Authors
1
PhD in linguistics, Tehran University, Tehran, Iran
2
Professor of Linguistics, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
3
Associate Professor of Linguistics, Art University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
This paper examines the interaction between the visual and the verbal modes, that is, the multimodality of transferring the meaning in Persian visual poetry in terms of cognitive base of different types of integrations which occur in the brain after different sensory channels transferring the visual and verbal data. Although contemporary poetry is multimodal, the visual poetry is considered a type of poetry that has both the verbal and the visual as the dominant, mixed modes that tend to construct the poetic meaning. Different arrangement of words and images, which has a neurological ground, requires different kinds of cognitive processing and will therefore induce different feelings, impressions, and connotations. Consequently, the general meaning of a multimodal text goes beyond that of the combination of the two modes.
Drawing on cognitive semiotics, this paper demonstrates how the multimodal poem is conceptualized through embodied experience. Furthermore, it shows how various types of visual/verbal synthetization in a poetry text are differed by a number of distinctive features. Moreover, it is shown how the meaning-making process and the resulting affection become possible in each type of visual poetry. Through modifying Aarhus’s model (2005, 2012), itself based on Fauconnier and Turner’s conceptual blending theory, this research puts forward twelve different types of interaction between the verbal and visual modes, which, in this paper, are mentioned just the three super basic classified categories due to the limitation of the journal’s space. In fact, the three super categories are:
It is about the general relations among the two or more modes or media. In this kind of relation, each mode/medium comprises separable and individually coherent texts in different mode/media to improve the meaning space at the end. It is divided into two sub-groups, which are Mode-adjacency and Multimodality.
It is a kind of transformations from one medium to another. An inter-medial text could be divided into Duplicating and Iconicity (Image iconicity, Relational diagram iconicity and Structural diagram iconicity). Duplicating could not presents an indissoluble connection of diverse modes as a fusion of different modal processes, while in the second one (Iconicity), the verbal and visual modes are fused together to represent the similarity or adjacency. The Duplicating could also be based on similarity or contiguity as well, that is the whole or a part of the text could be duplicated due to similarity of the verbal mode to visual mode or the contiguity of both together.
The third and the last type of relation between verbal and visual modes is mix-modal text, which is the combination of modes in a way that the complex signs in different modes would not be coherent or self-sufficient outside of that context. It is divided into four groups which are called in this research Counter-iconicity (Counter iconicity of mis-matching and Paradox-counter iconicity), Mode-situational inclusion, Mode-overlapping and complementary relation. Cognitively, these three basic types are processed respectively as following: bottom-up, top-down and integrated processing. Furthermore, these types are based on the structure of human brain and the functions of neurological cells, to study multimodal, especially visual poetry. Since both brain and literature contain similar patterns, it is inferred that each type of verbal-visual interaction that is constructed through a particular cognitive process will necessarily form specific emotions and impressions.
Keywords
Language Related Research
