety, or the implied contrariness of one term with the other. For example, the seme s t, "male", is described as the opposition ( in terms of presence or absence) of non-sj ( Sj ), "non-male", in which the seme "male" is absent. The contrary of s l5 "male", is s 2, "female", which expands the square to a four term constellation to include the contrary of s 2 which is non-s 2 ( s 2 ), "non-female". Complimentarity or implication now appears between the terms Sj and s 2 or s 2 and Sj: "male" implies "non-female" and "female" implies "non-male" (see Greimas, 1970). The "deep" structural nature of the semiotic square can be seen in the fact that there may be no lexical equivalent at the surface levels of manifestation to express "non-male" or "nonfemale" as concepts (Nôth, 1990). Therefore, the fundamental semantics at the "deep" level contains the necessary semantic categories that form the elementary structures of signification and the fundamental syntax consisting of the relations and transformations which derive and constitute those structures (see Figure 2). Discourse and Narrative Enunciation mediates between the semiotic narrative structures, organized as a series of strata along the entire generative trajectory, and their actualization in discourse produced by an enunciator. The discoursive structures manifest the surface semiotic structures and set them into discourse by making them pass through the domain of enunciation (Greimas, 1988). As Perron (cited from Greimas, 1988) notes, "It is the place where, by becoming actualized as operations, the semio-narrative structures make up the competence of the subject of enunciation" (p. xix). "Charged with the discoursivization of the narrative structures and comprising of three sub-components of actorialization, temporalization and

34 23 spatialization" (Greimas & Courtes, 1979, p. 134), the syntactic component is joined with a semantic component and "its sub-components of thematization and figurativization" (ibid., p. 134). At the surface level, narrative semantics subsumes the semantic values selected from the deep level of structure (see Figure 2) that are actualized in the form of lexical actants which, in turn, operate at the level of narrative syntax (e.g., as subject, object, predicate, etc.) (Greimas & Courtes, 1979) as part of a narrative syntagm (or a larger discoursive unit, e.g., a sentence or discourse). In essence, the lexicology of the text is built both horizontally on a syntagmatic axis consisting of formal structural elements within a text (be it a word, sentence, or narrative tract) and vertically on a paradigmatic axis where possible substitutions between linguistic elements occupying the same structural position within the same expressive context may occur (e.g., the phoneme /s/ being substituted for /g/ in the lexeme /go/ to make /so/). The juxtaposition of structural elements in a text, at the interpretive level, occurs in relation to syntagmatic indexes (e.g., contradiction, graphic codes, discontinuity, repetition, inconsistency, superfluity, non-verisimilitude, etc.) (Todorov, 1977). Paradigmatic indexes, at the interpretive level, may consist of: 1) intertextual paradigms refering to cultural conventions of human behavior and psychology established external to the text (e.g., characterization, event and discourse); or 2) internalized paradigms constructed from within the text by connecting two or more syntagmatically linked indexes of interpretation refering exclusively to the "textual world" (Todorov, 1977; Greimas, 1970; Kristeva, 1969; Eco, 1979). Thus, a text is said "to mean": 1) lexically at the syntagmatic and paradigmatic levels due to organization and substitution, respectively; and 2) thematically, by the syntagmatic and paradigmatic conjunctions and disjunctions created at the levels of organization and substitution, within and without the text, resulting in interpretive indexes. The second set are extensional operations that go beyond the conscious decoding of lexical meaning as a communicative act intended to realize the virtual possibilities of language, or intensional operations, and into the realm of activating possible worlds by determining the coherence and plausibility of the vision. For example, the representation of a character or event may be incorporated into the syntagmatic structure of

35 24 the plot and fabula constituting the text, yet, at the paradigmatic level have no intertextual, or cultural validity, and be relevant only to the textual world as an intratextual paradigm. Mythological or fairy tale genres refer to creatures such as dragons, ghosts and goblins that are unrealistic in a cultural sense because they do not exist in the external world; however, within the world of fairy tales and mythology, as determined by the story and fabula within specific genres, dragons, ghosts and goblins are perfectly plausible and realistic characters. It is at this point that actors (like these characters) are formed as the result of genre function and influences upon the form and perception of narrative utterance. Isotopy Isotopy describes the coherence and homogeneity of text which allows for the semantic concatenation, or chain-linking, of utterances (Greimas & Courtes, 1979). In order to semantically disambiguate terms within a text and assure textual coherence and homogeneity, there must be iterativity, or recurrence, of a classeme (either semic category or repeated contextual seme) which connects the semantic elements of discourse (sememes). Eco (1984) explains, The term isotopy designated d'abord, a phenomenon of semic iterativity throughout a syntagmatic chain; thus any syntagm (be it a phrase, a sentence, a sequence of sentences composing a narrative text) comprehending at least two content figurae (in Hjelmslev's sense) is to be considered as the minimal context for a possible isotopy. (p. 190) On a semantic level, Greimas (1983) uses two expressions le chien aboye (the dog barks) and le commissaire aboye (the commissioner barks) (p. 81) to illustrate that aboye (barks) has two classemes, human and canine. It is the presence of the subjects, the dog or the commissioner, that reiterates one of the two classemes and establishes the contextual selection for a literal or figurative reading of the text. A syntagmatic extension of an isotopy is constituted by the textual segments that are connected by one classeme.

36 25 Ultimately, a "text" which fosters a single interpretation in its semantic structure is a simple isotopy, whereas, bi-isotopy is the result of textual ambiguities or metaphorical elements that promote polysemous readings. Pluri- or poly-isotopy is the superimposition of multiple semantic levels in a text ( Eco, 1984; Nôth, 1990). The first stage of the theory considered: 1) syntactical (grammarial) isotopies; 2) semantic isotopies; 3) actorial isotopies; 4) partial isotopies (or smaller textual units that are "condensed" into a text as the result of summarizing macropositions); and 5) global isotopies (as the result of partial isotopies) (Eco, 1984). The second stage incorporates recurrent thematic and figurative categories where the typology of isotopies is extended to semiological isotopies covering iterativities in terms of exteroceptive)' (refering to properties of the external world) (see Greimas, 1983). Function and Actantial Structures Traditional motif research in narrative has considered actors (on two levels as characters, in anthropomorphic or zoomorphic forms, and lexical subjects, or actants, of discourse within a sentence engaged in a thematic role), items (or objects) and incidents as minimal units of narrative analysis (Greimas & Courtes, 1979). Propp (1928), however, identified the minimal unit of narrative analysis as the Junction in terms of an action which "cannot be defined apart from its place in the context of narration" (p. 21). Nôth (1990) explains, Functions as units of action are narrative invariants, while the agents performing those actions are textual variables. Within his corpus of one hundred fairy tales, Propp discovered a relatively small number of thirtyone such invariant functions, as opposed to a large number of persons, objects or events (corresponding to the traditional motif) (p. 371). For example, after the "initial situation" is established in a narrative text, a series of functions may be cited to explain the narrative syntax and progression of the fabula (story)

37 26 (see Appendix C). The thirty-one functions are distributed across seven spheres of action as performed by various characters such as 1) the villain 2) the donor 3) the helper 4) the sought-for person 5) the dispatcher 6) the hero 7) the false hero (cf. Greimas, 1983, p. 201). From Propp (1928), Souriau (1950; see Greimas, 1983) and Tesnier (1959; see Greimas, 1983), Greimas (1966) formulated a "mythical" model of narrative actants containing three binary oppositions: 1) subject vs. object 2) sender vs. receiver 3) helper vs. opponent. sender object receiver [knowledge] Î [ t desire] helper» subject «- opponent [power] Figure 4. A "mythical" model of actantial structure. Essentially, the fabula (or story elements of the narrative) and every other narrative structure is reduced to purely formal positions as actants (defined lexically as that which accomplishes or undergoes an act e.g., subject-object, sender and receiver, and narratively as classifications of an actor according to genre) which produce actantial roles (Greimas, 1966; Greimas, 1979; Eco, 1979). The syntactic order of the actantial categories correspond to "a subject wants an object, encounters an opponent, finds a helper, obtains the object from a sender, and gives it to a receiver" (Noth, 1990', p.372) sequence or variations thereof. The narrative utterance (NU) is, therefore, defined as a process composed of a function (F), in the Proppian sense, and an actant (A), or NU=F(A) (Greimas, 1983; 1979). The logic of relationships is based upon "knowledge", "desire" and "power" where the transmission of a message can be analyzed syntactically as the transferal of "knowledge" and the drama of the acquisition of "power" ("desire" being the motivating force behind the action).

38 27 The helper-opponent dichotomy was later abandoned (see Greimas, 1970) as a major actantial category and the value transfer occurring among the major actants explained as relationships of conjunction and disjunction according to the semiotic square. Following from the latter model, a narrative sequence can then be said to begin with a relation of conjunction between two actants (subject or object), followed by a disjunction (as a problem or transition phase) which is reconciled in the redistribution of semantic values as a new conjunction (Greimas, 1970): 1) initial state > transition» final state; or 2) problem > final stage (see Todorov, 1977). Time and causality are the basic dimensions of the narrative process (Ricoeur, 1983) that suggest a linear macrostructure, or overall sequence. Although, the semantic connection between the initial event and the final event may also suggest a cyclical model such as the following containing four phases beginning with either a state of deficiency or a satisfactory state (Bremond, 1970, p. 251): Satisfactory state Procedure of improvement Procedure of degradation State of deficiency Figure 5. Bremond's narrative cycle. Summary The focus of this chapter has been to review an epistemological, theoretical and methodological framework which is utilized to facilitate the construction of a method for the semiotic analysis of the picture book in order to isolate and explain the semiotic interaction

39 28 between the text and the reader/viewer as motivated by both the lexical and visual aspects of textual form. To this end, the scope of this review has been pragmatic in the selection of sources relevant to the discussion and not exhaustive in the sense of closing the door to further discussion. In summary, the following issues have been addressed in chapter two: 1) a coherent definition of semiosis has been presented; 2) the cognitive, affective and aesthetic implications of semiosis with respect to language and meaning have been addressed (e.g., iconicity and mental representation); 3) a definition of "image" and its implication with respect to lexical and pictorial text has been posited; 4) the structural aspects of lexical and pictorial texts have been outlined, compared and contrasted with respect to semiotics; and 5) workable, tested, and recognized semiotic methodologies (Eco, 1976; 1979; Greimas, 1983; Barthes, 1964; Saint-Martin, 1987) for examining the structural as well as the interpretive aspects of both lexical and pictorial texts have been discussed.

40 29 CHAPTER THREE A METHOD FOR THE SEMIOTIC ANALYSIS OF THE PICTURE BOOK Overview The purpose of Chapter Three is to outline the semiotic method of textual analysis which is applied to representative works of the picture book genre in Chapter Four and Chapter Five for the purpose(s) of the study (as stated in Chapter One). With specific reference as to how the lexical and visual elements comprising the unique textual form of the picture book work syntactically and semantically to create a complex system of codes, the method is used to identify and to explain in semiotic terms the interaction between lexical and visual texts in the picture book and between the picture book and the reader. Definitions and Features of a Method: Some Assumptions The epistemological, theoretical and methodological principles of structural semantics (see Eco, 1979; Greimas, 1983) incorporated within the method in Chapter Three provide the basic tools and metalanguage for the semiotic analysis of "text" (as discussed in Chapter Two) and are useful only to the extent that they allow for the phenomena being studied to be accounted for in terms comprehensible to the human intellect (Eco, 1979). It is in this sense that a methodological structuralism as operational procedure for analyzing lexical and visual texts is necessary because without the metalanguage required, there would be no way to achieve the purpose(s) of semiotic inquiry relevant to the study of the picture book form as outlined in Chapter One (see also Eco, 1976; Noth, 1990). A semiotic method of textual analysis is therefore considered to encompass metatextual means or devices (e.g., a

41 30 metalanguage, a "model", figures or other visual schemata, etc.) which conceptualize in hypothetical, rather than empirical, terms the intensions and extensions made by the reader/viewer in the act of meaning-making relative to the lexical and visual structures of signification manifest in the picture book form. Intensional responses are defined as the consciously motivated acts of meaning-making required of, or initiated in, the reader/viewer to realize the signifying potential of the total text. Extensional, or not consciously motivated, acts are defined as those performed in relation to the signifying structures which constitute the text but are determined extratextually by contextual factors which influence lexical and visual sign perception in the pragmatic act of communication (e.g., culture, education, competence, etc.). A model reader/viewer (Eco, 1979) who can apprehend fully the intensional and extensional structure of the picture book form is postulated as an integral feature of the semiotic method detailed in Chapter Three for the purpose(s) of the analyses conducted in this study. The model and method of textual analysis of lexical narrative text and the role of the reader proposed by Eco (1979) (adapted from Petofi, 1973, and incorporating the structural semantics of Greimas, 1983) forms the basic epistemological, theoretical and methodological foundation from which the framework for the lexical component of the method outlined in Chapter Three is drawn. Eco's (1979) method, however, is expanded and adapted (see Table 1) to include semiotic aspects of visual text manifest linearly in the picture book as a narrative progression. A feature and function of visual text relevant to the specific research purpose(s) of this study (as outlined in Chapter One). Like Eco's (1979) model, the position of the individual 'boxes' which comprise the visual representation of the method in Table 1 of Chapter Three does not preclude to any suggestions of an hierarchy of levels encompassing the method of analysis itself or to a sequential ordering of the reader/viewer's intensional and extensional responses to the textual form, but addresses metalinguistically the levels of possible abstraction at which meaning-making occurs. Eco (1979) explains this misleading aspect of semiotic method in textual analysis, The notion of textual level is a very embarrassing one. Such as it appears,

42 31 in its linear manifestation, a text has no levels at all... 'level' and 'generation' are two metaphors: the author is not 'speaking', he has 'spoken'. What we are faced with is a textual surface, or the expression plane of the text. It is not proved that the way we adopt to actualize this expression as content mirrors (upside down) that adopted by the author to produce the final result. Therefore, the notion of textual level is merely theoretical; it belongs to semiotic metalanguage, (p. 13) Table 1 is intended not as a guide to hierarchical levels of lexical and visual text or to a 'step series' of acts or responses which the reader/viewer may actualize in relation to the signifying structures of the picture book form, but to reveal and to reinforce the interdependence among the metatextual 'boxes' in detailing a semiotic method for textual analysis (see Eco, 1979). The only way in which the method depicted in Table 1 provides a concrete case for textual interpretation is the fact that all intensional and extensional performed by the reader/viewer are actualized in relation to the linear lexical/visual manifestation of the picture book such as it appears linguistically and visually in lexematic and colorematic surface form (Eco, 1976; 1979; Saint-Martin, 1987). In Table 1, a horizontal line separates the actualized content from the given set of codes or subcodes the reader/viewer applies to these expressions of textual form as Discoursive Structures or Plastic and Perceptual Variables in order to transform them into meaningful content. The Reader: Lexical Codes and Subcodes Basic Lexical Dictionary. The reader utilizes the graphic and lexical signs provided by the text to construct the most basic semantic sense from semes, or minimal content units, embodied in the expression(s). This is a primary tentative attempt toward an amalgamation (in a general sense) from which meaning is created (Greimas, 1983; Eco, 1983). For example, the sentence /Effie is a gregarious ant/ contains composite syntactic and semantic indicators within the terms of the expression which function to elicit cognitive and affective responses in the reader. The noun /Effie/ is a deictic referent to a human name, that of a girl, or perhaps, a woman, which in itself promotes mental associations

43 INTENSIONS Lexical Visual Lexical EXTENSIONS Visual 32 Elementary Ideological Structures Visual Ideological Structures Textual World Structures: (Visual) Veridiction Assignment: truth values Visual corroboration: Actantial Structures Visual Actantial Structures Judgement 'of accessability of textual worlds visual truth matrixes, congruity judgements, (non) contiguity (cross-medial) Narrative Structures: Themes, motives functions (fabula) Visual Metaphorical Structures: Themes, motives, visual functions (cross-medial) Forecasts and Inferential Walks Visual Indexes: Visual Image Indicators Discoursive Structures: Semantic Disclosures Plastic and Perceptual Variables (Bracketed) Extensions: First references to a possible world Visual Anaphoric/Deictic Extensions: First references to a possible visual world Linear Lexical Manifestation Linear Visual Manifestation lexical Codes and Subcodes Visual Codes and Subcodes Basic Lexical Dictionary Rules of Co-reference Selections: Contextual and Circumstantial Overcoding: Rhetorical and Stylistic Common Frames Intertextual Frames Ideological Overcoding READER VIEWER Basic Visual Dictionary Rules of Visual Co-reference Selections: Contextual and Circumstantial Visual Stylistic Overcoding Common Visual Frames Intervisual Frames Ideological Overcoding Table l. A method for the semiotic analysis of the picture book.

44 33 representative of the properties of the word manifest in its human state (e.g., a woman as experienced, in reality, having human proportions and characteristics). The development of meaning-making is dependent upon the existence of a basic lexical dictionary in the conscious mind of the reader that can be drawn upon to reference associations stimulated by visual clues in the form of word arrangements. The syntactical properties (e.g., singular, feminine, noun, etc.) of the lexemes, or words, do not completely actualize the meaning potential of a total expression until connections between other terms in the expression are established through co-referencing. Thus, the isolation and actualization of the virtual semantic properties latent within lexemes is contingent upon the syntactic structuring of expression which facilitates the reader's semantic disclosures. Rules of Co-reference. The various shifters in the text work to orientate the reader on the basis of the first semantic analysis of the words (Greimas, 1988). /Effie/ as a sememic unit is undercut with reference to non-human associations since the noun qualifier /ant/ is semantically anaphoric in reexpressing and reestablishing a previously made semantic relationship. Initial reader expectations are also displaced with the realization that /Effie/ refers specifically to a non-human entity and the sememic level of meaning becomes redefined textually through the syntactic relations between lexemes (e.g., /Effie/^«human»; /Effie/=«ant»). Co-references are textually based and disambiguate meaning from surface to deep levels within the structure of the sentence (see Greimas, 1979). If this is not possible, the reader relies upon further textual clues for clarification. Contextual and Circumstantial Selection. Beyond the co-textual manifestations of meaning in the linear text (e.g., word forms), contextualized selections of meaning provide possibilities for correctly determining the reference of a term in comparison with other terms originating from the same semiotic system, such as in a language (Eco, 1979). In this case, reference is based upon an encyclopaedic knowledge framework where one lexeme can denotatively and connotatively generate a series of associations with which the reader may or may not be familiar as determined through experience. For example, a lexeme like /hen/ can refer to «bird» or «poultry» in different cultural contexts and point to radically diverse associations for each reader depending upon experience(s) of the lexical

45 34 sign as real world object. The distinction is actualized by the reader as possible interpretations of a word within an expression are selected and rejected according to textually suggested correlations of lexical signs with external referents which are used to build interprétants, or mental representations of signs. Circumstantial selection is based upon "bookish", or intertextual competence, and the ability to reconcile the presence of elements external or foreign to the semiotic code to which a particular text adheres. This might include aspects of vocabulary, specialized expressions or jargon. In narrative texts, circumstantial selections become contextualized, or are linguistically defined in order to avoid confusion (Eco, 1976; 1979; Iser, 1978). Rhetorical and Stylistic Overcoding. Rhetorical and/or stylistic cues alert the reader whether language is being used literally or according to aesthetic convention. For example, the phrase /Once upon a time/ is an overcoded expression in that the reader is in possession of and inserts the part of the code required to complete the purpose of communication (Eco, 1979). The reader is aware of and alerted to the fact that a story beginning with this overcoded expression is fictional and written according to a certain style commensurate within the genre expected. The interpretation of the textual indicator is not naive but purposeful in setting up and meeting structural or thematic expectations. To this end, rhetorical and stylistic overcoding can be used as a literary device in aesthetic texts. Inferences by Common Frames. Frames are data-structures which are used in lexical texts to represent stereotypical situations experienced in reality (Winston, 1977). There are specific elements within frames (courses of events, people, objects, actions, relations, and facts) outlining basic courses of cognitive action (perception and language comprehension) that are necessary to understand the situation as an experience (Eco, 1976; 1979). Beyond the visual aspects of a text, which will be discussed later, a narrative contains references to visual objects, the features of which are isolated and identified in order to create an overall common frame. For example, the lexical description of a farm might contain references to objects with visual dimensions (e.g., hen, pond, haystack, mill, etc.) in order to establish a particular context for the scene depicted recognizable to the reader as a common frame. The listing of these objects is in itself an

46 35 overcoding of the information required to understand the specific situation and the subsequent building of further data structures to complement the common frame. Inferences by Intertextual Frames. No text is read independently of the reader's experience of other texts (Kristeva, 1969). This is another example of overcoding where the extratextual experiences of the reader act as an encyclopaedic source for information which can be used to disambiguate a text. What Eco (1979) describes as literary topoi, or narrative schemes of understanding based upon intertextual frames of reference, may aid the reader to the extent that a text is immediately invested with properties that are the products of intertextual reference (see also Iser, 1978; Kristeva, 1969) (e.g., allusions to stock elements of literary experience such as "the villain", "the Cinderella tale", "the happy ending", etc.) Ideological Overcoding. Ideological structures are outlined discoursively within a lexical text through the progression of a narrative sequence of action. The extent to which the reader can grasp textual ideological structures is determined by a personal ideological subcode, or gestalt (Iser, 1978). If a text is open, it allows for interpretation against a different code and is personalized in being uniquely invested with subjective meaning (Eco,1976; 1979; 1984). In the case of a closed text, however, a given ideological background can help to uncover or to inhibit the operation of the text on the level of fabula. For example, ideological bias can work to switch codes and lead the reader to interpret the code manifest in the text aberrantly, or other than that intended by the writer. That is not to say that the reader can know precisely what aspect of the writer's ideological subcode is incorporated in the text; nevertheless, tentative ideological subcodes can be attributed to the writer when authorial judgements are isolated, usually in the form of philosophical statements (Eco, 1979) (e.g., in some instances, texts ask for ideological sympathy from the reader). For example, in the genre of fable, one may ask: What are the affects upon the reader of a story of an ant who, once exiled from a society of ants because of a naturally inherited physical trait, returns to heroically save the day because of that particular trait and now commands respect and love from those who once despised her? If the reader perceives the ant as being vindicated in the outcome of the action, then there is a

47 36 sympathy between the embodied textual, and implicit authorial, ideology and that of the reader. If not, then the ideological code of the reader succeeds in promoting an aberrant decoding of the text because of subjectivity. The Reader as Viewer: Visual Codes and Subcodes Basic Visual Dictionary. With reference to the recognition of basic properties of visual representations, if the form depicted in a visual text is distinctively analogous, or representational, the viewer is able to juxtapose figuramatic properties present in the form against the basic properties of natural forms as experienced in reality according to external visual paradigms. Forms are iconic to the extent that the actual properties possessed by corresponding real world referents, are reflected in and not possessed by the represented figures (see Morris, 1946; Eco, 1979). The conventionality of the imitative code of the visual text is brought to bear upon the expressive plane but the content plane, the meaning, may also be affected if the analogous image comes to arbitrarily represent something outside of itself. In such a case, the visual text becomes symbolic, or contains digital imagery expression and content of which are determined according to internal visual paradigms of a particular work or intervisualparadigms drawn from the viewer's other encyclopaedic sources (e.g., the fox as a symbol of «cunning», the color red representing «danger», etc.). Rules of Visual Co-reference. After the initial figuramatic analysis resulting in the detection of visual syntactic properties, the viewer disambiguates spatial, or toposensitive, relations among the forms in a pictorial plane. The first tentative attempts at visual coreference are confirmed by a more detailed scanning of the forms as co-textual items within the pictorial plane and subsequent judgements are noted mentally. In this way, the visual text doubly articulates meaning on both the expressive and content planes (Eco, 1976; 1979; Sonesson, 1989). (Visual) contextual selections and circumstantial selections. These are coded and displayed through the figure of form. To be considered iconic, the figures represented in a

48 37 text must exhibit properties that are distinguishing characteristics of particular types of form as determined by external visual paradigms. For example, an animal depicted visually can be distinguished by its physical characteristics; however, if the illustrator wishes to distinguish between two or more types of the same animal, then the properties endowed the animal in the illustration will be precise enough for the viewer to cognitively facilitate the distinction. It is the responsibility of the viewer to eliminate the possibilities of alternative selection while drawing from an encyclopaedic source of knowledge. Conversely, if the figures contained in the text are foreign to the viewer's experience, then the viewer must resort to some external point of reference for clarification. Quite often, the text contextualizes explanations of items foreign to the viewer in order to expediate the meaning making process. Visual Stylistic Overcoding. The cumulative elements which comprise the visual text are stylistic features coded within the work itself (e.g., the depiction of figures, choice of setting, perspective, color choice, variation in textures, etc.) and can not be extricated from the particular context of expression. These stylistic features act as overcoded cues in the visual text when the viewer is alerted as to whether a work are being used to meet structural or thematic expectations according to the purpose of communication. For example, an abstract treatment of form is a stylistic feature of visual text which in itself sets up a series of associations, expectations and judgements in the viewer with respect to the means of accepting, decoding and interpreting the images presented. Inferences by Common Visual Frames. Utilizing the definition posited earlier (see Inferences by Common Textual Frames), it is necessary to stress that common visual frames are not necessarily inchoate texts (see Eco, 1979; 1984; Saint-Martin; 1987). The features which create the overall common frame are identified and isolated visually to produce overcoding. For example, a farm scene could depict some of the major elements that are traditionally associated with rural agricultural life: particular animal types (e.g., hen, fox, goat, etc.); naturalistic settings (e.g., trees, crops to be harvested, grassland, etc.); farm architecture (e.g., barn, hen-house, farm-house, windmill, etc.); agricultural artifacts (e.g., tractor, cart, etc.). This can be described as a common visual frame because

49 38 of the stereotypical nature of the scene contents. Inferences by Intervisual Frames. It has already been stated that no text is read independently of the reader's experience of other texts. Where the external visual experiences of the reader are elicited to act upon a visual text, visual topoi, or visual schemes of understanding, may aid the reader to the extent that the work is immediately invested or overcoded with properties that are the products of intervisual frames of reference. The viewer must supply the necessary intervisual knowledge to make meaning from the visual text in this case (e.g., stylization of forms according to convention, symbolic shapes, other culturally relevant information, etc.). Visual Ideological Overcoding. In a visual text, the interaction between the forms depicted, both open and closed (see Arnheim, 1974), produces visual contexts consisting of formally structured pictorial elements which function on the thematic level to develop a distinct visual code objectifiable through recourse to language. The ideological interpretation of a visual text is dependent to a great degree upon the viewer's powers of visual perception because internal variables (e.g., the ability to perceive color, depth, topological disjunctions, etc.) may influence the interpretive outcome regardless of the openness or closedness of the text itself. Actualized Content: Lexical Intensions and Extensions Discoursive Structures The responses to the word level of a text must be actualized by the reader to allow further amalgamations. Meaning is created through semantic disclosures made by the reader relative to discoursive structures which isolate the manifested semantic properties of the lexemes that are virtually present in the reader's store of culturally based information (Eco, 1979; Greimas, 1988). Therefore, the words in a lexical text actualize no meaning without the reader. The topic, or theme, of the lexical text functions as a guiding force to

50 39 insure communication and to delimit the extent of possible semantic properties within the lexemes to be actualized by making them textually relative. The isotopies, or actual textual verifications of the topic, present in an expression also direct the meaning making process by providing a single level of sense from which the reader guides amalgamations (Greimas, 1983). (Bracketed) Extensions Once the discoursive structures of the text are actualized, the reader is certain of the characters, the actions and the events that comprise the plot, since, the intensional semantic disclosures performed by the reader are realized through the interplay of lexical structures in relation to and within a total narrative sequence. Suspension of disbelief is then facilitated by the first overt recognition of a possible world with an inherent underlying logic corresponding to that of the characters, the actions and the events in the plot (Hodge, 1990; Eco, 1979). Narrative Structures Whereas the plot is the basic action of the text, the basic elements from which the story is generated is the fabula: the make up of the characters, the inherent logic of the action(s) and the time-line action of events (Greimas, 1987; Eco, 1979). Realization of the fabula involves a continuous series of abductions, or inferences, experienced linearly by the reader in the process of disambiguating a narrative text (see Peirce, 1931; Eco, 1979). Ultimately, the reading process leads from micropropositions emanating from expectations initiated through semantic disclosures on the level of discoursive structures to more definitive macropropositions such as themes, motifs, narrative functions and the determination of various levels of abstraction regarding the fabula upon which the story itself generates meaning for any given action in the text (Eco, 1979; Greimas, 1983; 1988).

51 40 Forecasts and Inferential Walks Since the fabula is always experienced as a linear and sequential set of abductions, a disjointing effect is necessarily experienced by the reader, thereby marring the vicarious imaginative experience to some extent. An extension of the imagination to presuppose further action results in aporia, or concerned curiosity, at the major or relevant disjunctions of the fabula which are set at the level of plot. Here, the reader infers by gathering intertextual support for the hypotheses created through the discursive structures of the text. In this way, the expected and/or the unexpected is made explicit "as individuals and properties belonging to different possible worlds imagined by the reader as possible outcomes of the fabula" (Eco, 1979, p.218) Actantial Structures The lexical text, as narrative, works to verify reader forecasts with respect to the fabula (Eco, 1978; Greimas, 1983). Narrative is segmented into programs, or stories where the fabula and every other narrative structure can be further abstracted and reduced to formal positions which produce actantial roles (e.g., subject vs. object, sender vs. receiver) according to the modal predication of lexical actants, those acting and those acted upon, that function thematically on the level of discourse to produce actors, or characters (Greimas, 1970). The active interaction between the lexical actants within expressions on the level of discoursive structures creates thematic meaning as the fabula is unfolded through the interplay of actors in the narrative structures. Lexical actants take the roles of actors when the thematic functions of a text are reinforced as discoursive and narrative structures, thus, reliably pointing to meaning within a text. Elementary Ideological Structures In comparing and contrasting actantial and actorial structures manifest in the lexical text

52 41 so as to distinguish "textual truth", there is an acknowledgement of the verisimilitude of the fabula on the part of the reader. This implies a comparison of the textual world with the reader's own world vision and a suppression of further suspension of disbelief (Eco, 1979). Elementary ideological structure oppositions can be translated into truth assignments where the reader, utilizing already formulated schemata, makes ideologically motivated interpretive decisions about the ideology expressed in a given text. Textual World Structures Once "textual truth" has been accepted, the text is reduced to binary oppositions and there is a subsequent assignment of truth values between the textual world structures determined. The given relations between the lexemes at the actantial level are considered insofar as they are predicated in the textual world structures as true or false (Eco, 1976; 1979). Ultimately, the reader makes final decisions about the credibility of the text as a series of reported events, the sincerity in embodiment of ideological beliefs through convincing characters and the accessibility of the textual world as a fictional experience. Visual Intensions and Extensions Plastic and Perceptual Variables Just as the lexical text is constituted of the sum of individual features which work to create meaning as a whole, the visual text is comprised of readily identifiable elements that create a meaningful integrated form of expression. Consequently, the relationships between the manifest properties of coloremes, or minimal color units comprising a visual text, disclosed at a point of ocular centration during the act of viewing, may also be analyzed syntactically and semantically (Saint-Martin, 1987; Arnheim, 1974). The cumulative effect of two sets of visual variables, plastic and perceptual, upon the perception process, isolates the latent properties of the coloremes virtually present in the

53 42 viewer's store of culturally determined visual encyclopaedic knowledge (Gombrich, 1960; Saint-Martin, 1987). Exploring the general chromatic relations between coloremes in a particular pictorial text, creates an awareness of how the visual variables determined through the formal structure of the work interact with respect to the perceptual processes of the viewer and engender meaningful visual experiences. Color, value and texture are plastic variables while line, shape, form, vectoriality (focal point and directional tension) and implantation (position/balance) are perceptual variables (Saint-Martin, 1987). Visual Anaphoric/Deictic Extensions Anaphora, for language, is characterized as a network of a relations between two or more terms, on a syntagmatic axis, establishing linkages in discourse (Greimas, 1983). On the level of visual text, anaphora can be regarded as the unity and coherence between the elements which comprise the work that must be maintained to create pictorial sense. The recognition of form, from schema as objects, in a visual text is deictic because it is dependent upon the recognition of changes in the intensification or regrouping of coloremes aggregately within a visual field. Distinct contours between figures (open or closed) creates analogous forms isomorphic with reality and results in a stable and organized visual field; whereas, digital, or symbolic, forms rival viewer interpretation because distinct form contours may or may not be present within the figures. The spatialization, or placement of forms, within the fore, middle or background of a pictorial plane is a determinate of the viewer's interpretation of a visual text resulting from variables in perception(s) according to individual gestalten approximations derived from experience (see Arnheim, 1974; Saint-Martin, 1987). Ultimately, the viewer can discern visual forms in a definitive spatial relations and the setting of which they are a part, thereby, setting up a possible visual world that invites the suspension of disbelief.

54 43 Visual Metaphorical Structures It is primarily through closed forms that regions or subregions in a pictorial plane lend themselves to iconization and are interpreted in relation to the properties manifest in relative natural forms external to the world of the visual text (Eco, 1979; Saint-Martin, 1987). It is on the level of visual metaphorical structures that a verbalized equivalent can also be connected to the representation of form, thus, allowing for the linguistic differentiation of the pictorial elements of the text which adhere to vraisemblance, or display a direct correspondence with real world entities. In "global" terms, the extent to which the visual text reinforces the lexical text can be described as cross-medial agreement. If there is a direct correlation between the visual and lexical possible worlds projected, then an objective correlative, or concrete visual representation, of the possible world referred to on a total textual level is established and elaborated upon through linear visual narrative. If not, then there is a chiasmos, or separation, between alternative world visions posited, visual and lexical, that the reader must juxtapose as fabulaic alternatives. The products of this type of visual stylistic overcoding are literal and figurative visual frames which may or may not reinforce reader abductions irrespective of stylistic considerations. On this level, the visual text works to secure thematic considerations as well as the functions of visual metaphorical structures from which abstractions in the from of macropropositions of the visual fabula (e.g., themes, pictorial motifs, etc.) are abduced by the viewer. Visual Indexes Visual indexes are the result of generative or repressive cross-medial image indicators built into the conventions of the text as a supportive visual framework for the inferences drawn from the lexical text. Beyond replication of possible lexical world constructs, the visual indexes set up cross-medial frames of reference with respect to internal and external paradigms applicable to a particular text which suppress disjunction and support thematic concerns on the level of the "global" fabula by providing points for comparison/contrast

55 44 and clarification/elaboration upon the narrative structures of the lexical text through the linear visual narrative of the pictorial text. Therefore, the visual indexes serve to limit and define the viewer/reader's extensional responses in accord with the aesthetic conventions of the text by aligning the visual contexts appropriately to insure indexicality for the interpretation of signs and codes, lexical and visual, within a specific schematic and textual framework. Visual Actantial Structures Through the isolation of visual actantial structures, the viewer attempts to furnish hypotheses necessary for an analytical approach to the pictorial text as part of a sequential linear visual narrative. The viewer's approach to decoding, however, is non-linear but correlational in that the interaction of forms within the pictorial setting results in an awareness of the visual actants comprising a supersyntagm, or combination of elements copresent in the visual text, as they function to elicit thematic meaning (Saint-Martin, 1987) over an extended series of visual frames which constitute the visual fabula. The active or passive interaction of forms creates visual actantial roles (e.g., subject vs. object, sender vs. receiver) within the picture plane and as the visual plot is unfolded pictorially through the interplay of visual actants with distinctive thematic functions in the action and events of the linear visual narrative, the viewer is able to discern the visual actors. Visual Ideological Structures In essence, "textual truth" is determined pictorially when the visual text is acknowledged as 'real' and the subsequent assignment of truth values placed upon a particular form or relation(s) between forms, as visual actors depicted in a linear visual narrative, is correlated with the truth values disseminated by the same relations between relative actors in the narrative structures of its lexical compliment. The reduction of the visual text to propositions of binary opposition determines if there is an incongruency

56 45 which must be resigned before the lexical and visual texts are aligned on the level of fabula to consolidate the total ideological vision of the text. (Visual) Veridiction Through (visual) veridiction, there is an attempt at corroboration of assigned truths, both lexical and visual, within a single textual world structure. The extent to which the 'textual truth' assignments of the lexical text and visual text are aligned thematically on the level of fabula, determines the aesthetic success of the work as a whole and the viability of the vision embodied within it. Summary The method outlined in Chapter Three is the culmination of inquiry into the epistemological, theoretical and methodological presuppositions of semiotics (as derived from the discussion in Chapter Two) (see Eco, 1976; 1979; Greimas, 1983; Saint-Martin, 1987) relevant to the research problem: How does the textual form of the picture book work, both lexically and visually, as a system of signs and codes to create meaning? In itself, the method directly addresses the purpose(s) of the study (stated in Chapter One) by identifying, defining and explaining through the metatextual 'boxes' in Table 1 the signifying elements constituting the bifurcated nature of form in the picture book as well as the interaction between lexical and visual text in relation to the reader/viewer's intensional and extensional acts of meaning-making and interpretation.

57 46 CHAPTER FOUR THE SEMIOTICS OF THE LEXICAL TEXT Overview Chapter Four illustrates the specific applications of the method outlined in Chapter Three in a formal semiotic analysis of the signs and codes comprising the lexical text of the picture book Effie (Allison & Reid, 1990). Reference is made to how the reader constructs intensional and extensional meaning from the lexical component of a picture book in the form of cognitive, affective and aesthetic responses and to the type(s) and extent of semiotic interaction between the lexical and visual signs and codes which engender the genre's textual form. The pragmatic aspects of communication (Peirce, 1931) between the reader/viewer and the text are considered in Chapter Four (and later in Chapter Five) insofar as is relevant to the discussion. Intensional Semiotics: Discoursive Structures to Semantic Disclosures The graphic clues to meaning provided by the lexical text of a picture book are signs or cues enabling the reader's progression toward the construction of fundamental semantic sense from semes, or minimal content units, embodied in the expressions. On the lexematic level of the text manifesting codes and subcodes in discoursive structures, the reader must resort to a basic lexical dictionary, present in the conscious mind, as determined through culture and experience to actualize intensional responses. The meaning-making potential of the text on the lexematic level is also dependent upon the reader's encyclopaedic knowledge which can be accessed through the basic lexical dictionary of associations mentally stimulated by lexical cues. The sentence /Effie came

58 47 from a long long line of ants/ (Allison & Reid, 1990, p. I) 2 contains composite syntactic and semantic indicators within the terms of the expression which elicit the intensional cognitive and affective responses required of the reader to decode the discoursive structures of the lexical text. The lexeme /Effie/ is a proper noun referential to a human name of the female sex, perhaps a girl or a woman, and in itself exudes semantic associations representative of the properties of its human referent imbued within the lexematic form of expression (e.g., «a woman experienced in the real world as having human proportions and dimensions»). The syntactic properties of the lexemes (singular, feminine, noun, etc.) are not completely actualized in terms of meaning potential until the remaining connections with the other lexemes in a sentence are established through co-referencing. /Effie/, as a nominal lexematic form, is unusual because it is used rarely; therefore, an immediate reaction to the lexeme at the semantic level may necessarily be delayed until more information is dearchived from the reader's encyclopaedic knowledge of onomastic terms through abductions drawn from the syntactically determined co-references of remaining terms in the expression. Consequently, the first semantic analysis performed by the reader of the lexeme /Effie/ as a sememic unit, presenting a defining set of terms, is undercut with reference to non-human associations which are blown up rather than narcotized within the linear manifestation of the lexical text. The lexeme /ant/ qualifies the nominal noun and is anaphoric in reexpressing and reestablishing a previously made semantic relationship. The reader's expectations are then displaced with the realization that the lexeme /Effie/ refers not to a human form but a zoomorphic subject and the sememic level of meaning becomes redefined textually through semantic disclosures based upon syntactic associations between the lexemes: «Effie is not a human female entity but an ant». The lack of disjunction separating /Effie/ and /ant/ on the "deep" level points reliably to non-contrastive relations between the two lexemes and reveals a semantic resemblance, or conjunction, based upon the semic category of species. Consequently, the operative semic categories that form the fundamental semantics of the "deep" level contain the semantic categories that form the

59 48 elementary structures of signification and the relations and transformations which derive and constitute those structures, or fundamental syntax (Greimas, 1983). The semantic and syntactic component of the expressions define spatialization, temporalization and actorialization in terms of the narrative structures once the subject is disambiguated on the level of discoursive structures. non-ant non-human Figure 6. The deep level of /Effie/. In considering how the internal spatialization of setting is established on the lexematic level through the discoursive structures, it is necessary to examine how the syntactic and semantic conditions in the text lead to the actualization of the actor, or character, Effie within a particular context of actions and events in relation to other forms of conscious being referred to in the lexical plot which cumulatively engender a possible textual world. One aspect is the particular combination of the lexemes /Effie/, /long/, /line/ and /ants/ in a specific syntactic order which compels the reader to produce a series of co-references that

60 49 create a spatially ordered sense of "a world" as determined by the linguistic functions of terms (see Greimas, 1983). For example, the toponym /line/ modifies and is qualified by the repeated use of the adjective /long/ to create the following semic disjunction: /long/ v s expanse line non-line Figure 7. A semic conjunction and disjunction based on spatialization. The semic category length applied to /line/ enables the contrast in the expression between the form of ant being represented in the lexeme /Effie/, without a spatial context, to the form of ant being spatially delineated and referenced in the phrase /hundreds of others/ of the following sentence, by defining the relations of the subject to the collective form of being alluded to through the discoursive structures in terms of somatic lineage and formation, which are also spatial constructs of determination. Therefore, the figurativization allows for the specific point of conjunction and disjunction, resemblance or non-resemblance, dividing the lexical actants into subject vs. object, sender vs. receiver as individual actors in the narrative structures to be determined textually. Spatialization leads to actorialization through the individuation of being and the creation of actantial and thematic roles. The separation and segmentation of subjects on the actantial level creates a disjunction between the two discursive subject sets, /Effie/ (SI) and /the others/ (S2), and results in the actorialization of the lexical actants, which through the reader's initial semantic disclosures promoted by the discoursive structures in the lexical text, have previously been figurativized and identified as characters invested with zoomorphic traits and properties. The reader's affective responses to the characters can then be said to result in relation to the process of figuritivization. Semic iterativity within a syntagmatic chain, such as a phrase or sentence (Eco, 1984) establishes isotopy, or the coherence and homogeneity of text through textual verifications of the topic, or theme, which allows for the chain-linking of utterances in the progression

61 50 from discoursive structures to narrative structures. The discoursive structures of the first four pages of Effie adhere strictly to the actorialization of the lexical actants by facilitating the basic syntactic organization of expressions necessary for thematic roles to be defined through the isolation oiactorial isotopies in terms of subject vs. object, sender vs. receiver on the level of narrative: «Effie is an ant, with a history, who differentiates from other ants by possessing a thunderous voice from which the other ants wish to escape». From a linguistic point of view, the coherence of the text is ensured because the actor /Effie/ is figurativized and rendered permanent in the lexical narrative as the main subject around which all relations with other individual or collective actors are structured. The narrative structure of the lexical text can then be said to unfold through the manifestations of the subjects in different actantial positions within sentences while resulting in transformations of values which simultaneously institute, determine and qualify disjunctions between two or more discoursive subjects according to thematic roles (Greimas, 1970). individual actor /Effie/ (SI) vs. collective actors /others/ (S2) Figure 8. Textual actors in a relation of disjunction. It is obvious, however, that the discoursive topic governing the sequencing of the total narrative is always /Effie/, or more precisely, /Effie's voice/ and the resulting series of negative reactions to it are manifest in the actions and events of the plot acted out by the lexical actors on the level of narrative structures which is divisible into programs according to the actantial and thematic roles of the subject(s). Temporalization in the introductory narrative sequence (NSI) of Effie attempts to establish verisimilitude of the characters, the actions and the events comprising the lexical plot through the citing of an "historical'' point of reference, within the possible lexical world of the picture book, for the existence of an endomic creature named Effie. The narrative time frame is suggested in the use of the past tense verb /came/, in the expression

62 51 /Effie came from a long long line of ants/, to establish an in médias res, or interrupted temporal sequence of actions from past to present, where the action is delineated to have been predicated before the beginning of the present narrative at an undisclosed past time. The reader is placed in the middle of the action, with the implication here being that the forward progression of time begins from the point of first narrative utterance; hence, the creation of a viable fictional reality is based on the logic of an allusion to an historical past of the subject as verified in the temporal progression of the linear narrative. The illusion of verisimilitude, in this instance, leading to an initial suspension of the reader's disbelief. /came/ (prior to narrative utterance) vs. «will continue to come» (post narrative sequence) Figure 9. Temporalization of the possible world. The first sequence of the total narrative (pp. 1-4) is set up by a distinct temporal disjunction, between itself and the rest of the lexical text, through which the discoursive dominance of the actors /Effie/ and the /other ants/ is presented. The subsequent suggestion of a time frame as having elapsed at a specific, yet undefined, point in the past is indicated in the lexical text as /one day/ and the change of narrative sequence which allows for the altering of actantial roles and the substitution of dominant subjects (or objects) in the narrative structures is established. It is then possible for the lexical text to present the actorial motives which are necessary for the logic of the characters, the actions and the events within the lexical plot and for the creation of actantial and thematic roles. The discoursive strategies embodied within the text itself are validated through the inferences made by the reader at the level of narrative structures. From a semantic perspective, co-referencing is not established grammatically but narratologically as the blowing up and narcotizing of various properties of the lexemes occurs by means of an overall generative trajectory of linear and dynamic discourse progression. It is then possible, if required by the reader, to determine what function a particular word performs

63 52 in the total narrative. For example, the first narrative sequence works toward the figurative use of language in a simile which represents lexically the dysphoric, or negative connotations, resulting from the juxtaposition of the lexemes /voice/ and /thunder/ as binary opposites in terms of level of sound volume. The emotive power of the connotations associated with the mental concepts represented in the lexeme /thunder/ are relayed back to the mental concepts represented in the lexeme /voice/ relative to the subjects /Effie/ and /the other ants/ and this results in the separation of discoursive subjects dominating the narrative sequence at two polar axes according to the semic category of sound volume in terms of the isotopy /voice/. /Effie/ /ants/ Negative SI VOICE S2 Positive /thunder/ /tiny/ Figure 10. The figurativization of actors according to the textual topic. Accordingly, there is a natural disjunction set up lexematically on the level of narrative structures between the two discoursive subjects based upon the extent (or lack of) proclivity for the production of sound, defined as /voice/, in each lexical actor portrayed within the sequence. This is clearly defined to be the topic of the discoursive structures in the introductory narrative sequence. A first structural consequence derived from the description of Effie's voice as /thunder/ is to give the subjects a specific narrative trajectory and define the thematic roles (SI and S2) and modal predication of subjects in actantial structures by which the narrative is segmented into programs. A second result is to recognize the dimensions of semantic meaning evoked through the figurative manifestations of rhetorical language use in the expression /voice like thunder/. In this way, a denotation becomes a connotation linking the reader's cognitive and affective associational responses with one particular lexeme in modification of the subjects according to the polar axes of the

64 53 semic category in question. Since there is no literal level of explanation that can disambiguate the expression adequately in real world terms without the reader's full participation in acknowledging the special use of lexical terms for aesthetic affect(s) (see Eco, 1984), the relations between the concepts are meaningful insofar as they allow for the differentiation of terms from which meaning can be made and not the extent to which the terms share resemblance. SI /thunder/ vs. /tiny ant voices/ «non-tiny ant voices» «non-thunder» S2 Figure il. The thematization of the actors in terms of the textual topic. Extensional Responses: From Paradigms to Possible Worlds In order to determine how a reader/viewer responds aesthetically to a lexical or visual artistic work, it is necessary to examine how the rational intellect influences affective choices regarding the acceptability of a possible world vision depicted in a text according to cognitive and affective modes of understanding established through experience. We, as readers, bring to the text an encyclopaedic knowledge, developed in relation to culture through our real world and literary experiences, ready-made frames of reference in the form of extratextual paradigms and intertextual paradigms respectively (see Kristeva, 1969). These externally derived paradigms are automatically juxtaposed by the reader against the internal paradigms of the possible worlds depicted in an artistic text which embody an internally self-consistent logic of characters, actions and events, the particularized features of which, may well have no validity for, or application in, the extratextual world. Even though it may be somewhat speculative to generalize the extent to which paradigms are truly shared experiences without acknowledgement of the variables present in human nature

65 54 resulting from differences between individuals, the shared experiences of language and culture are a homogenizing effect which stabilizes what is the "norm" or "mean" expected from participants in a particular society. Consequently, it can be concluded that the members of a given culture share more common similarities than common differences in behavior and thought (Eco, 1976; 1984; Lotman, 1990). In the case of Effie, the total text, both lexical and visual, works toward the suspension of disbelief by narcotizing any ideological disjunctions which may be created between extratextual paradigms derived from the reader/viewer's encyclopaedic knowledge and the internal paradigms of the possible world portrayed in the picture book that would impinge upon and mar the vicarious aesthetic experiences promulgated by the artistic text. From the first narrative utterance, the reader is alerted to the fact that the story is fictional and not realistic, since, ants do not possess the human faculty of speech and it is extremely doubtful that in the history of the world there has ever existed an ant named Effie with anthropomorphic features of the kind objectified in the visual text. However, there are also the unique stylistic implications arising from the anthropomorphization of zoomorphic beings in both the lexical and visual texts which suppress the textual function of isolating the fictive elements of the story. Indeed, aspects of the possible world of Effie are set up in the lexical text which are in themselves believable as common frames of reference and reinforce the logic of the actions of the characters and the events related in the narrative structures to promote the reader's acceptance of the lexical fabula on its own terms. The lexical actants which develop figurativized actors, in themselves, all refer externally to familiar zoomorphic forms and are actualized as such through the particular actions and behaviors of the creatures described in the text that are synchronous with what is known to be expected from them through experience. These specific expressions of predication are chosen in relation to these acting subjects in order to justify figuritivization according to external paradigms. For example, a real world /caterpillar/ does in fact /wriggle/ as a means for locomotion and /split his skin/ in the natural metamorphosis to butterfly; a /butterfly/ is capable of being /blown away/ from the force of air pressure after /landing/ on a flower; a spider does, in a sense, /parachute/ to safety and a beetle does, in fact, hide all appendages

66 55 while /spinning/ topsy-turvy. The aesthetic function of the lexical text is to establish a realistic point of reference for the physical behavior of the subjects, as reinforced by predicates derived from extratextual paradigms in order to to legitimize intellectually, for the reader, the fictional portrayal of the zoomorphic forms by actualizing a possible textual world which corresponds to external reality in degree. A reader/viewer is, therefore, more likely to accept the non-realistic visual representation of a napkin-bibbed spider, with an expression of delight, holding a salt shaker in expectation of a potential victim who will make a tasty treat, if the lexical text does not contradict, but remains neutral to or supports, the aesthetic purpose of the code being developed in the possible visual world. Consequently, the obvious lack of specification in the lexical text about the pictorial forms depicted (e.g., few adjectives) allows for the support of the aesthetic function of the text by visual elements which act as stylistic indicators and compliment the purpose of communication by providing an overfurnished set of possible world structures. Whereby, the reader/viewer is forced to reassess the content of the message conveyed in the lexical text in order to comprehend the coding processes through which the lexical expressions and the visual expressions are structured textually. The aesthetic sign-functions in the lexical and visual texts of the picture book are based upon the reader/viewer realizing a process of code altering where the communication act elicits highly original responses (Eco, 1976). For example, the new and surprising portrayal of the spider (as discussed previously) in the visual text alters our perception of the 'world of spiders' by allowing the one to emote upon the concept through connotations which are built upon the normal sign-function elicited in the lexical and pictorial representation of «spider» and results in either positive or negative feelings which produce a response in the reader/viewer based upon the deviation from the "norm" either definitional or stylistic. From this point of view, the total text of Effie, as expression and content, becomes unpredictable and semantically ambiguous because multiple interpretations of the visual and lexical texts can abound which brings into play different codes that upset the reader/viewer's already acquired knowledge structures, or schemata, and cognitive and affective modes of understanding developed in relation to experience.

67 56 Eco (1979) explains, The contextual interaction brings to life more and more meanings and, as soon as they come to light, they seem fraught with yet other possible semantic choices...the addressee 'senses' the surplus of both expression and content, along with their correlating rule. This rule must exist, but to recognize it requires a complex process of abduction, hypotheses, confrontations, rejected and accepted correlations, judgements of appurtenance and extraneity (pp ) For example, intertextual frames of reference may provide the reader with the necessary background information to comprehend how the duality of meaning is structured figuratively in the first narrative utterance where the lexeme /line/ plays upon two distinct denotations each of which implies an altered perception of the lexical plot and influences the consequent mental construction and construing of the possible world on the level of lexical fabula. For the reader attempting to define the term /line/ within a definite semantic field which would allow for trouble-free decoding of the lexeme, it becomes necessary to examine why (and by extension how) the text is intentionally ambiguous in specifying the correlating rule between the expression and the content. The sentence /Effie came from a long long line of ants/ plays punningly upon the reader's ability to contextualize selections from an encyclopaedic knowledge framework in order to determine the definitive meaning of the lexeme /line/ as qualified by the epithet /long/. The semantic possibilities for the denotation of meaning in lexical terms, normally actualized and reinforced textually as sememes, are not readily isolated through the discoursive structures of the picture book in this instance because the visual text works to support one denotation (Dl) while not totally suppressing another denotation (D2) suggested by the lexical text (and vice versa).

68 57 Dl: /line/ = common ant formation vs. D2: /line/ = lineage; ancestral descent Figure 12. Possible denotations of /line/ actualized by the reader. The hybrid use of visual and lexical sub-codes to convey semantic sense by guiding reader/viewer disclosures, in fact, promotes the textual ambiguity which causes the humorous tone of the sentence as a result of the conflict of contrasting definitive isotopies presented in the visual and the lexical texts that generate tension between the two sub-codes and the potential for an aberrant decoding of the lexemes. The meaning of the lexeme /line/ then becomes equivocal because the visual text amplifies and objectifies the virtual properties of what one may perceive to be associated with an «ant line», while the lexical text is left open to sememic substitutions that are at odds with the pictorial portrayal (see Eco, 1976; Greimas, 1979). This is an example of stylistic/rhetorical overcoding, or a type of aesthetic ideolect, where the expression alerts the reader to the certain conventional use of language doing things with words and the reader must insert the part of the code required to complete the aesthetic purpose of communication (Eco, 1976). It is at this point that the reader may make abductions and predictions as to the unfolding of the lexical or visual fabuli. Cognitive and Occurential States: Doing and the Subject The micropropositions actualized through the reader's initial semantic disclosures enable the progressive abstraction leading to macropropositions of the lexical fabula, from the lexical plot, in the form of first references to a possible world. In order for the reader to move beyond the level of semantic disclosures, however, there are two types of doing consummated by the subjects in a tract of narrative discourse which must be considered:

69 58 occurential, or pragmatic, doing (which is a physical form of action) and cognitive, or psychic, doing (whose object is the attainment of knowledge) (Greimas, 1983). Greimas (cited from Blonsky, 1985) explains the nature of the cognitive subject in relation to doing and narrative structure, Cognitive doing is true doing [sicl it has a subject and that subject aims at an object. In that way we can write that as an entire narrative programme. However, if you take cognitive doing, the subject intends an object but that object is, as we said, knowing; it involves knowing what? Another object, and especially what I call the doing of someone with someone else. (p. 345) The textual predication of the cognitive subjects in the form of lexical actants is set up as interpretive doing and takes the form of verbalized (dialogic) and non-verbalized (occurential) doings (see Greimas, 1970; Bakhtin, 1981). The process of cognitive doing can be further broken down in modality to states of active and passive transmission and reception (Greimas, 1983). The different cognitive operations performed during these psychic states are indicative of the modes of conscious behavior exhibited by the actantial subjects as actors. Two questions now arise: 1) As the possible subject of an occurential verb or as a subject of its own cognitive doing, what does the presence of bidimensional levels of a subject's doing within the lexical text indicate?; and 2) What establishes the conjunctions and disjunctions between the various actants in the lexical text on the basis of doing? The act of communication is a conscious attempt at the transmission of knowledge from internally motivated sources and the reception of knowledge which in turn stimulates its interpretation. In the picture book Effie, cognitive doing as the transmission of knowledge is a dynamic and self-directed process performed by the active subject on both the pragmatic, or plot-line level of occurrences, and cognitive, or knowledge seeking, axes. For example, the sentence /Effie set out to find someone who would listen to her/ (p.5) displays the pragmatic as well as the cognitive dimensions of active doing initiated by the subject in relation to the object with a definite will, purpose and desire. When the

70 59 protagonist attempts to communicate with other zoomorphic forms in the possible world of the lexical text, the main object of the pragmatic action is to acquire cognitive knowledge about the doings of those deemed potential interlocutors. The modality of transmission is determined from the subject in relation to the object and results in the predication of doing where there is a wanting-to-do without knowing-how-to-do which leads to disappointment because the cognitive reception of the knowledge by the objects (or other cognitive subjects) of the communication act in the actantial role of receiving the transmission of a message from the sender, is most typically interpreted negatively as /noise/ in the narrative sequences constituting the first narrative program (NP1). The reader's resulting awareness of the functions of the subjects as actants in the narrative structures (e.g., active subject vs. passive object) leads to macropropositions regarding the total elements of the story engendered within the lexical text. A third type of cognitive doing, exhibited in a later narrative sequence (refer to NSVIII), can be categorized as the already interpreted reception of communicated information. It is represented textually in Effie by the active avoidance, or escape, of any cognitive doing, either the communication of, or the reception of, knowledge on the part of the other cognitive subjects with respect to the protagonist. Figure 13. A representation of the levels of a subject's doing.

71 60 Lexical Actants and the Modality of Discourse In essence, the point of convergence and investment of both the syntactic and semantic components on the levels of discoursive semantics and narrative syntax creates actors from actantial subjects with at least one thematic role and one actantial role through which the cognitive and occurential doings as a series of actorial transformations are worked out temporally in the plot. The segmenting of narrative sequences according to temporality disjunctions makes possible the analysis of the lexical text in which the principle actantial roles of the subjects are defined and interdefined in the concatenation of utterances that form syntagms within distinct narrative programs belonging to a larger narrative trajectory (see Greimas, 1988; Hjelmslev, 1943; Eco, 1979). The syntactic role of a subject in a narrative sequence is not stationary but in a constant state of flux with respect to its occurential and cognitive doing at a given time frame in the narrative program. It is the seeking of new positions to occupy in the paradigmatic organization of the discourse as syntagms which compose the narrative structures forming the elementary level of surface narrative syntax that enables the subject to accomplish its function in the total narrative trajectory. The thematic objectives and goals which constitute the functions entailed by the subject with regard to the total narrative schema are then actualized textually on the level of thematic content. There are thirteen narrative sequences (NSI-NSXIII) in Effie documenting the transformation of the protagonist from villain-exile to heroine and the subsequent transformations of the other subjects in terms of cognitive and occurential doing (see Appendix D). Greimas (cited from Blonsky, 1985) explains the progressive functions of subject-actant transformations in narrative discourse, The hero becomes a hero only at a given moment in the narrative route; earlier he was not a hero, and perhaps at a given moment he will cease to be a hero... A journey often characterized by acquisition of competences... Thus we can call a hero a competent subject who has the will to do and power to do. That is a hero. If there were no will to do, there would be no hero, but what if one can will but not be able to do? (p. 347)

72 61 Consequently, the dynamic nature of the hero is determined by the "lack" or "absence of lack" (see Propp, 1928; Greimas, 1970) of the subject, as actor, at a given time with respect to other subjects also predicated in a particular narrative route. Explained grammatically, the modifications of the predicate are incurred by the syntactic position of the lexical subject at various points in the narrative route and reveal the modality, or syntactic organization of discoursive structures, where the subject acting upon a corresponding object modifies its predication and defines the actantial roles of both lexemes as subject vs. object, sender vs. receiver thus resulting in the creation of thematic roles for each of the lexical actants according to the terms of relation. The sentence /Whenever she spoke, the whole nest of ants ran to get away from the noise/ (p. 4) contains a definite modality manifest expressedly in the discoursive structures within a hypotactic structure specifying "the hierarchical relation linking the two terms situated at two different stages of derivation (e.g., the relation between main and subordinate clauses, between modified and modifier, etc.)" (Greimas & Courtes, 1979, p. 145) in terms of the subject's doing versus being. Referring to the protagonist, the lexical subject /she/ takes on an actantial role of sender in relation to the expression /the whole nest of ants/ which embodies the receiver of the message in the object /ants/ within the planes of cognitive and occurential doing. On the one hand, the subject/sender /she/ (SI) wishes to establish cognitive and occurential lines of communication with the collective subject /ants/ (S2) who, manifest in the discoursive structure of the sentence as object/receiver, wish to avoid the cognitive and occurential reception of the message because of previously interpreted knowledge about the means of transmission (e.g., Effie speaking = /noise/ = «discomfort»). The cognitive competence of the subject that presupposes performative doing, being-able-to-do and knowing-how-todo, in the context of the relationship between the sender and the receiver of the message in any act of communication is absent here. There are two reasons which explain why Effie is incompetent in the act of communication: 1) because of the loud voice she possess; and 2) because she is naive to the fact that her voice is unbearably loud for the other animals. Consequently, the cognitive and occurential communicative objective of the subject/sender can not be fulfilled in this

73 62 instance with respect to the object/receiver. The lexical actants can, therefore, be examined in terms of conformity and non-conformity to the deixes in question (e.g., voice and sound volume), as represented by the semiotic square, and their disjunction can be determined upon a paradigmatic axis as "elements that can occupy the same place in the syntagmatic string, or, in other words, a set of elements each of which is substituted for the other in the same context" (Greimas & Courtes, 1979, p. 224) (see Appendix C). If we consider which other lexemes in the course of the narrative program may be substituted for the particular lexical actants in this sentence and maintain the same semantic sense as well as the paradigmatic disjunctions established through the syntax of the discoursive structures, then the issue begins to take on contextual implications as there must be an equivalence of thematic roles between the different lexical actants for substitution to be possible (see Appendix D). Functions, Motives and Thematic Roles "Functions as units of action are narrative invariants, while the agents performing those actions are textual variables" (Nôth, 1990, p. 371; see also Propp, 1928; Eco, 1979; Greimas, 1983). Therefore, the narrative utterance, defined as NU=F(A) (where NU=narrative utterance, F=function and A=actant), is based upon a logic of relationships between the thematic counterparts of actants operationalized in the possible lexical world of the text as actors according to the categories of "knowledge", "desire" and "power" (see Greimas, 1983). Thematic roles embody an entire narrative program made up of shifts in temporal sequence and are capable of actualizing and of summing up, through syntactic analysis, the body of cognitive and affective mental activities performed by the reader to make the necessary linkages between the actantial roles accomplished by lexemes on a syntactic-grammatical level and the resulting thematic roles on a semantic-content level which creates characters, or actors. From this perspective, if we look at occurential doing, or pragmatic action, in a narrative tract and define it on a grammatical level but with semantic investiture, it is possible to glean from the analysis a thematic element that

74 63 produces the semantic field of logic from which the occurential level of narrative can be structured and wherein it lies (Eco, 1979; Greimas, 1983). ants denigrative + escape communicative search (Cognitive) Effie (Occurential) Figure 14. Thematic roles of the subjects in terms of cognitive and occurential doing. In Effie, the thematic roles both cognitive and occurrential are derived from the semantic disclosures which result in the "deepest" levels of intensional meaning making that place the actants in a syntactic relation of binary opposition determining searcher vs. escapee and communicator vs. denigrator. The predication of the action in the expression /ran to get away from/ in NSI concretizes the actantial roles of the subjects around which the narrative sequence (and all of NP1) is syntactically structured for the reader to semantically realize the virtual properties of the language manifest on the lexematic level in the form of figures that are extended into discourse configurations through the thematic roles of the actants. (see Appendix D) The discoursive level of structure also aims at eliciting the processes utilized by the reader to test expectations and forecasts on the level of the lexical fabula. To recognize a given lexical fabula, the reader must first identify a narrative topic, or main theme, through abductions built from micropropositions to macropropositions during the course of reading. The abduction process functions as a series of cumulatively effected mental hypotheses to be tested through trial-and-error against the actual textual verifications of the lexical fabula. Narrative sequences one to thirteen in Effie contain parallel actantial structures embodied in three thematic roles manifest by two main actors, Effie and the

75 64 object searched out to talk with: NSI-XI: subject vs. object [searcher vs. escapee] sender vs. receiver [communicator vs. denigrator] NSXI-XIII: helper vs. opponent [rescuer vs. adversary] Figure 15. The narrative as determined by actantial and thematic roles. Ironically, the actor Effie is the simultaneous textual representation of the narrative functions performed by the villain-exile, the helper and the heroine. This is a literal contradiction but it is figuratively and thematically plausible in the possible world of the lexical text if we consider the sum total of narrative utterances as two separate narrative programs (NP1/NP2), or story lines, based upon the actantial and thematic roles of the main textual subject, /Effie/. Then, the first phase of the story in NP1 ends after NSX where the protagonist transforms from villain-exile to heroine in the form of helper and adopts a new actorial role as actantial and thematic subject in relation to other subjects within the cognitive and occurential doing of the second narrative program (see Appendix D). The sequencing of NP1 and NP2 in figure of functions reveals the importance of the original conjunction and disjunction based upon individual physical characteristics set up between Effie, as an actor, and the subsequent subjects presented in the lexical text. The introductory narrative sequence, NSI in NP1, thematizes the actantial role of the subject /Effie/ through the relationships created between the lexical subjects according to the categories of "knowledge", "desire" and "power" and defines the actors which will isolate the functions, or actorial roles, through the narrative sequence of utterances on micro/macro levels (Propp, 1928; Greimas, 1983; Eco, 1976). The comparison of /Effie/ with /the other ants/ in NSI can be said to be the result of a gradual process of isolating through the reader's semantic disclosures the physical properties, both natural and static (immutable),

76 65 natural and kinetic (mutable), that are common to the actors in the sequence and to differentiate later through disjunctive contrasts the virtual properties of the lexemes that will be necessary to distinguish between textual actors on the thematic level. While functioning as textual subject-actant and possessing both thematic and actantial roles to single out the themes of search, escape and isolation which are reiterated in the plot structure from NSI to NSX, /Effie/, as a lexeme, is invested with potential textual meaning Effie is a gregarious ant with a large mouth with a natural compunction for loud conversation whom other ants and animals wish to escape from cognitive or occurential contact with. Actantial Structures and the Level of Fabula The conceptualization of fabula is the result of the continuing series of abductions made by the reader about the possible world of the text and is experienced step-by-step during the course of the reading act with regard to how the textual actors change or develop at each phase of the story (Eco, 1979). Left to wonder, the reader, therefore, sets up probabilities and disjunctions about the characters, the actions and the events during the course of the narrative in the form of macropropositions. The reduction of the fabulaic elements of the lexical text into a series of narrative structures (à la Propp, 1928) is an inevitable prerequisite in order for the reader to travel further toward the "deepest" intensional levels of meaning that the lexical plot reveals as manifest in the actantial structures of the lexical text from which to abstract the lexical fabula. The reduction of those same elements to binary opposites in the form of conjunctions and disjunctions (see Bremond, 1970; Greimas, 1983) can then be performed to identify the elementary ideological structures of the text. The text, however, in narrating the steps of its own construction at the linear level of manifestation, creates its own model reader. It guides the reader from beginning to end in how to read it through the steps of its production (Eco, 1979; Greimas, 1983; Iser, 1978) and elicits specific expectations on the level of the lexical fabula. For example, through subdivisions in chapters, paragraphs and other graphic devices determining lexical text construction, the temporal distribution of

77 66 narrative action is spread across the surface intensional levels as warnings, connotative hints, allusions, innuendoes, devices of suspense, archetype, etc., which lead the reader to expectations and forecasts in the form of propositional statements (Eco, 1979). The confirmation or contradiction of the reader's hypotheses is then settled in the final outcomes of the lexical fabula in terms of veridiction, or "truthfulness" of textual world structures, and are validated by the accessibility of the possible world depicted. After NSI, it can be forecast by the reader that Effie's voice will offend other creatures in the possible world created within the narrative structures of the discourse. The interplay of lexical actants is set up according to the functions of the actors that govern the form of the narrative utterances by establishing distinct thematic roles to be acted out in the plot. Therefore, the narrative sequences are paralleled with respect to the main actantial subject /Effie/ as determinant of the lexical plot and lexical fabula. It is indeed expected that the reader infer this important conclusion in order to predict the subsequent progression of the lexical plot as a series of failed attempts at communication by the protagonist through which the lexical text engenders an elementary ideological framework manifest as world structures: Good vs. Bad, Positive vs. Negative, Life vs. Death, Nature vs. Culture (Greimas, 1983). What is considered acceptable or unacceptable in the possible world created according to the textual world structures established through the reader's abductions of the lexical fabula, is held up for scrutiny and judged according to the reader's already formulated schemata. Ultimately, to create a sense of empathy for the character as victim of her own prowess, the actantial structures in the lexical text of Effie work toward the thematization of the terms by which competence is measured in its possible world. It is true that Effie may be "mistress of mayhem" but it is a naive and inadvertent malice caused by an immutable character trait deemed as flawed within the possible world of the lexical text which brings about the succession of accidents that occur through the interplay of the characters during the course of narrative action. The succession of failed attempts at communication because of the lack of understanding displayed by other actors is the reason for the gradual isolation and resulting insularization of the protagonist. This leads to visual and verbalized textual expressions of the actor's feelings of inferiority and self-pity through which an emotional

78 67 identification between the reader and the protagonist is achieved a bond of psychic and emotional pathos for the plight of essentially a likable character who is pray to fortune and bound to physical nature. Consequently, the dramatic tension in the plot is heightened since the narrative structure of the lexical text, as reinforced by the visual text, works toward the movement of epiphany, or revelation, where the protagonist's true heroic potential is actualized in the suspenseful climax of events. Archetype, Genre and the Hero It is at this point that the reader cannot distinguish between the possible imagined events and the events as they have actually occurred to that point of the story (Eco, 1979; Lotman, 1990). Therefore, the reader bases his/her thinking upon intertextual frames of reference rather than logic (Eco, 1979), the essential criteria being verisimilitude of the lexical fabula to events having previously occurred in other stories. Also, the intertextual frames of reference, or experiences of other stories where animals are endowed with human characteristics and pursue both psychological and physical human goals, accessed by the reader, make the story of Effie more palatable as fiction and stimulate the suspension of disbelief; since, the reader may refer to these intertextual frames as ready made literary topoi, or common narrative schemes of understanding, according to the structural archetypes set up through genre (Frye, 1957; Eco, 1976; 1984). In providing an intertextual frame of reference for the reader, the story line in Effie is a rather common adaptation of the literary archetype containing the anti-heroine in the low-mimetic mode (Frye, 1957) of "Cinderella" or "The Ugly Duckling", where through the intervention of a helper, in the form of either a preternatural or natural agent, the protagonist succeeds in gaining peer acceptance and secures a happy ending. In fact we have come to expect the anthropomorphic characterization of zoomorphic life forms in children's literature since we, as a culture, name animals in an effort to befriend them and rationalize the logic of the relationship between human and non-human beings through anthropomimesis. It is in this sense that Effie is a fable and can be read and interpreted on at least two levels: 1) the

79 68 story of an ant with a special power of voice or 2) an animal story containing a moral lesson and allegorical to some degree when juxtaposed against the human condition. The story of Effie is poised toward the tragic until the commoedic peripeteia, or reversal (used here in a non-tragic sense) where, again through naively motivated action, the protagonist is transformed from well-meaning villain-exile to unexpected heroine. Even if it is not specifically stated in the lexical text in order to reinforce the mood of suspense until the fabula unfolds naturally as a complete course of "global" narrated events, the reader may suspect such an outcome as elicited through macropropositional abductions. For example, when the reluctant interlocutors return in haste toward Effie in NSX, there is a definite attempt at communication made by two of the other subjects (e.g., the spider says /At a time like this?/ and the caterpillar interjects /Run for your life/) What the reader is left to abduce from the dialogue and the pragmatic action in the visual sequence is that danger is imminent and the threat is serious enough to propel the actors toward a previously interpreted and known danger Effie. The protagonist, however, decontextualizes the action and misinterprets it as a change of heart on the part of the other subjects. At this point, the reader is more aware of the gravity of the situation than is the protagonist who still pursues the original motives for communication and is left perplexed. This is revealed in the questions posed by Effie (e.g., /You've changed your mind?/, /Welcome back!/, /Have you come to talk with me?/) all uttered by the protagonist under the adverbial qualification of /hopefully/. It is clear that Effie has misunderstood the cognitive and occurential dimensions of the action of communication as well as the motives for the attempt. From a semiotic perspective, the message has been decoded aberrantly through the proxemics, or body language, of the figures portrayed in the text according to a physical code of actions where the protagonist interprets the cognitive and occurential doing of the other actors in light of previous experience. For a short while, the reader may actually be encouraged into a temporary identification of knowledge with that of the character because of the sympathetic viewpoint nurtured in the picture book by the portrayal of the protagonist up to that point in the lexical and visual texts. The visual and lexical texts working in cross-medial agreement provide the clues necessary to deduce the relational

80 69 logic which leads to the correct macroproposition that subsequently disambiguates the textual subcodes at a later point in the narrative. Life search vs. escape Death communication denigration Figure 16. The motivation for doing in the narrative. Superimposing the motive for the act of communication upon the doings of the actors in the specific situation enables the reader to decode the message as «danger», whereas, the protagonist confuses the motives for the action by relating the action to a context determined through personal ideological sympathies; therefore, Effie cannot easily interpret the message through the action in the plot which results in the verbally externalized search for a possible motive. The Semiotics of a Possible World: Textual World Structures The notion of possible textual worlds is situated in the framework of two types of modal logic manifest in the lexical text discussed thus far: 1) the logic of perception and 2) the logic of actions (Petôfi, 1973; Eco, 1979). Eco (1979) defines the concept of possible worlds as follows: (i) a possible world is a possible state of affairs expressed by a set of relevant propositions where for every proposition either p or ~p ; (ii) as such it outlines a set of possible individuals along with their properties ; (iii) since some of these properties or predicates are actions, a possible world is also a possible course of events ; (iv) since this course of events is not actual, it depends on the propositional attitudes of somebody; in other words, possible worlds are worlds imagined, believed, wished, and so on (p. 219).

81 70 The concept of the possible world is essential for examining the notion of inferential walks or forecasts of the lexical fabula and for discriminating between the process of actualizing discursive structures through semantic disclosures and ascertaining an extensional framework for the analysis of lexical text. It helps avoid the problems associated with textual intensions by providing an overfurnished set of textual elements that compose world structures complete with acting individuals possessing properties and performing psychic and somatic actions in the courses of possible events. Therefore, the inferential walks, expectations and predictions both within and without the world of the text, concern different possible outcomes of the lexical fabula imagined by the reader rather than the actualization of the lexical and textual meaning according to semantic disclosures made in relation to the reader's basic lexical dictionary. A possible world, however, is definitely a rational cultural construct because it arises from the reader's experience as encyclopaedic knowledge (of which the basic lexical dictionary is a component) where the framework for the lexical fabula "is a mere spatio-temporal meeting of physical qualities, relations with other characters, actions performed, or passions suffered" (Eco, 1979, p. 221). For example, the fact that the discourse reveals that Effie is an /ant/ leads the reader to a certain set of cognitive and affective mental operations whereby the semantic disclosures are referenced in terms of a real world entity in relation to the lexical term; however, the substitution of the reader's real world conception of «ant» with its representation in the possible lexical and visual world of the text is established through the cross-referencing of paradigmatic indexes, non-textual and textual, that support the imaginary characterization of the ant with anthropomorphic properties as in the visual context (e.g., the power of speech, human-like teeth, footwear, human emotions, etc.) through which the fictive is established by actualizing the semantic content of the lexematic level of discoursive structures. The real world references to individuals and their properties in a state of affairs (situation) is essential and practical since no fictional world is or can be totally autonomous as a schema for a possible world and still be consistent in providing a comprehensible plot, a viable fabula and convincing actors. There must be reference to some real world constructs in the form of individuals, anthropomorphic or zoomorphic, their properties and

82 71 events or situations which are in fact representational cultural constructs because a possible world interpretation is idiosyncratic in its dependence upon individual conceptualization systems and ideational schemata (see Eco, 1979). The fact that a text is subject to potentially different readings due to individual experiences results in interpretive openness. It may be conceivable in the possible world set up by the lexical text of Effie that zoomorphic forms (insects and mammals) are capable of anthropomorphic type communication and this fact may well be compatible with some individual ideologies or cultural attitudes but incompatible with others. Even so, there is a certain amount of narcotizing of some properties and blowing up of others on the level of discoursive structures through semantic disclosures which must occur for this trope to be accepted as an integral literary and visual stylistic device. The diagnostic measure by which the validity of the properties given to the individuals are judged on the basis of logicality or factualness is in essential relation to the textual topic pertinent to the discourse on the level of narrative. Consequently, the accessibility of the possible world is affected because it is the discoursive topic which outlines the textual world structure(s), not in a broad or "global" sense (Eco, 1979), but as a narrow determinate used for its interpretation in relation to the real world as represented mentally and referenced linguistically in the reader's encyclopaedia of associations. Therefore, the textual verifications of the topic (as discussed earlier in isotopy) actually limit the associations which are established as possible world structures because the discoursive topic is very specific in identifying and guiding the semantic association on levels of meaning analysis. Through the reader's semantic disclosures, the characters, the actions and the events in the plot of Effie are determined specifically to produce a possible world which engages the reader's imaginative identification and aesthetic cooperation in the suspension of disbelief whereby the fictional purpose of communication is acknowledged and accepted. The fact that the realism of the textual world structures projected in the picture book does not coincide with or correspond to the world actualized outside of the lexical text does not limit cognitive and affective mental associations or aesthetic responses that aid the reader's construction and experience of the fictional world of Effie, but

83 72 promotes the juxtaposition of the actual, or real, world structures with the possible, or fictional, textual world structures and corresponding individuals with specified properties in the picture book. Actual World «ant» W Q : XI speech clothes emotions looks (-) Fictional World «ant» W, : X Figure 17. Contrastive properties of the subject in two world structures. In essence, the two individuals (XI and X2) depicted in the two world structures (W 0 and Wi) are not the same individuals but X2 is a supernumerary to XI since it differs in essential properties and, through disjunction, results in the stylization of X2 as an anthropomorphized version of XI. The stylistic difference of personification within the two world structures is necessary for the lexical fabula of the possible world with respect to characters' actions, wishes, beliefs and motives to be viable in the genre of the fable and to be ideologically successful in conveying the dianoia (as an overall theme or didactic purpose) of the text. In essence, the textual world structures manifest in the lexical text reflect a selfregulated possible world established by the author through language to guide the reader on two codic levels: 1) a deigetic code, or the narrative aspect of discourse construed as the relations between the lexemes at an actantial level which are predicated in the textual world structures as true or false (see Eco, 1979; Greimas, 1983); and 2) a proairetic code, where the code of actions contained in the lexical text treated thematically as a syntagmatic unit yields a moral lesson (Barthes, 1964; Frye, 1957). It is the combination of textual world structures related through narrative and the direction of the narrative programs of the lexical text that give rise to thematic oriented questions in the reader which require answers: Why does the ant speak? What does that mean? Is there a reason for giving the ants and other zoomorphic beings human traits? Is the protagonist's voice really as abrasive as the text

84 73 indicates? Does the protagonist have no redeeming features that merit the reward of friendship? The answers to those and similar questions are thematically oriented since, in this particular instance, Effie as a text is closed because "it is immoderately 'open' to every possible interpretation" (Eco, 1979, p. 8) and is determined by genre and fictional, as well as, moral purpose. As a traditional literary archetype of westernized culture, the fable is engendered with specific attributes which the reader has come to expect of the genre. Even a beginning reader who is in the process of developing intertextual competence is alerted to similarities and differences in story elements which are assimilated and determined through the overall thematic intentions of a specific genre. The textual world structures manifest in fable, of which Effie is a representative work, demand the temporary freezing of what the reader has come to expect from the realistic genre of fiction and promote an acceptance of the nonmimetic function of the text as it turns inward on itself centripetally (see Bakhtin, 1981; Frye, 1957; Lotman, 1990; Todorov, 1977; Hirsch, 1983). Scholes (1974) explains, Every literary text is the product of a pre-existing set of possibilities. Therefore, literary study must operate by proceeding from the set of possibilities toward the individual work, or from, the work toward the set of possibilities which is in fact a generic concept. Genres are the connecting links between individual literary works and the universe of literature (p. 128). Genres are also connecting links between the writer and the reader within a particular cultural context since there are demands made upon the writer to communicate within a prespecified literary tradition, a relevant and culturally viable message to the reader for the purpose of either entertaining or distracting, of being didactic or teaching a moral lesson. Therefore, the genre determines the accessibility of the textual world structures by placing the work in an historical and literary context dependent upon style and message, or more formally, as genre and theme (Scholes, 1974; Frye, 1957). The aesthetic function of the plot is to bring the arrangement of motifs (e.g., recurrent images, themes, etc.) to the attention of the reader in a causal chronological order so as to

85 74 engage the reader emotionally and to develop the theme, or overall didactic purpose, of the communication. To this end, the genre provides the familiar formalization in structure of a lexical text which is necessary for the communication of the message to be expressed through a fictional literary work and to be summarized by the reader as propositional attitudes or opinions. For example, it really does not matter to the reader that Effie contains non-realistic portrayals of zoomorphic forms because in itself that is not the purpose of the attempt at communication of a message on the part of the text but a feature of the formalized structure of the text's genre by which the purpose of communication is fulfilled. It is expected, rather than rejected, in the possible world of the picture book, as representative of the fable genre. The abstraction of an overall state of affairs presented and relayed through the interaction of characters on the level of cognitive and occurential action builds through the reader's abductions from micropropositions on the level of discoursive structures to macropropositions where it is possible to ascertain the lexical fabula. Consequently, the ideological framework of the lexical text embodied in the propositional attitudes of the characters as cognitive and occurential doing in the form of verbalized and non-verbalized actions can be determined through relations of conjunction and disjunction which yield a plethora of possible worlds. The textual world structures gleaned by the reader through the characters and the actions and the total of events represented are then judged accordingly by the extent to which those propositional attitudes are engendered within the text. The reversal of Effie's fate and that of the other ants is dependent upon a coincidental moment of action which alters the elementary ideological framework of the text. There can be no doubt that this is the moment of climax in the plot where the protagonist fulfills heroic potential through the help of an unknowing agent. The plot has been building to this moment of triumph after a series of successive failures expected by the reader. The need to release this tension built in the plot through the continual delay is only achieved because the protagonist is frustrated by the lack of individuals with which to talk. It is a moment of stasis, or heightened still-framing of anxiety, where the rope of the plot is stretched so tightly that any vibration in the course of the narrative structures will cause it to snap. It foreshadows what the reader expects, a tragic resolution. Ironically, the natural

86 75 propensity in the protagonist for loud speech which has been denigrated thus far in the possible textual world brings the situation about to its commoedic resolution and the subject gains heroic status in the process. The themes can be abstracted by the reader in the form of different propositional attitudes expressed as relationships of conjunction and disjunction within the lexical text. The plot, consequently, fulfills the thematic expectations of the fable genre as literary archetype in the commoedic mode when the story can then be determined successfully on a thematic level as an allegory because the world structures predicated in the text support the reader's conclusion through veridiction. Summary Through the application of the method for the semiotic analysis of the picture book outlined in Chapter Three, cognitive, affective, and aesthetic aspects of meaning-making are addressed in Chapter Four by providing pragmatic (Peirce, 1931) and theoretical explanations in semiotic terms for both the intensional and extensional acts performed by the reader in relation to the linguistic structures of signification identified in the lexical text of Effie. The method of semiotic analysis utilized in Chapter Four offers ample dimensions for an examination of lexical text according to the research purpose(s) stated in Chapter One so as to facilitate a comprehensive study of how the lexical signs and codes function on numerous levels to engender the picture book form with meaning-expressive potential. Within the picture book genre, however, a "reading" of the text lies not only in decoding the lexical cues by which a reader synthesizes meaning, but is further qualified in relation to the co-existent visual signs and codes of the text used as the expressive form of pictorial content. The following chapter furthers the semiotic analysis of the picture book while considering the levels of interdependence between the lexical and visual components of the text and the viewer's intensional and extensional acts of meaning-making.

87 76 CHAPTER FIVE THE SEMIOTICS OF THE VISUAL TEXT Overview Chapter Five illustrates the specific applications of the method outlined in Chapter Three in a formal semiotic analysis of the signs and codes comprising the visual textual form of the picture book Effie in relation to the lexical text and the reader's cognitive, affective and aesthetic responses as viewer. The intensional and extensional acts performed in visual meaning-making are explained in both pragmatic (Peirce, 1931) and theoretical terms according to the semiotic principles of textual analysis (discussed in Chapter Two). References to other picture books, Tuesday (Weisner, 1991), Tar beach (Ringgold, 1991) and The eleventh hour: A curious mystery (Base, 1989), are made to show how the method is applied to a diversity of examples in the picture book genre. The Elements of Visual Text Any work of visual, or pictorial, text achieves its existence through color or value (lightness and darkness) arrangements. A visual text, like a lexical text, can be examined according to the syntactic elements of its construction and the semantic purpose of its composition at both a microstructural level and at macrostructural level of analysis (Eco, 1976; 1984). At the level of microstructure, the "deepest" visual structures are established through morphology and function of color, or value, groupings whereby the total formal compositional elements interact to create thematic meaning at a macrostructural level (see Saint-Martin, 1987; Arnheim, 1974; Gombrich, 1960; Eco, 1976). To facilitate the analysis of how a visual text functions at both microstructural and macrostructural levels to create signifying potential through the separation and organization of color, or value, within

88 77 a visual field, a semiotic methodology may be utilized to identify and explain how the signs and codes of a visual text interact in the presence of a viewing consciousness which actualizes the text's meaning potential. Microstructures: Plastic and Perceptual Variables Plastic variables are defined as color, value (lightness and darkness) and texture; perceptual variables are defined as line, shape, form, vectoriality (focal point and directional tension) and implantation (position/balance) (Saint-Martin, 1987). The combination of plastic and perceptual variables within a visual text constitutes the body of textual articulation within the visual field of the viewer at points of ocular centration. The rapid peripheral scanning of a visual field on the part of the viewer is essentially an attempt to link the focal points, or microstructures, of the viewer's intensional ocular concentration (Arnheim, 1974). It is an exploratory analysis of the visual variables, plastic and perceptual, manifest in the text which the viewer must perform so as to locate the transformations of these visual variables in relation to each other spatially (see Arnheim, 1974; Saint-Martin, 1987). Consequently, the process results in a cognitive and affective, conscious and subconscious awareness of the visual elements (color, value, texture, line, shape and form) within the microstructural framework of the visual field which are dependent upon perception and the aesthetic experiences evoked in the viewer in the act of meaning-making. Plastic Variables: Color, Value and Texture The Semiotics of Color Color is not an inherent property of objects in our visual field. It is the product of a perceptual phenomenon consisting of the interaction between light and an object. White

89 78 light is composed of a spectrum of light rays (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet) of which the red light ray has the longest wave length and the violet light ray the shortest wave length. Light sources emit all spectral light rays so that they in turn may be either reflected or absorbed in the object being viewed by the pigment a synthetic inorganic or organic substance that enables the reflection or absorption of light from a surface so as to allow for the perception of color. If all the light rays are reflected, the viewer perceives the object as white; if all the light rays are absorbed, as black. To perceive a color such as green, all light rays are absorbed except a predominance of the green light ray which triggers perception of a green hue on the retina. Green is then seen as a property of the object viewed. Therefore, color is perceived by the viewer when an object selectively absorbs and reflects various light rays depending on surface pigment. The array of color variables are infinite and the possible combination of light rays specifically reflected are indefinite (see Saint-Martin, 1987; Arnheim, 1974). Color and Human Perception There is difficulty in attributing to specific color perceptions definitive qualities in that human perception of color correlates with numerous variables. Differing chromatic constitutions seemingly imperceptible to the eye may qualify perceptional stimuli and physiological variants of perceptual mechanisms within individuals can disqualify the homogeneity of color's physiological effect(s): Two human eyes do not see color in the same way in a spontaneous way, before being subjected to a gestaltian type of adaptation... These differences are accentuated with age and are sometimes greater from one individual to the next, because of the coloration of crystalline as well as individual variables of the yellow pigment of the macula lutea, in which the capacities of absorption of short waves may vary in the different groups". (Saint-Martin, 1987, p. 21) Colors modify the perceptual stimulation experienced by the viewer due to the conditions of perceptual contact in which he/she is placed. Since no color or predominance of a single

90 79 color ray can be viewed in complete isolation and because color perception is modified through its juxtaposition with various chromas (or hues), colors are inherently dependent on their surrounding milieu to define the influences they may concur upon optic perception. Because of the indeterminacy of the dynamics of color due to influences extraneous to the hue itself, semiotic theoreticians of visual text have lacked a quantifiable base from which to discuss the potential nuances of color and its dynamic properties (Noth, 1990; Saint- Martin, 1987; Arnheim, 1974). Ironically, it is the postulated structural dyad of visual textual articulation and the arbitrariness of human perception in classifying colors which have caused semioticians to disagree about the ontology and nature of color as substance and matter (Goethe, 1963; Sonesson, 1989). It is, however, in relation to human perceptual processes that color has been studied and defined. The first step in realizing color is to perceive it as differences within a visual field (see Arnheim, 1974). Colors (chromas or hues) reflect a distinct value (lightness or darkness), tint (white additive to pure color), shade (black additive to pure color) and intensity (pureness of color). Although responses to color, or color vibrations, lack a scientifically quantifiable method for delineating the subject's neuro-physiological viewing reactions, it has been identified and recognized by color theoreticians (Arnheim, 1974; Goethe, 1963; Verity, 1980; Gombrich, 1960) that color is capable of significantly affecting emotional responses in individuals and of evoking innate psychological reactions within the viewer which are stimulated by associations derived from the internalization of color as perceived in natural elements within the external environment. Color is an important vehicle for identifying, comprehending and ordering the features of our external world and possesses immediate signifying potential. At a pragmatic (see Peirce, 1931) level, color takes on a symbolic meaning in relation to external referents where the primary definition of the object(s) perceived relates to connections made through one's psychological world. Arnheim (1974) points out that "Red is said to be exciting because it reminds us of fire, blood and revolution. Green calls up the refreshing thought of nature and blue is cooling like water" (p. 368). In social communication, color has come to contain metaphorical expressive potential in delineating human emotional states

91 80 through language. For example, the phrase /seeing red/ is used to denote a state of heightened anxiety and emotional fervor relative to normalcy anger. The basis for the mental connections between the color red and the state of agitation which it conveys conceptually is purely arbitrary and subject to the influences of cultural convention (Eco, 1976). Even though the affects of learning (e.g., experience, culture, education, etc.) can influence an individual's reaction to color stimuli, the affects of color upon psychological and aesthetic responses are too spontaneous to be solely attributable to the acculturation process (Gombrich, 1960; Arnheim, 1974). Eysenck (1988) suggests that "the ability to make correct aesthetic judgements... seems to transcend cultural national boundaries. It is related to some objective core of beauty which is difficult to define, but which has been measured with some success in simple colors, color combinations and simple forms" (p. 151). It is in this basic sense that colors express emotional states and that the choices made by an artist are dependent upon the desired emotional experience which he/she wishes to impart to the viewer. It is generally acknowledged that the colors yellow, orange and red can be employed to convey an emotional sense of warmth and cheerfulness that is lacking from the cooler, more subdued, psychic associations promulgated in the viewer by green, blue and violet (Goethe, 1963). Although no scientific hypothesis has been established to correlate specific psychological reactions to color in subjects, it has been ascertained that colors of strong brightness and high saturation and the hues of long wave vibration, produce a state of excitement (Arnheim, 1974; Goethe, 1963; Itten, 1973). In essence, a bright red is more active than a subdued, greyish blue. Clinical research into color psychology suggests that individuals display color preferences which are directly related to the emotional impact of the colors (Verity, 1980). The results of the experimental studies were based on the selection of colors and the ordering of such selections so as to reveal personality traits the individual holds in affinity to the emotional aspects and potential of colors.

92 81 Properties of Color Formation: The Color Wheel Ultimately, colors, cool or warm, are subject to the affects of color combinations, values and intensities within a visual field. Colors change in relation to their chromatic surroundings (see Arnheim, 1974; Saint-Martin, 1987). Goethe describes the relational properties of colors in Theory of color. Single colors affect us, as it were pathologically, carrying us away to particular sentiments. Vividly striving or softly longing, we feel elevated toward nobility or lowered toward the ordinary. However, the need for totality inherent in our organ guides us beyond this limitation. It sets us free by producing the opposites of the particulars forced upon it and thus brings about a satisfying completeness, (cited in Arnheim, 1974, p. 358) A single color will give a different appearance depending on the colors adjacent to it. Certain color combinations intensify the dynamics of an illustration while others serve to produce a more serene effect. Using the Twelve-Color Wheel (the most common organizational framework for the twelve basic colors), secondary and tertiary colors can be identified. The three primary colors which form a triangle on the wheel (blue, red and yellow) can not be derived by mixing pigments. Secondary colors are produced by mixing adjacent pigments and are located centrally between the primaries. Six tertiary colors are mixtures of a primary and adjacent secondary colors. Colors opposite each other on the color wheel intensify their own brightness (especially at full intensity) when placed adjacently in a visual field and are subsequently classified as complementary colors. When red and green (opposites on the color wheel) are placed side-by-side, both colors are perceived as more intense and dynamic than would they be if placed in a context where their complements were unavailable. This technique is often employed by artists when their purpose is to produce brilliant color effects which serve to impart a compelling vibrancy to the image. Consequently, if not used throughout an entire composition, complementarity could serve as a point of capturing and focusing the viewer's attention. Using complementary colors within close proximity of each other in a visual text is termed

93 82 a simultaneous contrast which suggests that one color simultaneously intensifies the brilliancy of the other. The front cover of Effie demonstrates how complementary colors serve to draw attention to a color designated as a significant focal area(s) for the viewer's gaze to be directed. Green frames the ant, Effie, on the horizontal pictorial axis while red, intensified by the green surroundings which border the central figure, is used for the lettering to feature the title, Effie in the upper left quadrant. Similarly, the brilliant red chroma of the tongue creates a second area of interest which competes for the viewer's attention by creating tension between the focal points. Effie's tongue draws the viewer's attention while exuding a vibrancy which is itself imparted to the organ and serves to create two primary focal areas. Before viewing the book, the reader can in no way be precise in predicting the visual plot or fabula (the thematic context and content will be actualized at a later phase); however, the intensity of the chromatic motif as well as the intentional focusing of attention upon certain topological regions in the visual plane allow the viewer to make inferences based on initial reactions to colors which promote an emotional tension or mood. Had the title and tongue been depicted in a pale, soft tint of yellow, the effect(s) of the total image would have been less dynamic and perhaps would have been less likely to succeed in alerting the viewer, consciously or subconsciously, to the quick-paced plot of the book, but made allusion to a tranquil emotional landscape of a peaceful story line about an ant. In this depiction of the protagonist, Effie is an effervescent ant being with special powers of speech as indicated by the large human-like mouth and the active intensely red tongue. Analogous colors (colors adjacent to each other on the color wheel) when used within a picture plane, function to create a harmonious unity of expression due to their close relationship within the color wheel. Such combinations of colors are not derivative of states of psychic and emotional agitation within the viewer, but possess an internal selfconsistency of properties which manifests itself in the quality of sameness. In Effie on page twenty-nine, when the encounter between the protagonist, as hero, and the elephant, the helping agent, isolates the theme of friendship as the motivating force for both subjects' need to communicate, the undercurrent of desire for a commoedic resolution which has

94 83 been building to a climax in the plot and fabula manifests itself in an effusion of yellow and orange hues (pink also) which envelop Effie and the elephant in a rich warmness. While the dense greens used in the foreground frame the inner scene, a contrast is achieved by the chromatic disjunction. In this way, the artist uses analogous colors to serve as an objective correlative for the harmonious relation between the two subjects and to establish a type of pathetic fallacy where the external environment is sympathetic to the psychic and emotional states of the characters. This is also the only point in the picture book where the color scheme utilized for the sky is altered significantly. The picture book Tuesday (Weisner, 1991) contains an analogous color scheme of warm green and blue hues which also characterizes the dream-like and ethereal compositional motif of the nocturnal adventures of the frogs. Essentially, the mood is subdued and almost silent as the frogs hover on lilypads high above an unsuspecting sleepy town. Color and Value Another property of color which influences our experiences of it is value (lightness or darkness). A work containing predominantly light values can serve to convey an emotionally pleasing effect (e.g., cheerfulness), while one containing primarily dark values can be perceived oppositely as foreboding or sombre. In first introducing the elephant to the viewer of Effie, the artist chose to portray the subject in its naturalistic environment using a preponderance of colors light in value thereby toning down the traditional emotional perceptions of the elephant as an intimidating creature (chiefly because of its massive structure). The representation of the animal as amiable and unintimidating is achieved in this way through the visual text even before the lexical portion of the text has conveyed any information about the actual nature of the character. Thus, the light values of the color scheme undercut any negative visual stimuli which may support an impulse in the viewer to actualize pejorative associations with respect to the subject. The negative properties of elephants are effectively narcotized. In fact, the suspense that is built into the plot before the elephant is identified to be the supposed ominous and evil persona whose

95 84 shadow covers the page in dark values is really undercut after the viewer is allowed to see how harmless the creature really appears. It is the sudden shift from dark to light values after a static moment which builds dramatic tension that visually reinforces the theme of epiphany. Effie has found a friend that she no longer needs to run away from. It is a new source of life and a rejuvenation of hope. The fabula is then lifted to another level where the previous actions of the characters that hinged upon denial and escape are juxtaposed with the promise of acceptance and friendship. Contrasts in value can also be used to initiate vectoriality (focal point and directional tensions) within a picture plane in that the viewer's attention can be focused to certain areas because of contrasting value regions in relation to the predominant chromatic hue of the visual stimuli. One page twenty-eight when Effie meets the elephant, she is but a tiny dot in the visual plane; however, in using a dark value as a contrast to the light values of the elephant and the scenery, the visual text immediately gravitates the viewer's attention toward the direction of the minute ant form instead of the elephant form which is much larger in dimensions and proportions within the pictorial plane. This example serves to designate emphasis upon the power which value contrast can achieve in visual text since the differences in proportion of the two subjects is not really a factor in determining the focal point of the viewer's attention. Intensity and Luminosity Colors can also be classified according to intensity, or pureness, of chromatic representation and luminosity, or brightness. The luminosity of the color pigment depends on the spectral structure of the light reflected by the pigment itself. For example, yellow appears the brightest of all because it is nearest to white and violet the least bright because it is nearest to black. Colors of high intensity and high luminosity convey a lively and dynamic quality to the visually created mood. Also, since every hue has its own individual luminosity, the differences in luminous intensity of different colored surfaces on the same plane bring out by contrast the diverse lightness or darkness of the colors themselves and

96 85 create illusory movements and varieties of structural effects. Many of the colors used in Effie (e.g., red and green) are high in intensity and color saturation thus reinforcing the energetic mood generated in the viewer by the hyperbolic activity of the protagonist and the quick-paced action of the linear visual narrative. The intensity of the colors used in Tar beach (Ringold, 1991) fluctuates with the vicissitudes of the narrator's emotions and alerts the viewer of narrative epiphanies. When the narrator describes a vignette from a childhood dream which is especially pleasing, the intensity and saturation of the colors increases and the artist supports the optimistic mood of the text by choosing combinations of complementary colors to enhance the effect in vivid patterns and textures. Low intensity colors immediately convey to the viewer a more subdued portrayal of the character's actions and result in the slowing down of the plot. Again, intensity and luminosity contrast can be used to direct the attention of the viewer to areas that stand out as discordant focal points in relation to the remaining visual field which would create vectoriality, or directional tensions, within the image. When Effie opens her mouth to yell and save the ant hill, the frame is engulphed by the shape of a mouth and the excited vibrations of her loud voice is conveyed through the selected depiction of the "roar" (see page twenty). The mouth, portrayed as the hollow expanse of a cavern, is depicted in a very dark value of red and, concurrently, a red of very low intensity is framed by a brilliantly luminous red tongue and above it a uvula also high in chromatic intensity but less bright. The viewer's eye is drawn back and forth between the tongue and the uvula almost emulating the explosive vocal vibrations that would be evoked within the scream of the protagonist. Color can also be implemented within the illustration in conjunction with black, white and grey values. It is generally agreed by art theoreticians that these are not colors but are neutrals. Warm colors which are considered in themselves as active, again depending in degree on intensity, luminosity and value, seen in conjunction with black, gain in energy and passive colors, from the warm hues placed next to black, lose energy. Active colors seen next to white lose energy and passive colors increase their potential for creating a cheerful mood. Effie begins with a diagonal curving line of black ants on a high intensity

97 86 field of yellow. The yellow is made more active by the placement of black ants within the picture plane which accentuates the busy mood of the image and the industrious activity the ants, in themselves, are a part of. The foreground tends to project toward the viewer to suggest an expansive visual field and reinforce the illusion of diagonal and horizontal motion (see Kandinsky, 1976). Haptic Aspects of Vision: Textural Inscapes Riegl identified the haptic vision as "capable of touching with the eye" (cited in Gandelman, 1991, p. 5), not merely brushing but penetrating the surface and finding aesthetic pleasure in texture(s). The optic vision is concerned with scanning objects according to their outlines or linearity and angularity (see Lowenfeld, 1952). What is the relationship between the senses of vision and touch? This perspective of correlating touch with vision was first developed by Descartes and then elaborated by Berkeley as follows: The locating of the objects in the world and their identification what is today called pattern recognition and even more so the evaluation of the distance between the observing eye and the points of his focusing on the surface of these objects are synaesthetic operations. The purely optical (without synaesthesia) is only capable of apprehending points on a plane surface, (cited in Gandelman, 1991, p. 6) The traditional Greek meaning of the word synaesthesia (cruvecrôiaia) is translated as sensitivity to and empathy with a given psychological and emotional state of another person or thing. Here, however, the sense of empathy and sympathy which allows for human beings to experience and show touching emotionalism is transferred to the tactile aspects of vision as an empathetic aesthetic experience. In essence, viewing a work of art is one step in experiencing its depth, both as spirit and as substance, while establishing one's point of physical, psychological and emotional relation to the forms perceived. Texture produces a very tactile quality within the experience of the viewer. The

98 87 textured image connects the sense of sight with the sense of touch. Through visual representations of texture, one can achieve empathy with what the depicted scheme would feel like were it to escape from the two-dimensional page surface in which it is entrapped. Therefore, texture conveys the surface qualities of objects. In a two-dimentional visual field, such as that provided in a picture book format, variations in light and dark values create the illusion of surface qualities by which focal interest can be achieved and maintained. For example, the broad expanse of yellow chroma within the ants' environment is imbued with variations in texture through the use of shaded pebbles and slight ridges which add visual interest to the field of yellow. The pattern evoked by the textures gives the planar surface a "graded" effect which suggests angularity, or depth, as the eye moves from the foreground to the background along the diagonal trajectory. Visual distance can also be established within a pictorial plane through textual variation. Proportional variations of a textural size in relation to relative shapes and forms suggest a depth of fields within the picture plane. Through the visual text alone, the viewer can identify a rapid distancing between Effie and the butterfly when the protagonist inadvertently /blows away/ the butterfly with the power of her voice. In the visual frame which introduces the butterfly to the plot, the textures of the grass forms are uniform in size and relative shape. The proceeding frame, after the fall, depicts the butterfly from above, much smaller in size and surrounded by blades of grass far more densely textured than the blades around Effie; thus, the differences in proportion suggest to the viewer great distance between the two characters. Texture is dependent on the quality and potential of the medium from which it is produced. Generally, textures are achieved through value and color changes within a visual field. In the case of Effie, the medium itself possesses a three-dimensional quality circumventing the need to use value changes to allude to changes in texture and depth. The plasticine artist preparing the image for photography is actually creating a tactile-textured, three-dimensional, reliefed surface which, when photographed, creates its own shadows and highlights which otherwise in paint or other dry mediums would have had to be achieved through the application of chroma and value changes so as to give the illusion of a

99 88 variated surface. The plasticine being pressed and molded by hand leaves indices of the human hand involved in its formation. The residual finger print textures inform the viewer of the part a human agent played in the birth and creation of the characters and scenery. Some of the landscape such as the sand scenes are not produced by hand modeling but by the spreading of the medium using a spatula-like instrument. This change in surface values serves to vary the textural quality of the pictorial plane and to create interest through directional tensions between the focal areas within the composition. Unity of texture(s) within an artistic composition or similarity of motif adds harmony and cohesiveness to the image; however, if exaggerated the technique can lend itself to a monotonization of the visual field which is not likely to capture the interest of the viewer. Optic Aspects of Vision: Line, Shape and Form as Outscapes Lines are used in composition to delineate and describe shapes, contours and forms. Lines may vary greatly in thickness, weight, directional tension and character. Horizontal lines tend to convey a feeling of repose and serenity; vertical lines a character of stability and strength. Diagonals impart a feeling of dynamics, energy and action, while curved lines imply a soft, gentle energy and zig-zagged diagonal lines imply aggressive expression and energy (see Gombrich, 1960). In Effie, there is a predominance of diagonal lines throughout the composition with very few horizontal or vertical lines used in the visual field. The pictorial text serves to fuse the entire visual fabula with the dynamic and kinetic nature of Effie's character through the selection of diagonal line arrangements that reinforce the illusion of movement. The elephant on page twenty-nine is defined visually through the lines showing the positive shape of the elephant against the negative shape of the background in which the line of value change defines the shape of the elephant as depicted using curved, flowing contour lines and shapes that suggest to the viewer, the amiable and gentle character of the ants' new friend. Whereas, the ants on page twenty-two are portrayed in an arrangement of diagonal angles of lines and shapes serving to convey to the viewer the over-emphasized frenzy of nervous energy the ants are feeling in the fear of

100 89 losing their lives and their home. Line can also be implied through a linear positioning of points along a vertical, horizontal or diagonal axis. The first page of Effie depicts a zig-zagged line of ants moving up the page. Although the ants are not connected, the regularity of ant shapes within a linear progression causes the eye to follow directionally alternating diagonals of the perceived lines. The diagonal format of the line again conveys the industrious and energetic linear activity of the ants and establishes a character trait that is a natural phenomenon as well as stereotypical of the species. Form is similar to shape in that it delineates the boundaries of an object but in contrast it could be said that "form is the visible shape of content" (Shahn cited in Arnheim, 1974, p. 97). Gombrich (1960) elaborates, Everything points to the conclusion that the phrase the "language of art" is more than a loose metaphor, that even to describe the visible world in images we need a developed system of schemata... It has become increasingly clear since the late nineteenth century that primitive art and child art uses a language of symbols rather than "natural signs". To account for this fact it was postulated that there must be a special kind of art grounded not on seeing but rather on knowledge, an art which operates with "conceptual images". The child it is argued does not look at trees; he is satisfied with the "conceptual" schema of a tree that fails to correspond to any reality since it does not embody the characteristics of, say, birch or beech, let alone those of individual trees... But we have come to realize that this distinction is unreal... All art originates in the human mind, in our reactions to the world rather than in the visible world itself, and it is precisely because all art is "conceptual" that all representations are recognizable by their style, (p. 87) Shape conveys schematic information which enables the mind to translate the visible schema of an object through an already existent mental encyclopaedia of shapes. Form adds another dimension of mental modeling to the schema by further delineating the qualities of the depicted shapes and creating the physical reality as an internal psychic structure or schematic representation that can be identified linguistically. A form can be defined contextually in relation to its environment and to a certain degree by the means of its production. When discussing the form or formal qualities of a work, the term takes on an alternative nuance of meaning in referring to the visual organization of the work which

101 90 suggests the work's arrangement of pictorial elements ( color, texture, line and shape) and how they may be arranged to create directional tensions, balance and proportion of composition. It is this formal aspect which is a major determinate of a work's conventional features with respect to genre. Abstraction of form detracts from the mimetic correspondence between life and art (and language) and allows for greater freedom of interpretation within an unrestricted realm of content. Vraisemblance, or the representational depiction of forms, demands the codification of form according to external environmental or contextual constraints which limit interpretive openness (see Eco, 1976). The Word as Visual Text: Typography and the Shape of Form Two additional features of form in the visual text elaborate upon or clarify the thematic concerns of the lexical text by suppressing possible disjunctions between the visual fabula and the lexical fabula: typography and framing of lexical text. Typography is the selection of typeset, or the printed form, of visually represented language used in a text. Not only does each letter of a word have its own unique shape, but all the letters of the word combined give a shape to the word form. Words then can be arranged in infinite ways to create sentences and narratives. It is the visual shape of the word that engenders printed language with meaning potential and expressivity when read. We recognize the shape and produce the necessary mental operations required to decode the denotative and connotative aspects of printed words (see Iser, 1978) in a relationship of conjunction or disjunction with other words in a syntagmatic chain (see Eco, 1976). Therefore, the altering of the shape of a word can affect its perception if the context of communication is made clear enough or elaborates a code against which the reader can check mental associations made with reference to the syntactic and semantic structure of printed language. In Effie, there is emphasis upon the visual representation of language which must classify the printed word as a component of "visual text". The positioning of the lexical text within a visual frame is strategic in focusing the viewer's perceptions upon specific areas of the visual text which ultimately effects the way a text is read. For example, on

102 91 page one the sentence /Effie came from a long long line of ants/ (p. 1) is at the bottom right of the page and separated from the conglomerate of ant shapes. The major vectorial tendency of the visual field is an upward diagonal push which suggests a bottom-up visual reading that connects the end of the ant line on page one with the ant line on pages two and three and provides some visual continuity of framed structure. We may speculate, then, that the reader is intended to view the sentence after a brief first orientation to the visual field (the converse also being possible) before moving to the next visual frame, the implied continuation of the first. It should also be noted that the overwhelming cadence of the sentence is trochaic with three successive accents on /long long line/ to emphasize an acoustic and visual sense of length through the alliterative properties of the words. Thus, allowing the reader/viewer to transform the visual configurations into aural sense impressions of form which also denote and connote meanings as well as promote aesthetic responses to the text. The spatialization of the sentences on page three at the upper left and bottom right of the page works to build suspense by delaying reception of the most thematically important piece of information: /Effie's voice was like thunder/ (p. 3). The previous sentence is place at the bottom right, above which, the protagonist is depicted in physical contrast to all the other ants in the line. The point of view then begins to alternate between Effie's attempts at communication and the affects of the powerful voice which she posses. The power of the voice is conveyed through the difference in script size, boldness and case. When Effie speaks, the words are capitalized in bold upper case letters to emphasize the difference in volume compared with the narrative voice in the text and the speech of other characters. The verbs used to characterize the voice of the protagonist (e.g., /boomed/, /roared/, etc.) are also onomatopoeic of the actual sounds produced and referred to in the real world in order to index the sound type according to external paradigms of the reader's experience.

103 92 Vectoriality (Focal Points and Directional Tensions) The viewer in fronting an illustration is subject to the visual dynamics which constitute the directional tensions of the image presented. A visual image in its arrangement of colors, points, surface elements, shapes, lines and forms culminates in a perceptual experience in which the properties of these visual components compete for the viewer's attention. In being drawn toward certain points during optical scanning of a visual field, the eye does not jump from one point to another but follows a linear pattern of movement toward various elements at specific focalities in the picture plane which attract attention. Tension manifests between the focal points of ocular centration creating a fluid energy within the picture plane which draws the viewer's attention around the image. A single area or point may attract interest and areas of secondary contrast from the mean of pictorial elements draw attention but only as the eye tires of the dominant variation and moves to new points in which to encounter fresh stimuli (see Gandelman, 1991). Directional tensions within a picture plane animate one's experience of the image through movement caused by the directional tensions. When visual elements differ from their surroundings in a pictorial text, the eye is compelled toward the difference. A shape of large proportion will draw attention of focus if encased within an area of small shapes, just as an angular shape will stand prominent in a scene composed of predominantly curved shapes. If more than one area pervades as inconsistent to the norm, these points compete for the viewer's attention resulting in an optic impulse for constant movement within the visual field. On page twelve of Effie, two forms alienate themselves from the surroundings: the ant because of its contrasting dark value and the grasshopper because of its contrasting lighter value. The eye of the viewer is suspended in focal dynamic tension as it oscillates between the two forms while seeking a final resting position. Isolating an object from other groupings within the visual plane also directs optical perception to the area. The overall design, however, must work as a unified whole connecting the isolated area of optical attraction to the overall design through repetitions of elements such as color, texture, line, shape or form which exist within the primary focal points elsewhere in the

104 93 illustration. On page nineteen, the ant form on the left stands on its own and in isolation attracts the viewer's attention. The figure is undoubtedly connected to the rest of the textual image in that the ant's shape is repeated in a clustering motif of ant shapes in various physical positions on the right. Balancing the protagonist with a group of similar species, inclines the viewer to feel a tension which is in psychological identification empathetic to the emotional states of the figures conveyed. The group of ants are petrified with fright while Effie is very much alone in a state of naive and fearful bedazzlement of the mysterious shadowy figure which is about to descend on the hoard. The facial expressions also convey the inner psychological and emotional state of the figures as some of the ants are portrayed with contorted and grotesque features associated with a painful experience and resulting emotional turmoil (e.g., fear, panic, anxiety, and isolation), whereas Effie is comparatively complacent in expressing an open-mouthed, circular shape that connotes breath-taking, fear, surprise and wonderment. Directed tensions can also be created through the use of lines and linear shapes which act as stimuli to guide the viewer's attention to a desired area. On pages sixteen and seventeen, the reader is drawn down the path as its linear shape encased by the framing of grass forms stands in contrast to generate interest and directional tensions which pull the viewer down the path and into the visual field following the movement of the characters from the foreground of the first frame to the top of the second frame. Focal points are not essential within a pictorial plane; however, the purposeful arrangement of directional tensions by the artist may be an attempt to vivify the viewer's aesthetic responses to the work through controlling the energies produced within the visual frames and overall text. In some cases, this technique is supported by the lexical anchoring or relay of the content (see Barthes, 1964) within the visual text to that of the lexical text in order to create a total context for the act of communication. If there are many competing focal points of interest within the image, the resulting experience for the viewer is one of a confused and disoriented state. Such excessive use of directional tensions could be used in illustrating a state of chaos but is not conducive to a balanced and harmonious composition. The scene where all the insects are running away from Effie is chaotic and causes the viewer to search

105 94 the visual field because there is no specific focal point or consistent unity of colors upon which to fixate an ocular centration. Consequently, the lack of order or underlying logic in the visual field opens the text to aberrant interpretations of the pictorial code: Has Effie terrified the other insects to such an extent that they react with such extreme fear? The possibility is open for miscommunication between the text and the viewer/reader based upon inferences drawn from the previous incidents of the plot as it unfolded; therefore, the visual text requires more lexical relaying of information in order for the viewer/reader to interpret the message properly. Implantation (Positioning in the Plane and Balance) In assessing pictorial balance, the viewer mentally weighs the visual elements (color, value, texture, line, shape, and form) on the picture plane as they are distributed across the visual field. Desire for balance is an innate human tendency (Arnheim, 1974) and an image in which the pictorial elements confirm imbalanced arrangements within the compositional plane serve to cause a feeling of psychic and emotional (conscious and subconscious) discomfort within the viewer. An equal distribution of visual weight is a common denominator of compositions aimed at creating a sense of harmonious arrangements. Purposeful imbalances of the pictorial plane can be controlled and practically applied for visual texts in which the theme aims at the attainment of a desired disquieting affect of an uneasy response in the viewer. On page ten, Effie is depicted on the extreme left and at the top of the visual field to the extent that the total form has been cropped to a minimum of essential defining parts. The imbalance of the composition enhances and supports the sense of instability, inadequacy and insecurity Effie must be feeling in not having succeeded at finding a friend with whom to converse. In essence, the imbalance in the compositional structure of the visual text projects the unique emotional content of the image outward to the viewer in order to achieve the pathos, or sense of pity and fear, required for the fabula to succeed penultimately in its resolution as a story of triumph. Such slight imbalances can also be employed to draw viewer interest. Due to our

106 95 intrinsic sense of gravity, visual texts which are weighted more heavily in the bottom region of the picture plane result in a comforting sense of stability. As the arrangement of visual weight moves up the vertical axis of the picture plane, the image increasingly evokes a sense of dynamics and instability. Page seven of Effie depicts the butterfly predominantly in the top left of the illustration. Although the weight of the butterfly is balanced by the grassy region on the lower quadrant of the visual field, as the focal point high in the picture plane the butterfly achieves a weightless grace and airiness usually associated with the species that would have not have been conveyed to the viewer were the subject situated in the lower half of the composition. Symmetrical balance in which the centre axis separates two identical arrangements of visual elements on either side of the axis is the simplest form of composition exemplifying perfect but similarly static balance. As a result, the mood of an image can be delineated as austere and ordered through the symmetrical arrangements of pictorial elements. A dignified subject would appropriately be illustrated through a symmetrical arrangement so as to emphasize personality and identity traits by way of the psychological impressions achieved through compositional arrangements. The elephant on page twenty-four is depicted in near symmetrical arrangement to convey to the viewer a dimension of the elephant's persona as dignified and stately. The character traits endowed the elephant are also supported by the viewpoint from which the viewer is allowed to see the subject, looking up at it, which functions to emphasize the overwhelming stature and magnitude of the animal so as to promote the illusion of size and significance. Asymmetrical balance is achieved when dissimilar objects are arranged in the visual field in order to attain balance of the visual field. This form of balance is less static in contributing to infuse the visual field with tensions and movement. On pages sixteen and seventeen, a vertical composition presents us with a variety of asymmetrically arranged pictorial elements. The large, dark, simple shape of Effie which draws our attention is balanced by an intricate arrangement of smaller shapes culminating in a mound of yellow sand on the far right side of page seventeen which attracts the eye and proves to complete the necessary weight to achieve visual balance of the vertically oriented visual field.

107 96 Color can also function to achieve balance within a pictorial plane. A large area of low intensity color and values can be balanced by a small area of high intensity color and value. On page twenty-five, the large, grey elephant's head in the upper left quadrant is balanced by a small, brightly colored yellow quarter-circle which opens in the expanse of grass for the ants to cluster together. The large, dull grey area is counterbalanced asymmetrically by the yellow area. Brighter and more intense colors are visually heavier and can therefore be used to balance larger light areas. It should also be noted that large simple shapes can be balanced by smaller more complex ones. The simple shapes of the elephant's head and eye on pages twenty-six and twenty-seven are balanced by Effie's intricate arrangement of body shapes and angles. Asymmetrical balance can also be achieved through placing heavier dominant shapes or colors closer to the center while situating the visually lighter and less dominant objects toward the outer edges of the picture plane. Such balance create for dynamism within the viewer's experience of the image because at first it alludes to imbalance before equalizing the visual weight. On page thirty, Effie is situated left of center as a dark figure being visually counterbalanced by the placement of an isolated tree running off the edge of the picture plane. The directional tension between the two focal points because of the dark values used to depict the subject causes the viewer to follow the line of visual forms from Effie to the tree and eventually into the background. It must be acknowledged that rarely do visual balancing arrangement techniques work in isolation. Illustrations generally employ several methods within the visual field to achieve the type of balance and visual dynamics conducive to creating a desired psychological and emotional attitude within the viewer. Visual Anaphoric/Deictic Extensions: A Possible Visual World Viewed in totality, a visual text is a supersyntagm made up of supersigns composed of smaller pictorial structures of signification and is, in a "global" sense, quite different from the plastic and perceptual variables which constitute the work syntactically and semantically from the viewer's perspective (Eco, 1976; Saint-Martin; 1987 Prieto, 1966; Arnheim,

108 ). The mind must grasp the whole work of art and internalize the visual experience before the senses can react to the individualized parts and general features which may then be conceptualized through recourse to language. The eye/brain does not initially differentiate each of the individual components of a visual image but instead it will organize the components into a more comprehensible and unified whole. Arnheim (1974) explains the wholeness of human perceptions that constitutes the Gestalt theory of visual text, If one wishes to be admitted to the presence of a work of art, one must, first of all, face it as a whole. What is it that comes across? What is the mood of the colors, the dynamics of the shapes? Before we identify any one element, the total composition makes a statement that we must not lose. We look for a theme, a key to which everything relates. If there is a subject matter we learn as much about it as we can, for nothing an artist puts into his work can be regarded with impunity. Safely guided by the structure of the whole, we then try to recognize the principle features and explore their dominion over dependent details. Gradually, the entire wealth of work reveals itself and falls into place and as we perceive it correctly, it begins to engage all the powers of the mind with its message, (p.8) It is this intrinsic wholeness of a visual text in relation to the nature of human perception which places limits upon and interferes with semiotic analysis. Yet, in attempting to understand a visual text by furnishing cognitive and affective, conscious and subconscious, hypotheses for an analytical approach to larger aggregates of coloremes, it is necessary on the part of the viewer to perform visual semantic disclosures based upon the syntactic structure of the visual text as a composite supersyntagm. On one level, the syntactic structure of a visual text is composed of differences in color the properties of which are the result of and subject to particular laws of color (as discussed earlier). On another level, the agglomeration of color within a pictorial plane from the chromatic formlessness of dots and lines to create shapes which take on specific forms and dimensions engender the visual text with semantic meaning potential only outwardly expressible through recourse to language. The recognition of form as the main principle of correlation between visual elements (color, value, texture, line, shape, form) constituting a pictorial text is the result of gestalt regroupings or disjunctions within a visual field. Once the dimensions of form(s) are

109 98 identified, lexically as well as pictorially, the underlying logic of organization within the pictorial plane becomes apparent through subjective gestaltian approximations made by the viewer to determine the spatialization of forms and their interrelations within the visual text which engender a possible visual world. The major criterion for the evaluation of form is vraisemblance, or a direct visual correspondence to reality, where the viewer's experience of naturalistic forms in the real world is necessarily the determinant for recognition. One cannot identify linguistically and cognitively assimilate a form which is not familiar to one's own visual experience (see Arnheim, 1969). Therefore, the figuritivization of shape into form is textually determined by the capacity of the viewer to identify the resemblance of a pictorial shape to a referent, or predesignated and already accommodated form, in external reality and the extent to which the resemblance holds true determines the success of the figuritivization for the purposes of communication between the viewer and the visual text. The basic schema of an ant identified in Effie is anatomically accurate to the point where the viewer can confidently state that some of the zoomorphic forms depicted in the picture book are indeed ants, or creatures with a three-part segmented body structure, black, red or brown in color, possessing six appendages and a single set of antennae, while others are not. There are, however, inconsistencies between ant forms found in the external world and ant forms depicted within the internalized visual paradigm of the text that must be reconciled before the viewer can accept the "truthfulness" of the possible visual world of Effie and suspend disbelief fully. It is true, however, that all artistic representations of reality are in fact abstractions of reality to some degree because of non-reconcilable perceptual variables that affect and determine the external portrayal of form in relation to its mental interprétant. To some extent, the viewer's eidetic memory intrudes upon the visual perception of forms by providing what is depicted with properties defined in terms of the vestigial remains of the viewer's previous experiences with the form in the real world. The viewer subconsciously fills in any gaps between the stylized image and the real-life referent in order to assimilate and accommodate the new visual experience within the ready-made schemata of an encyclopaedic visual knowledge (Eco, 1979; Arnheim, 1974); however, the responses resulting from subconscious processes of visual understanding are much more

110 99 difficult to determine and it is not possible to generalize what the particularized networks of visual associations for an individual might be without basing the analysis in the specific realm of a viewer's experience. Despite natural differences, the ants, and indeed all the zoomorphic forms in the picture book, are anthropomorphized in physical and intellectual capabilities to the extent that the occurential and cognitive doings of the visual actors exhibited in the text by the artist deviate radically from what is feasibly expected from these animal types in real world terms. For example, all the zoomorphic forms represented in the picture book have the power of speech and possess psychological and emotional complexity of will manifest as needs, wants and desires which are depicted in the visual text through the characters' facial expression and actions. These are the correlatives of non-verbalized forms of somatic and psychic consciousness objectified in the text as visual metaphorical structures from which the viewer draws inferences to realize the cognitive and occurential dimensions of doing performed by the subjects depicted in the linear visual narrative. The lexical text, in turn, reinforces and extends the visual portrayal of the characters by offering the verbalized equivalents of actorial consciousness in the form of dialogic discourse (see Bakhtin, 1981). It is this disjunction between "the real" and "the fictional" that the viewer must address through extensional responses: first, on the level of visual anaphorical/deictic extensions in order to permit or to reject the thematization of various aspects of physical behavior and psychological or emotional demeanor exhibited by the subjects in the linear visual narrative and, second, on the level of visual indexes where cross-medial frames of reference are set up by the viewer's macropropositions in order to determine the extent of contiguity between the lexical and visual possible worlds established in the text. The process of aesthetic encoding and the means of decoding must be clearly identified by the viewer in order to verify abductions which visual semantic disclosures generate in the form of "frame-by-frame" micropropositions during the act of visual meaning making. It is not by chance that as a consequence of anthropomorphic stylization in the visual text, some of the zoomorphic forms in Effie also wear clothing and other apparel which accentuates the characteristic features of their species in order to amplify the comic portrayal according to

111 100 one or more aspect of the common visual frames of reference afforded the viewer (e.g., the caterpillar wears multiple pairs of sandals and the butterfly wears a ballet outfit to float through the air). This visual trope based upon hyperbole, or exaggeration, and is used to inspire the cognitive and affective responses in the viewer leading to humor. Yet, it is because the most obvious facets of the subjects' physical structures are transformed in the fictional representations that the viewer is alerted to the recodification of real world forms in terms of conventions established specifically by intervisual paradigms drawn from the genre of fable where textual world structures, already determined by the possible world of the text, facilitate the aesthetic purposes of communication. Since the suspension of disbelief is to some extent dependent upon a knowledge of existing visual conventions which are the product of previous experience of texts (e.g., genre), the ability of the viewer to access intervisual frames of reference as the basis for either accepting or rejecting the possible visual world depicted in the text is a determinate of his/her aesthetic cooperation in acknowledging the fictional construct being developed. If the viewer can identify the network of relations governing manifest elements in the pictorial text which define the functions of forms as visual actors in spatially determined roles governed by temporal sequences, then the visual plot can be realized linearly as a continuous pictorialized narrative of characters, actions and events. Later, on the thematic level, the visual fabula can then be abstracted as propositions which actualize the artist's purpose of communication. The viewer's basis for judgment then becomes the internal self-consistency and the logic of the possible visual world portrayed in the pictorial text as a familiar fictional archetype and not the verisimilitude of the forms, the actions or the events in the sequences composing the linear visual narrative. Visual Metaphorical Structures: Cross-medial Agreement Once the denotative aspect of identifying and lexically naming the specific forms that are depicted in the visual field has been achieved through figurativization, the most fundamental semantic level of visual communication between the pictorial text and the

112 101 viewer has transpired and the connotative aspects of the representation can, therefore, be built upon the viewer's literal conception of the forms through definitional and stylistic variations. The depiction of the caterpillar on page five of Effie is an example of how possible initial abductions regarding the genre of the picture book may be confirmed in accordance with the progression of the linear visual narrative because the viewer has been prepared for the anthropomorphization of the caterpillar by the like presentation of the ants. There are no real world zoomorphic forms with human tendencies of the type depicted in the possible visual world of the picture book; however, the viewer must be persuaded to maintain the suspension of disbelief required in order to accept the pictorial tropes used by the artist to portray the subjects anthropomorphically for the aesthetic and thematic purposes of the work to succeed as "visually truthful" text. In the case of Effie, if the viewer has not realized the first steps leading from the micropropositions drawn from inferences in relation to specific visual frames depicting the spatialization of forms toward the macropositions of the visual fabula resulting from the portrayal of the action as events within a linear visual narrative, then the thematic significance of the visual plot cannot be abstracted from the presentation of actorial doing, both cognitive and occurential, in the pictorial text. This important phase of meaning-making begins from the recognition of the thematic function of form (see Arnheim, 1974). The rejection of the possible visual world is the result of the inability of the viewer to comprehend the underlying logic of elementary structures of visual signification constructed from the relations and transformations of elements comprising the pictorial text and based upon spatialization between forms as visual actants which derive and constitute those structures, or fundamental visual syntax. It is obvious in the first four pages of Effie (identified as NSI in the lexical text) that the protagonist maintains a relation of conjunction and disjunction to the other ants which is determined on the levels of somatic resemblances, psychological empathy between visual actors and social position in the possible visual world. The conjunction is delineated strictly through spatialization (see Arnheim, 1969) by the protagonist's dutious role in the regimented routine of the cumulative population of ant forms in long lines during the performance of laborious tasks.

113 102 The disjunction becomes apparent in the representation of Effie relative to the similar ant prototypes which appear, in the text, to be suspended in varying states of animation over three consecutive visual frames to suggest an elapsed time. The cross-medial agreements between visual and lexical texts support these conjunctions and disjunctions by stylistically overcoding the points of similarity and contrast that are the most thematically relevant. The viewer at this stage has already performed the necessary visual semantic disclosures required to amplify or suppress the latent properties of form which distinguish the protagonist from the rest of the ants and the visual topic is then pictorially identified as being based upon a disjunctive physiognomic relation: the shape and size of Effie's mouth relative to the same feature presented in the other ants. In essence, the bigger mouth is a visual metaphorical structure representing greater vocal power which, in turn, reinforces the disjunction between the visual actors and isolates it pictorially as the topic for the source of discontent to all the other zoomorphic forms in the beginning of NSI in NP1. Also, the lack of physical elaboration in the portrayal of the ants virtually guarantees that the viewer will interpret the image of the mouth as thematically important to the visual text because of the absence of pictorial clues to the contrary. Therefore, this particular feature characterizes the visual representation of the protagonist in relation to the other zoomorphic forms and is thematized with respect to the outcome of the linear visual narrative. Ultimately, the viewer becomes aware of how the pictorial text is structured actantially and if it is in agreement with the actantial structures of the lexical text. It is not possible for the artist to produce the homogeneity of negative reaction required from the zoomorphic forms toward Effie for the resolution of the visual fabula to be effective without isolating the underlying reason for the overwhelmingly pejorative response and assigning specific thematic functions to the visual actors comprising the action of events in terms of cognitive and occurential doing. We can see that Effie possesses a substantially bigger mouth but the facial expression can suggest a number of possible interpretations such as excitement, happiness or even naivete which are contrary to the dysphoric connotation developed through the lexical text. Without recourse to cross-medial agreements between the lexical and the visual texts, there can be no way to elaborate upon the thematic significance of the

114 103 physiognomic differences perceived between Effie and the other ants which give rise to visual actantial roles in the modality of predicated actions and events represented within the pictorial text. To enhance the visual metaphorical potential of the expression /Effie's voice was like thunder/ (p. 3), the superior physical trait of the protagonist is manifest in the physical feature of a larger mouth to accommodate the viewer with a symbolic equivalent or visible referent to the louder voice and to pictorially identify the associative logic of a comparison deemed feasible only within the possible world of the text (e.g., the wider Effie opens her mouth, the louder her voice then becomes). The correlation is strictly associative and non-rational because the larger mouth is symbolic in representing something outside of itself and does so in accordance with the aesthetic conventions of the text which determine how the encoding of pictorial elements is accomplished through the isotopy delineated in the lexical text and incorporated into the metaphorical structures of the visual text (Eco, 1976). In reality there is no physiological basis for the correlation but the visual symbol, or visual metaphor structure, works to join the two disparate semic axes, size of mouth and loudness of voice, in order to create the illusion of a correlation for the viewer and guide macropropositions of the fabula. This is an example of the type of crossmedial agreement which comes to dominate the pictorial text of Effie as visual stylistic overcoding for the purpose of identifying and developing the distinctive personality traits of the characters which define their functions in the visual actantial structures of the picture book. If we seek an explanation as to why an ant would wear shoes or walk upright, a satisfying answer to the problem must contain specific reference to the logic inherent to the visual and lexical structures underlying the possible world developed in the text. The stylized depiction of the actors cannot be taken literally, but only figuratively, as visual metaphorical structures which build a mood or tone upon which the textual level operates openly in association with the viewer's intensional and extensional responses to achieve the cognitive, affective and aesthetic responses that focus and realize the purpose of communication. This process of visual encoding is derived from what Gombrich (1960) defines as "Toffer's Law", where expression may transform any shape into the semblance of a being

115 104 endowed with life, identity and a living presence. justification for an abbreviatory style of pictorial narrativity as follows: Gombrich (1960) explains the One thing only is needed for the pictorial narrator a knowledge of physiognomies and human expression. After all, he must create a convincing hero and characterize people he comes into contact with: he must convey their reaction and let the story unfold in terms of readable expressions, (p. 339) The interpretation of psychic and emotional states of consciousness in a visual subject are connected to synaesthetic judgments made by the viewer resulting from an empathy with the external expression and manifestation of internalized states of being, like anger or shame, that are observable in the visible constitution of its physiognomy. The basis for the conclusions drawn from any like abductions is visual experience since the projection of the viewer's synaesthetic feelings allows for empathy which is ultimately derived from real world experience or knowledge of other visual examples. The information received from the visual representation of inner states of being through physiognomy allows the viewer to abduce macropropositions through a series of inferences in a particular situation which aid in the construction of the visual fabula. For example, when the pigs fly on the last page of Tuesday (Weisner, 1991), the viewer is hardly as surprised as the pigs themselves who are undergoing the surreal psychic experience of defying the natural physical capabilities endowed them by nature. This is because the linear visual narrative has come full circle to parallel the beginning of what may well be a recurrent phenomenon and the viewer is invited to imaginatively complete the cycle of events in conjunction with the original visual plot by mentally substituting the pigs for the frogs in the supersyntagm of the linear visual narrative. The range of psychic and emotional states experienced by the subjects can be read through the various facial expressions and physical gestures exhibited. The pig figure in the upper left hand corner is left wide-eyed and open-mouthed to connote a sense of awe and fear which is paralleled in the form by the spread-legged stance adopted, as if searching for a place to touch firmly down. Yet, the pig figure between the direction markers pointing north-east is utterly comfortable and sated with the experience of flying as is

116 105 connoted through the closed eyes, the drawn smile, the pulled-back ears and the more naturally relaxed stance. This technique of conveying thematic information visually through the physiognomic expressions and physical gestures of the subjects is particularly effective in picture books that contain little or no lexical text because the pictorial text can be brief without needing recourse to language in order to clarify the method of encoding embodied within the linear visual narrative plot beyond what the viewer actually needs to decode it on the level of fabula. In this sense, a picture book like Tuesday (Weisner, 1991) is more open to multiple interpretations than a picture book like Effie because the visual text is not anchored to a particular context of meaning making where the purpose of communication is developed in close relation to the relaying of information from the lexical text, without which, the viewer would be unable to disambiguate and understand the visual narrative sequence (see Barthes, 1964). In this respect, Effie as a total text is "closed" or guides the viewer/reader to an foregone thematic purpose or moral lesson in the conclusion. Visual Indexes: Within and Without Culture Two types of visual indexes serve to limit and define the viewer's intensional and extensional responses: 1) a syntagmatic index which enables the juxtaposition of elements within a visual text and 2) a paradigmatic index which allows for the assimilation of visual elements of form to a series outside the text in culture. By providing cross-medial frames of reference that contextually link the visual and lexical codes and subcodes in the text, the visual text parallels the lexical text in that it also generates the circumstances for its production and reception in the model viewer, or a viewer who is in essence a mythical construct of the artist (see Arnheim, 1988; Eco, 1979) because no real-life viewer can apprehend totally the intensional and extensional structure of a pictorial text. The visual text of Effie promotes a stylized depiction of naturalistic forms (e.g., ants, caterpillar, butterfly, grasshopper, etc.) and sets up the means and standards by which to decode the pictorial elements as actors, sequences of events and linear visual narrative relative to the purpose of communication: in broad terms, to divert and instruct the reader. In this way,

117 106 the visual text is structurally centripetal, or inward turning and self-supportive in its construction because the possible visual world depicted does not have any relation to or validity for the real world (which is necessarily outside itself) and is thematically centrifugal, or outward reaching in its purpose, because of the intended implications of the allegorical message with respect to the human condition (see Frye, 1957; Bakhtin, 1981). It is not necessary for the viewer to move beyond the visual text to look for clues to the sources of thematic meaning within external reality since it is possible to use selections from internal visual paradigmatic indexes drawing upon the juxtaposition of visual elements within the pictorial text to read the visual linear narrative and to abduce the visual fabula in terms of a composite series of actions performed by visual actors. Then, if necessary, the viewer can move between intratextual and extratextual visual paradigmatic indexes to abstract the visual fabula and derive thematic meaning. In The eleventh hour: A curious mystery (Base, 1989), there is a deliberate crossingup of external visual paradigms, as accessed by references to real world referents, in order to create the internalized visual paradigms of zoomorphic forms upon which the picture book relies to achieve its expressive purpose of attempting deliberately to confuse and fool the viewer through the circumstances of its production in a complex coded structure. Especially since the text openly alludes to the "curious mystery" which focuses thematic objectives in the aim of communication around the viewer/reader's powers of observation, detection and abduction (see Eco, 1979). Consequently, it is of no surprise that there are no real focal points in the sequence of tightly compressed visual frames presented in this picture book which may aid the viewer's search for information required to break the mysterious code. The viewer is constantly searching for a lull in the overload of visual stimuli carrying information to be processed by the eye/brain. This enables the artist to overcode the visual text with so much stylistic variation in the formal arrangement of pictorial elements that it is virtually useless in providing the viewer with a single code from which to derive clues to construct meaning. The viewer must then rely upon the interplay of the visual and lexical texts to relay the necessary information component so as to provide a guide to the overall code and process of decoding which is also embodied deeply within

118 107 the structure of the visual text, yet hidden until the key code is extracted through abductions or the instructions of the author/artist. The masquerade and mystery theme outlined in the lexical text allows the artist to develop the disguise motif pictorially whereby the animals are perceived not only as familiar zoomorphic forms according to external visual paradigms drawn from references to such forms through the lexemes, but also as fictional alter-egos which establish internal visual paradigms that function as indexes for gauging cross-medial agreement. The zoomorphic forms are characterized internally in the visual text by joining an aspect of the animals' real-life "value" (e.g., physical properties, derivation, historical, cultural importance, etc.) with the costuming required to facilitate the masquerade theme in order to create the internal visual paradigm which will support the semantic implications of the lexical text and repress miscommunication while generating processes of code-making through the viewer/reader's abduction. The success or failure of the purpose of communication in this picture book depends upon its ability to be open to multiple interpretations (a great deal of which will be erroneous due to the need for trial-and-error methods of detection, analysis and deduction). For example, Sam, the crocodile, is masquerading as a judge and wears the traditional wig, cape and three-piece suit, complete with pocket watch, associated with the external paradigmatic conception of what a "judge" should look like. The viewer may ask a simple question, "Why is the crocodile dressed as a judge?" A possible symbolic reading of the visual image in thematic terms could be as follows but this is determined by an individual's encyclopaedic knowledge and ability to contextualize semantic selections within the possible world of the text. On the surface, the pairing of the external visual paradigm of "the judge" with the pictorial representation of the crocodile form is incommensurate; however, the crocodile has been traditionally associated with wisdom or evil in western culture deriving from its resemblance to the serpent or dragon as the symbol of knowledge before the fall of man. The thematic aspect of the crocodile's symbolic function is never really actualized in the visual text and it does not need to be in this case because of the mystery and masquerade theme which leaves the text open to multiple and contradictory interpretations. It could be

119 108 argued, however, that this is an underlying feature of the logic of characterization for all the zoomorphic forms depicted, though the viewer would be hard-pressed to analyze and justify some of the more obscure connections because the encoding of the visual text is openly associational and not totally rational. By accessing external visual paradigms as developed in relation to the concepts evoked in the lexical text, the crocodile is then presented for the viewer as a unique, internal, visual paradigm able to stand on its own because the means and purpose of anthropomorphization depicted in the creature comply with the possible visual world of the picture book and the genres of fable and mystery. Similarly, the depiction of characters in Effie functions to accentuate the commoedic aspects of the possible world being developed in association with the lexical text and to establish internalized visual paradigms which work as indexes to focus the viewer's extensional responses, or what Barthes (1964) has termed, anchoring the message of the visual text. For example, the overwhelming blueness of the spotted caterpillar, the multiple pairs of sandals, the tufts of hair that bristle out angularly from the creature's head and chin and the drowsy facial expression suggest a relaxedness of manner that is reminiscent of "beatnik" culture. The next visual frame undercuts the given impression of the caterpillar by contorting the features of the subject in order to reveal the startling power and affect of Effie's voice referred to explicitly in the lexical narrative. The caption which reads /But she was talking to thin air. The caterpillar nearly split his skin in his hurry to escape/ (p. 6) reinforces the visual metaphorical structure developed in the picture book by providing the relational isotopy through which the pictorial text is indexed in relation to the lexical text and understood at the level of both lexical and visual fabuli in conjunction with the viewer's reactions to the connotations of the image presented, especially since there are no other principle closed forms in the visual frame upon which the viewer may rely. The lexical allusion to /air/ is represented visually as a puff of air released forcefully from the bulging caterpillar. The swelling of the eyes and cheeks connotes the impression of tightness which refers directly to the lexical metaphor /nearly split his skin/ because it denotes in figurative literary terms the rush in which the caterpillar wanted to escape from the source of the irritation, objectified in the previous visual frame, in the form of the protagonist who

120 109 has taken on the visual actantial role of the searcher. This type of cause-effect implication in the pictorial representation defines the mode of presentation in the sequencing of character actions and events which comprise the linear visual narrative in the picture book. It is an effective means of smoothing over any of the possible disjunctions created through the segmenting of visual plot into frames which could affect the communication between the viewer and the pictorial text. Therefore, the interaction between the lexical and the visual texts facilitates the means for explaining the thematic implications of the mental concepts evoked by the lexical and visual images presented in both literal and figurative terms. This is achieved in this instance by the viewer drawing first upon the internal visual paradigm of the caterpillar acting as a visual index and, in turn, eliciting information from the external visual paradigm of "the beatnik" (or any other similar external paradigm) to make cognitive and affective associational judgements that will guide meaning making. Intertextual knowledge of caterpillars in general and of the nature of the psychic and emotional state connoted by the expression of the subject enables the viewer/reader to decode the phrase /split his skin/ both literally and figuratively in conjunction with the total text. A caterpillar does indeed /split his skin/ in the transformation from one physical state of existence to another, a butterfly, but the operative topic presented in the lexical text is that of /escape/. Effie must be the cause of discontent, always acting upon unsuspecting others with the same results, before the transformation from villain to heroine can occur. Visual Ideological Structures in Actantial Structures Even though the focal awareness of the viewer shifts from primary to secondary areas within the visual field, to comprehend the pictorial text on deeper levels of intension depends upon identifying the logic of relationships between the major forms figurativized in the pictorial plane, as visual actors, with specific functions in visual actantial structures to motivate thematic concerns in the linear visual narrative at the level of fabula. The succession of visual frames in a picture book predicates the action in this way by showing the progression of the plot temporally in terms of visual actantial structures in the pictorial

121 110 text which may or may not correspond to the actantial structures presented in the lexical text. A "frame-by-frame" examination of cross-medial agreement reveals the extent of synchronicity in the modalization of actantial structures on both textual levels and results in the concretization of actorial roles within the linear based narratives. For example, it has been established that the story of Effie is told in the lexical text through the sequencing of the protagonist's actions from an implied past to an implied present. The pictorial text functions to embellish the allusion of historical reality necessary for the fabula to be accepted as tenable as well as identifying the principal visual actants within the syntagmatic structure of the linear visual narrative related over twenty-seven frames as it is derived from the narrative structure of the lexical text. The visual text then indeed elaborates upon the lexical text by pictorially isolating the actantial and thematic roles of the lexical actants (subjects/objects) in the narrative structures by objectifying their cognitive and occurential doings in terms of searcher vs. escapee, communicator vs. denigrator, in visual actantial structures which suppress misinterpretation of the lexical text on the level of fabula. In this way, the visual ideological structures aid in establishing textual truth by confirming the elementary ideological structures promulgated in the lexical text. The visual portrayal of lexical actants reveals not only the non-verbalized dimensions of occurential actions but also shows the cognitive dimensions of those actions which infuse the text with additional levels of psychological and emotional levels of complexity that can be ascertained by the viewer through the physiognomy of the pictorial forms and promotes further macropropositions on the level of fabula. This is evident in Effie where the progression of the linear visual narrative is a paralleled series of failed attempts at communication on the part of the main visual and lexical actant in the text. As the situation becomes worse because the object of the search has not been attained (e.g., someone to talk with) despite the will-to-do being present in the visual actor, the psychological and emotional state of the protagonist is made visually apparent on page twelve in the form of a facial expression which connotes despair and grief. The protagonist now becomes the object of pity through which an emotional identification on the part of the viewer is achieved as endearment for the suffering of an individual who is less than adequate compared to other individuals in the

122 111 possible world of the text and, therefore, anti-heroic in a thematic sense (see Frye, 1957). It is because the visual narrative program presents situations closely aligned to the narrative program in the lexical text, where the repeated failures of the protagonist create specific thematic roles stemming from the narrative functions of actors (e.g., villain vs. hero, exile vs. friend) with respect to occurential and cognitive doings, that the viewer/reader is capable of summing up the visual and lexical narrative as a series of interrelated lexical and visual actantial structures that are revealed in the modality of predication according to subjects as objectified in both the lexical and visual texts. The lexical narrative of Effie is sparse in descriptive vocabulary and lacks the adjectives necessary to characterize, in full, the cognitive and occurential relations between actors; hence, the visual text builds upon the limitations of signifying potential within the lexical text by describing with greater detail what lexemes such as /ant/, /elephant/ and /beetle/ are verbal representatives of within the textual world structures of the picture book and delineates specific visual actantial roles and thematic roles for each form of being in the text in relation to the protagonist who controls the lexical and visual narrative programs by virtue of being the main subject of both textual levels. This is an important consideration for picture books that are constricted to containing vocabulary and visual imagery which developing readers will need to comprehend both syntactically and semantically within structures of lexical and visual forms of signification. Quite simply, it takes many more words to describe an ant and its actions rather than to portray one visually (see Eco, 1984; Arnheim, 1974) and this selfevident fact will ease the decoding difficulties experienced by the young reader/viewer when first exposed to a lexical or visual system of signification. The actantial structures of the visual text unfold the fabula neatly by presenting a pictorial indexicality, or context, for understanding the lexical text in terms of visual world structures that work as generative or repressive cross-medial indicators to verify or refute the abductions, or micropropositions and macropropositions made by the "viewer" as "reader" during the process of decoding the lexical text. In virtually all picture books, the visual text enhances and extends the lexical text by relaying information that redefines the semantic potential of the lexemes in a syntagmatic chain (see Lewis, 1990).

123 112 Aspects of Visual Veridiction There is no need for the visual text to overtly justify the means and purpose of its creation because the viewer, by this stage, has either already suspended disbelief and accepted the incongruity of formal structures between the world of reality and the possible world of fiction, or has rejected the aesthetic function of the text by applying external visual paradigms as common visual frames of reference to the non-realistic but internal visual paradigms constructed in the picture book. The logic of the depiction of the characters, the actions and the events in an artistic text is internally self-consistent because the syntactic relations between pictorial elements which engender the work with meaning potential are based upon the thematic function of form according to purpose in structure and not a validity determined by the extent of a work's adherence to external paradigms. Visual veridiction is achieved when contiguity, or the degree of congruity displayed between both lexical and visual texts in terms of visual truth matrixes generated cross-medially and applicable to the possible visual world as represented in the text, is ascertained by the viewer/reader in the form of propositions. Since Effie contains a stylistically animated and representational visual text, the literary genre of fable is concretely identified in the possible visual world of the picture book and a series of expectations are created within the viewer/reader with respect to the textual world structures of allegory to be developed through the linear visual narrative and later to be actualized in the form of micropropositions and macropropositions that constitute the level of visual fabula. A frame can be said to fit sequentially into the linear visual narrative from which the visual fabula is abstracted and veridict the lexical text through a contiguity derived from corroborating 'textual truths' established in the possible world of the text (e.g., «Effie is a lonely créature», etc.). For example, in the frame on page thirteen of Effie, the distinct separation of forms representing tree roots, grassy plants and leaves of the natural landscape into a clearing reveals the structural insignificance of the protagonist as the overshadowed pictorial center and emphasizes the emotional low point of the visual narrative by creating a psychological empathy for the character within the viewer to

124 113 promote the feeling of isolation through the centric perspective. The top-down depiction of the ant in the center of the visual frame creates the impression of distance and the illusion of space and depth through the arrangement of formal elements. The aerial viewpoint gives an amplified perspective of the ant's body, where the head and mouth are disproportionately larger than the rest of the thorax, which recedes in segments down and away from the viewer, to emphasize the downward angular projection of vision. The tops of the leaf-like forms are shown in order to reinforce the unusual viewpoint and to create effectively the illusion of a third-dimension while suppressing fact that the visual text is really a twodimensional plane. The superimposition of one form upon another also promotes depth perception and a sense of separateness due to the creation of different spatial planes in the front, middle and back of the visual field. It is the configuration and organization of plant forms acting as vectors, or pointing fingers, which captures and directs the gaze of the viewer toward the clearing in the central area of the pictorial plane where the figure is completely isolated (see Eco, 1976; Arnheim, 1988). Since the directional forces represented in the pictorial plane are defined primarily by spatialization, the center, which serves as the natural point of reference for the viewer (Arnheim, 1988), characterizes the tensions present within the visual field in relation to the direction, shape size and location of the forms depicted in a work. In this way, the spatial orientation within the visual frame relies upon the viewer's sense of kinaesthetic associations (Arnheim, 1988; 1974), or the ability to vicariously experience the simulation of gravitational pulls, in order to establish tensions and relations between forms that determine the structure of the possible visual world as a veridiction of the lexical text. Emotional content is also conveyed through the structuring of the other formal elements, such as color, or value, and texture, in the visual frame. For example, the color contrasts reinforce the fragile emotional state of the protagonist and accentuate the mood of vulnerability which is represented visually by the use of softer analogous colors in the center surrounded by the seemingly hostile fecundity and burgeoning overgrowth of the raw green environment. A similar psychological and emotional state is conveyed pictorially through darker and more textured hues near the beginning of the picture book before NP1, as supported by both the lexical and visual

125 114 texts, has fully progressed toward the psychic and somatic isolation of the protagonist within the possible visual world portrayed. The use of color and texture on page eight is primarily symbolic in directing and focusing the viewer's extensional responses to the darker and more primitive aspects of the possible visual world of the picture book by creating diagonal tensions across the dense pictorial plane from Effie's red tongue at the center to the light values of the fallen butterfly in the upper left corner and the luminosity of the squiggled yellow line in the lower right corner. The dominant diagonal separation increases the dynamics of the scene and ties the two opposite corners of the frame together to freeze the scene at a moment of high emotional tension where the protagonist is acting out the verbalized and non-verbalized physical manifestations of profoundly distraught internal sensibilities in the possible world of the text. Ultimately, the theme of isolation in Effie is serious while the treatment of the theme is comic; thus, the lack of total cross-medial agreement disjoints visual veridiction on the level of plot and creates the potential counterpoint for a non-comic but tragic resolution. In essence, the visual text embodies a series of violent slapstick motifs, or "calamity", like slipping on a banana peel and falling down a flight of stairs, which the protagonist quite unintentionally instigates and does not even notice. There are no injured parties, which in itself is not a real world expectation, but a facet of the familiar comic convention employed in the picture book to deflate the seriousness of the situation on the level of fabula. We pity the protagonist and fear the adverse circumstances which are endured because the events depicted follow the progression of the linear visual narrative through a series of core archetypes functioning as narrative invariants representative of the human condition: the desire for friendship, recognition, acceptance and love (see Appendix D). Summary Chapter Five contains an application of the method for the semiotic analysis of the picture book (outlined in Chapter Three) to the linear visual texts of Effie and other works

126 115 representative of the genre in order to answer the research question: How does the textual form of the picture book work, both lexically and visually, as a semiotic system of signs and codes to create meaning? For the research purpose(s) intended by the present study (as stated in Chapter One), the application of semiotic principles of textual analysis to linear visual text, like lexical narrative text, elucidates how the visual signifying elements of picture book form function as systems of signs and codes to create intensional and extensional meaning for the viewer/reader in cognitive, affective and aesthetic domains of understanding. By examining the picture book from a semiotic perspective according to the method detailed in Chapter Three, we are afforded insights into the dimensions of visual text which characterize the genre's facility for meaning-making through the interaction of lexical and visual media that comprise the formal structure of such texts. It is this enriching of our experience of picture books based upon the analysis of textual levels higher and lower than the sign (Saint-Martin, 1987; Eco, 1984; Greimas, 1983) which reveals the immensely complex nature of lexical and visual elements of textual form in a work as actualized by the cognitive, affective and aesthetic responses of a reading/viewing consciousness. Then, the total text is illuminated and its role in learning can be better understood in terms of the technical and artistic merits it possesses as a literary form.