The communicative potential of pictures: eleven theses

Abstract

Pictures are artifacts, man-made, consciously designed objects. They can be distinguished from other artificial objects, e.g. tools, by their function: they serve human communication. Man cannot survive without communication. As a species, humans are anatomically unspecialized and do not possess many instinctive, unlearned, and error-free behavioral dispositions. Man is continually forced to acquire new patterns of behavior and cognition. This is achieved via communication, including pictures. At the earliest stages in the evolution of human communication, man could only utilize the means of elementary social interaction: gestics, mimics, body posture, and only later, spoken language. Harry Pross (1972), a German researcher in communication, proposes to designate these means to interaction as the “primary media of communication”.

Translated by the editor.