Language and visual communication

This chapter starts me to think about the relationship between language and visual communication.
The value of language, which serves as the dominating method of communication in the society, can not be totally replaced. However, I agree that visual communication should also be an effective language if properly applied. The key is: how to combine or collaborate both into a meaningful culture-based design—to convey certain message and promote social actions.
The book so far distinguished two kinds of visual literacy by comparison of Ladybird’s and Dick Bruna’s work ( p21-22). In Ladybird’s My Bath, images are simply structured as replicas of reality and the visual communication has been made subservient to language, while in Bruna’s Bird in Tree, a much broader imaginary space has been left to readers since the coded image has been openly constructed and the visual communication exists independent of language. Therefore, the two images impose two different forms of social control over meaning.
We may ask: is there still a third or fourth possibility that the construction of images and words may contribute to a more powerful convey of meaning? The answer is definitely yes since the social power and appeal of images is highly recognized in all lines of life. According to the Chapter, it is stressed that there is a role distribution among different semiotics, a role distribution in which some semiotics are given a great deal of social power, but at the price of being subjected to greater institutional (and technological) control (p26). Social and cultural factors are believed to primarily bring about the new realities of the semiotic landscape (p34). The chapter also further discussed the dramatic shift from the verbal to the visual, the characteristics of the “new literacy” and its promising prospect and highlighted the hypotheses proposed in page 39, which may serve as a breakthrough point for further research.
Besides, I think, the task also chooses designers as meanings arise out of the real society. Though children’s early drawings may to some extent reflect their recognition of the world and could be called as creative, it is more of some original self-expression instead of true communication owing to their lack in the experience of social interaction.