Towards a Rhetoric of Tactile Pictures

Carol Wiest

continued . . .

So far, we have explored how tactile pictures represent objects in the world. Now we turn to the question of how they enact social relations between interactive participants (the viewers or readers of the image) and represented participants (the people and animals portrayed in the image). Kress and van Leeuwen provide a comprehensive model for analysing the interpersonal metafunction in pictures. Tactile pictures, however, tend to blur the boundaries between categories they have defined, such as offer/demand and objective/subjective. Also, tactile pictures use a specific, narrower range of vertical and horizontal angles to represent involvement and power. Finally, Kress and van Leeuwen's model of modality becomes problematized when applied to tactile pictures due, in part, to the relatively short history of tactile pictures. Taken together, these important differences between tactile and visual images point to the unique nature of the tactile mode.

To begin, tactile pictures blur Kress and van Leeuwen's classification of visual images into two types of image act: offers and demands. Demands "want something from the viewer" such as recognition while offers create no such social imperative (122-124). The tactile pictures I have studied tend to be offers but the distinct boundary between the two kinds of image act does not accurately reflect the gradations of offering and demanding that I have found.

Of the twenty-seven pictures in the alphabet book (twenty-six letter pictures and the cover), five appear to be demands: the Clown on the front cover, Queen, Ears, Nose, and Rabbit. The represented participant in each of these pictures looks directly out at the viewer, demanding recognition and acceptance. However, the degree or level of demand varies. At one extreme, the Clown not only looks directly at the viewer but extends his hands outward. When reading the picture, the reader's hands touch those of the Clown enacting a very personal, friendly interaction. The Clown not only demands recognition but also demands a particular level of intimate social interaction with the reader. At the other extreme, Ears and Nose look directly out at the viewer but lack mouths. The kind of social interaction that Ears and Nose demand thus becomes ambiguous because facial expressions are perhaps the most powerful index of social relations. In these two pictures, a single physical feature outweighs the importance of social interaction. They present exaggerated representations of ears and a nose while disregarding other physical features, such as a mouth, hair, and body. The clear distinction between offers and demands becomes blurred. The clown certainly presents a strong demand but do Ears and Nose constitute demands or are they offers portraying particular physical features?

The pictures in the alphabet book also problematize the distinction between subjective and objective images. Subjective images have a "built-in" point of view or perspective: "In subjective images the viewer can see what there is to see only from a particular point of view" (136). In contrast, objective images, "reveal everything there is to know (or that the artist has judged to be so) about the represented participants, even if, to do so, it is necessary to violate the laws of naturalistic depiction, or, indeed, the laws of nature" (136). However, for tactile pictures, "the laws of naturalistic depiction" differ significantly, requiring new definitions of "subjective" and "objective" images.

The pictures in the alphabet book use a mixture of both point of view and deviations from that point of view. For example, the Clown's face makes sense from a frontal-central perspective. However, his hands and his lack of a body deviate from that point of view. Also, the Duck, shown in profile, makes sense except for the feet: they appear at odd angles to the Duck's legs. While these deviations are strange distortions by visual standards, they are conventional for tactile pictures. As Polly Edman explains in Tactile Graphics, feet (human and animal) need to be shown at a 90 degree angle from the body (129). Feet that are not turned outward do not feel like feet. Further, arms and legs should not be foreshortened because readers, particularly children, expect to find two arms and two legs for humans (four legs for animals) (19, 129). Thus, although perspective plays a role in tactile representation, certain deviations are naturalistic. The objective-subjective pair thus needs some revision. For tactile pictures, degrees of objectivity and subjectivity seem more applicable than mutually exclusive categories, at least until the grammar of tactile representation becomes more firm. The Clown, missing his body as well as extending his hands at odd angles, is more objective than the Duck, for example, whose only deviation from perspective is his feet.

Since tactile pictures are neither wholly subjective nor wholly objective, it is difficult to apply the angles of involvement and power. Tactile pictures break the symmetry between "the way the maker of the image relates to the represented participants and the way the viewer must, willy-nilly, also relate to them" (137). The angles of involvement and power are still useful for analysis, however. A specific point of view does tend to dominate most tactile pictures and this point of view has been selected by the producer and imposed on the viewer. Further, the producer, rather than the viewer, decides when and how deviations from the point of view occur, within the conventions of tactile representation. The horizontal and vertical angles still establish a social relation between the image and the interactive participant.

Interestingly, tactile pictures use a very particular and limited set of angles. The horizontal angle, representing involvement, is either frontal or completely oblique. That is, the plane of the represented participants is either parallel or perpendicular to the plane of the viewer. Tactile pictures do not use gradations of obliqueness and so portray the represented participants as either wholly a part of or wholly alien to the world of the viewer. In the alphabet book, for example, most pictures have a frontal angle and three have a completely oblique angle (Duck, Truck, and Wagon). Often, however, the horizontal angle is ambiguous partly due to the nature of the object represented and partly due to decontextualization. A round Apple, for example, does not have a front per se, neither does a Banana. If these pictures were presented within a context, such as sitting on a table, it would be easier to judge the horizontal angle. This ambiguity, however, concerns whether we are facing the front or the side of an object and does not entail possible gradations in obliqueness. The ambiguity does, however, make it unwise to make firm conclusions about social relations based solely on the horizontal angle of involvement.

The vertical angle, representing power, is also limited in range and somewhat ambiguous. Tactile pictures use either a central or high angle, never a low angle, but again, decontextualization and the nature of the objects themselves sometimes make it difficult to judge the vertical angle. Like the ambiguity of the horizontal angle, however, the ambiguity exists between two possibilities and does not entail gradations. Tactile pictures either place the interactive participant in a position of equality or in a position of power in relation to the represented participants. In the alphabet book, pictures of people clearly have a central angle, for example, the Queen, Ears, Nose, and Clown. In contrast, pictures of tools have a high angle, for example, Comb, Fork, Key, and Scissors. People exist in a social relation of equality with the interactive participant while tools are objects over which the interactive participant has power.

Kress and van Leeuwen state that gradations are intrinsic to the angles of involvement and power (145). Since tactile pictures lack gradations, it is likely that tactile pictures draw on other aspects of representation to establish social relations.

Scale and social distance, for example, stage social relations ranging from personal intimacy to impersonal formality. Kress and van Leeuwen explain that the social distances people keep between them reflect the social relation in which they are involved (130). In images, close-ups, medium shots, and far shots establish imaginary social relations between interactive and represented participants. Close-ups, for example, enact an imaginary social relation of intimacy or friendship (132). This model of social distance derives from Edward Hall's study of face-to-face communication and uses both visual judgements of closeness and the participants' ability to touch each other as markers of social distance (130). It may seem, then, that social distance does not apply to tactile pictures. The viewer of a tactile picture can always touch the objects in the picture and cannot judge distance visually. However, tactile pictures do enact social relations through distance with the added feature of scale.

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