Visual and verbal texts: A semiotic distinction

Abstract

In an article about the eclectic nature of visual literacy research, Braden (1996:9) notes that the notion of visual literacy has been steadily revised to accommodate relevant research results from widely diverging topics of interest. One of the areas of study which has important implications for the theoretical basis of visual literacy is the visual-verbal dichotomy (i.e. the contradistinction between visual and verbal messages) in the sense that any attempt to measure visual literacy skills in a meaningful way requires sound definitions of the terms ‘visual’ and ‘verbal’. In this article, three theoretical perspectives of the visual-verbal dichotomy are discussed and illustrated by means of two examples. The theoretical perspectives are one, the view that verbal texts comprise arbitrary signs whereas visual texts consist of iconic signs; two, the redundancy theory-based stance that verbal texts have a clear, predictable meaning in contrast to visual texts to which the viewer attaches a new and unique meaning; and three, the theory that scanning patterns differ significantly between pictorial and written texts.