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Article published In:
Perception, Culture and Language
Edited by Judit Baranyiné Kóczy and Rita Brdar-Szabó
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies 10:2] 2023
► pp. 367–397

Cultural models mediating between visual sensation and semiotic systems, exemplified on visual, alpha-pictorial and verbal-gestural communication

ORCID logo | Eötvös Loránd University
ORCID logo | University of Osijek
People often see what they want to see (or hear, or taste, etc.), i.e., our mind imperceptibly edits our actual sensations. Culture may function, metaphorically speaking, as a pair of glasses that filters light, because it may be tinted, or have different lenses. In this article we study how visual sensations are filtered and edited, either reduced or enriched, so as to produce perceptions fitting the cultural models we have, and how this interaction is reflected in semiotic systems, i.e., in visual, multimodal, and verbal-gestural communication. Accordingly, we offer three case studies in which we demonstrate the claim that variably articulated cultural models (often networks of related cultural models) we have influence whether, and how, we experience something as being of metaphorical or metonymic nature.
Keywords: cultural model, metonymy, metaphor, visual metonymy, multimodality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.On cultural models and conceptual metonymies (and metaphors)
  • 3.Case studies demonstrating the role of metonymies and metaphors in matching perceptions with the cultural background knowledge
    • 3.1Visual metonymies and metaphors in The Mérode Altarpiece (by the workshop of Robert Campin)
    • 3.2Alpha-pictorial type of multimodal communication – mixing graphemes and images
    • 3.3Gestural communication: When football players cross themselves during a match
  • 4.Conclusions and outlooks for further research
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 November 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.00105.brd
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