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INTRODUÇÃO
«People use idioms to make their language richer and more colourful and to convey subtle shades of meaning or intention» (Brenner, 2003, p.11). An idiom (Summers, 2003, p. 976) is a group of words or a phrase that has a particular meaning and is completely different from the meanings of all or some of its individual words. For example, Cut From the Same Cloth doesn’t mean exactly cutting from the cloth but sharing a lot of similarities (The Free Dictionary, 2014). Idioms can characterise different physical, intellectual and psychological abilities, behaviour, condition, performance, quality, and quantity. Normally they are used in a fixed and consistent way. «Usually, an idiom is a pair of words that has a certain meaning which will be lost when we try to understand it by parts of the phrase. For example Shoot the breeze cannot be understood by separate words shoot, the, and breeze» (Cacciari &
Tabossi, 1988, p. 668).
THE POwER OF IDIOMS
Being able to use any idiom requires several unconscious stages that actually take milliseconds to process in the brain. The primary one comes with the native language. Being born in a particular culture gives one an innate capacity for vocabulary of particular idioms and an instinctive understanding of their usage.
An average person uses idioms every day without realising it. It all comes to us with the society we live in and actually from our metaphorical mentality.
Metaphorical mentality was very much discussed by Lakoff and Johnson in their book Metaphor We Live By (2003, p. 4): «…metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action. Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature.
The concepts that govern our thoughts are not just matters of the intellect. They also govern our everyday functioning, down to the most mundane details. Our concepts structure what we perceive, how we get around in the world, and how we relate to other people. If we are right in suggesting that our conceptual system is largely metaphorical, then the way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor». And if this process comes out unconsciously it means our thinking and mentality is metaphorical. Lakoff &
Johnson (2003, p. 50) prove that using one simple example:
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«LOVE IS A PATIENT:
a. This is a sick relationship.
b. They have a strong, healthy marriage.
c. The marriage is dead—it can’t be revived.
d. Their marriage is on the mend. We’re getting back on our feet.
However, being able to understand an idiom and produce it later on depends on a huge essential process called perception. «According to Aristotle, ‘the soul never thinks without an image’…image making and our perceptions of it serve as a way for us to make sense of the world… Through art, people are able to create conceptualisations of their understanding about the specific ways they see the world» (Simmons & Shauna, 2013, p. 1).
Before a person can visualise something, he/she has to perceive information.
Perception is the organisation, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment. Perception is not a single passive process but a complex one which involves learning, memory, expectation and attention. In this research it is reasonable to mention the
fragmental nature of perception, which is caused by the fragmental environment we live in. In the city, for instance, all the different coloured advertising and signboards are rising from nowhere and changing one after another like separate fragments of the whole city picture, creating some kind of fragmental environment. Many researchers use the word montage, instead of fragmental, which is usually employed in the field of filmmaking. Having been discovered as a part of filmmaking, montage, with the help of its promoter in cinema Sergei Eisenstein, went much farther than filmmaking and transformed itself into a concept called “montage thinking”.
The theory of montage thinking is explained like this: two objects placed next to each other will definitely have an impact on each other and in result will create something new, with a new definition. The idea came to Eisenstein from analytically dividing an object on individual important elements and then verifying that their new synthesis produced a new sense (which is similar to the Gestalt theory).
Association follows perception. «Association is the process of forming mental connections or bonds between sensations, ideas, or memories» (Merriam–Webster’s Online Dictionary, 2014). In general, association is the meaning that is created in the mind when a person thinks of—or looks at—something that is visually different but the person makes a subconscious connection between them according to their life experience. Aristotle created three main laws of association: similarity, contrast and contiguity. The fourth law of frequency and other appendages were added by his followers. Using the principle of association a person can successfully and accurately
represent the information by replacing a large number of verbal information with associative images.
Having different associations will lead to completely different interpretations.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary interpretation is explained as the act or result of explaining or interpreting something: the way something is explained or understood (Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary, 2014). «To interpret images is to examine the assumptions that we and others bring to them, and to decode the visual language that they “speak”» (Sturken & Cartwright, 2009, p. 41).
A person goes through perception, association and interpretation simply and fast in their native environment and common comfortable social circle. But that statement will be false, for instance, in another country. That is why it’s so important to remember that understanding the meaning of idioms varies from location to location. Every language has its own idiomatic expressions, different from others, which can not be literally translated, because they won’t convey the same meaning in different languages. It means that the relationship between word and its understanding is formed by a language code and society rules. «It was central to Saussure’s theory that meanings change according to context and to the rules of language» (Sturken & Cartwright, 2009, p. 28). We learn these rules along with the culture we live in. For example, let’s have a look at the same idiom in various languages. Listed idioms are analogous to ‘kick the bucket’ which in English means
‘have died’ (Wikipedia Dictionary, 2014):
— French: manger des pissenlits par la racine (‘to eat dandelions by the root’);
— German: ins Gras beißen (‘to bite the grass’);
— Italian: tirare le cuoia (‘to pull the skins’);
— Portuguese: esticar o pernil (‘to stretch the leg’);
— Russian: дать дуба (‘’to give the oak’);
— Spanish: estirar la pata (‘to stretch one’s leg’);
— Ukrainian: врізати дуба (‘to cut the oak—as in building a coffin’).
As we can see they are completely different and trying to understand and translate them literally will bring no success. That happens because usually every idiom has figurative meaning separate from its literal one. What does that mean? Literal meaning means exactly what the phrase or sentence is about. And figurative refers to when the sentence describes something different from its context. It represents the idea behind the words.
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IDIOMS AS THE VISUAL PIECE
After the nature of idioms was analysed it’s time to investigate the process of the visual idioms’s transformation. «Visualization means thinking in pictures or, more precisely, in individual shots or brief sequences» (Zettl, 2009, p. 203). Every time one thinks about anything they visualise it in the mind using known images. But where do these images come from?
Visual communication happens subjectively, we get the image in our brain after we looked at the object. «The brain processes three types of visual messages: mental—
those that you experience from inside your mind such as thoughts, dreams, and fantasies; direct—those that you see without media intervention; and mediated—
those that you see through some type of print (paper) or screen (movie, television, or web) medium. What you experience and what you remember are products of a mind that actively thinks, with images and words, the mental, direct, and/or mediated visual messages you imagine or experience in your life.» (Lester, 2013, p. 8).
In visualising idioms, collage was chosen as a technique of representation. The reason for this is its physiological, philosophical, social, historical and cultural characteristics. «Collage is the primary formula of the aesthetics of mystification developed in our time. It is the visual vocabulary of what Walter Benjamin called
“the age of mechanical reproduction”; it reflects the absurdity of representing things and images in a universe of forces and energies… With collage, art no longer copies nature or seeks equivalents to it; an expression of the advanced industrial age, it appropriates the external world on the basis that it is already partly changed into art» (Rosenberg, 1983, pp. 174–178). Taking into account that collage itself consists of different fragments, the fragmental environment we talked about earlier acquires collage characteristics. That is why collage appeared to be the best technique or, better said, the best tool in representing idioms. With its dualism, conflict and hidden abilities, collage can interpret and present the difficult and deep meaning of an idiom. It transforms into a reflection of contemporary culture and global world events. It is a method against pattern perception, which helps increase the range of contrast and harmony in the environment and artistic creativity.
POSTCARDS
Postcards were produced as visual pieces during the visual idioms transformation.
Postcards have evolved to much more than just pieces of the postal service and became individual pieces of art and communication. This little printed piece of paper can explain and show tastes, attitudes and ways of life through the picture represented in it. In fact, despite its small size, it has huge visual power. Every postcard is an independent and unique piece, and the message represented in it is self-contained and complete. That’s the main reason why we chose postcards as the way to convey idioms. Each idiom has a different story and each postcard is a different “book”.
The goals of the idiomatic theme were to find a suitable visual representation for each idiom, one that would combine harmoniously the strong philosophical meaning of the idiom with clear, transparent, understandable and well designed illustration. By themselves, idioms are very different. They may express an act (make a mountain out of a molehill—to exaggerate the importance of something; carry coals to newcastle—do something unnecessary), a fact (holy cow—expressing amazement, surprise and astonishment), a term (big fish—an important or powerful person in a group or organization), or a situation (one hand washes the other—
between two equally hazardous alternatives). And this differentiation has to be saved and united during the creation of an illustration. Taking into account special abilities and differences in each idiom, the major methods of representation were collage, photography and computer manipulation.
Examples 1. The Big Fish
2. Make a Mountain Out of a Molehill 3. Holy Cow
4. Carry Coals to Newcastle 5. One Hand Washes the Other
DESIGNA2015 - PROCEEDINGS - PICTURES PAINT A THOUSAND WORDS. VISUALISING IDIOMS ON POSTCARDS 111 Figure 1: The Big Fish.
CONCLUSION
This was a mean of studying and exploring idioms. We hope it will help breathe new life into postcard popularity, creation and production. This paper is actually nothing more than just a drop in the ocean, but surely drop by drop we can make an ocean.
Figure 2: Make a Mountain Out of a Molehill.
Figure 5: One Hand Washes the Other.
Figure 4: Carry Coals to Newcastle.
Figure 3: Holy Cow.
reFerences
— Brenner, G. (2003). Webster’s New World American Idioms Handbook. Webster’s New World. Canada:
Wiley Publishing.
— Cacciari, C., & Tabossi, P. (1988). The Comprehension of Idioms. Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 668-683.
— Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003). Metaphors We Live By. London: University of Chicago Press.
— Lester, P. (2013). Visual Communication: Images with Messages. Boston: Wadsworth.
— Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved September 15, 2015 from http://www.merriam- webster.com
— Rosenberg, H. (1983). Art on the Edge: Creators and Situations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
— Simmons, N., Shauna, D. (2013). The Art of Thinking: Using Collage to Stimulate Scholarly Work. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2(1), 1-13.
— Sturken, M., & Cartwright, L. (2009). Practices of Looking. An Introduction to Visual Culture. New York:
Oxford University Press.
— Summers, D. (Ed.). (2003). Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. London: Longman.
— The Free Dictionary. (n.d.). Retrieved September 15, 2015 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com
— Wikipedia dictionary. (2014). Retrieved September 16, 2015 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_
Page
— Zettl, H. (2009). Sight. Sound. Motion. Boston: Wadsworth
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