"We Talk In Pictures Now, But What Does It Mean?"
This article talks about the ever-growing form of image-based communication (emojis, memes, GIFs, etc.) in Internet language. As Montreal linguist and writer Gretchen McCulloch says: "as social life migrates online, visual forms of communication become increasingly attractive because they replicate some of the physical experience we've lost." This article presents a really interesting sort of dichotomy between image and speech, and even image and word (as seen on a page). McCulloch and Tumblr-based artist Kari Altmann imply that images are in a sense more natural to us, more so than words (which, in my personal view, I don't really see as that different from images? For example, how do we check to make sure a word is spelled right? We write it out and make a judgment based on what it 'looks like.') and maybe even (spoken) language. @_@ wow... such semiotics... (See what I did there?)
One other thing McCulloch mentioned was how ironic it was that it was technology that transformed "images" (religious icons, etc.) into "words" in the first place (printing press) but it is now bringing it back.
Anyway, really interesting read! [Published on 05-03-2015]