Towards a Rhetoric of Tactile Pictures

Carol Wiest

continued . . .

The tactile pictures in the alphabet book represent objects in the world around us, such as an apple, a banana, a comb, and so on. Kress and van Leeuwen's framework for analysing the ideational metafunction in pictures provides a way of talking about how this representation works.

At first glance, it may seem that a simpler framework would be suitable. But the pages in the alphabet book, though designed for a young audience, are actually quite complex. Each contains and shows relationships between three semiotic codes—Braille, tactile pictures, and the Roman alphabet. (See, for example, the page for T). The book is teaching children that there are many semiotic codes, these codes can work together to communicate ideas, and that the codes are all important. It may seem strange to include the Roman alphabet, but there are practical reasons for this. A blind child who uses Braille still needs to know the Roman alphabet for tasks such as signing their name. Also, it gives the child information about the sighted world, allowing them to understand how others communicate. Underlying these reasons, however, is a statement of value—the Roman alphabet cannot be left out of a book about literacy and Braille cannot stand on its own.

The overt presentation of these different codes, however, is just the beginning. Like spoken texts, which are made up of multiple semiotic codes—the spoken and the visual or non-verbal (39)—so too are tactile pictures. They express the object they represent, but even the very paper they're produced on has meaning. Haut relief pictures, like those shown with each letter in the alphabet book, are generally made on the same plastic form paper. In time, the child will learn that the touch of this paper signals that there's a picture on it for them to find. The child also learns about another type of picture, the raised line drawing on the cover. This type of picture uses different stimulus parameters to represent the face of a clown and is produced on a different type of paper. For the child, the materials themselves become a code that indicates the existence and type of tactile picture on the page.

If we take a step further, to an analysis of the pictures themselves, we find another type of code, that is, the conventions used to represent objects. The pictures in the alphabet book represent what Kress and van Leeuwen call conceptual-analytical processes. The pictures represent objects "in terms of their more generalized and more or less stable and timeless essence" and "serve to identify a Carrier and to allow viewers to scrutinize this Carrier's Possessive Attributes" (79, 90). The level of detail that can be expressed in tactile pictures, however, limits the number of Possessive Attributes that can be included in the representation of a Carrier. A photograph can show, for example, the Possessive Attributes of a house in great detail, from the architectural style of the building as a whole to the finer details of design. In contrast, the picture of the House in the alphabet book shows only the basic features of a house—windows, a door, walls, and a roof. The producer of this picture had to choose which Possessive Attributes to include and which to exclude. In turn, the reader of the picture learns what the defining characteristics of a "house" are, or in other words, the reader learns a code for recognizing the object "house."

Aside from the inclusion or exclusion of Possessive Attributes, however, tactile pictures can also emphasize particular attributes. These privileged or criterial attributes become a kind of shorthand for representing the object and may differ significantly from what would be considered criterial in a visual representation. For example, in the picture of the Rabbit, the prominent features are the ears, teeth, and whiskers—the ears and whiskers are larger than the other elements and the teeth feel sharp in comparison to the smooth edges of the other elements. For rabbits, then, the criterial features are long ears and whiskers, and sharp teeth. The choice of these criterial features contrasts with what would be considered criterial in the visual realm. The author of the tactile picture has represented the object "rabbit" with a frontal, rather than oblique angle, has emphasized the facial features, and hasn't included the tail. The visual and tactile semiotic codes each have a unique sign for "rabbit."

Not all tactile pictures differ so greatly from their visual counterparts. In the picture of the Truck, for example, the three wheels are criterial—they are raised slightly above the rest of the picture. A visual drawing of a truck would probably emphasize the wheels also.

As young tactile readers learn these criterial features, they begin to learn the semiotic code of tactile pictures, for example trucks have three wheels, not two. By analyzing the criterial features used in tactile pictures and comparing them to those used in visual pictures, we can deepen our understanding of the social constructedness of representation. We can also begin to understand the semiotic code of tactile representation and observe its development over time as tactile pictures become more widely available.

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