"Ethos Prototypes: Using Prototype Theory to Examine Visual Communication in Cross-Cultural Exchanges"
Kirk St-Amant
Texas Tech University
Abstract:
It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. What those thousand words are, however, can vary from culture to culture. That is, different cultural groups can associate different meanings with the same image. Even when a visual is recognizable across cultural groups, problems can still persist in terms of how certain cultural audiences perceive the acceptability/appropriateness or the effectiveness of such universal images. For this reason, researchers in visual communication need to consider different ways of approaching and understanding intercultural image design.
This proposed presentation would overview a method for both analyzing and creating effective images both for specific cultural groups and for cross-cultural audiences. The proposed method combines ideas from the cognitive psychology concept of prototype theory - which focuses on how humans identify and evaluate images - with the communications study concept of visual rhetoric and ethos - which examines what features distinguish a recognizable image from an acceptable or an excellent one. By merging ideas from these two areas, researchers in visual communication can explore culture and visual design from a more micro level, and this analytical approach can be used to develop design strategies for producing a range of effective images - from the photorealistic to the abstract.
In discussing this method, the presenter would use actual examples that range from the humorous and commercial to life threatening. Such examples, in turn, would be analyzed via the combined prototype theory-rhetoric method, and this analysis will be used to discuss what solution visual designers can use to address such problematic situations in cross-cultural visual communication. The presentation will then conclude with a discussion of how this methodology can be applied to both the design of specific, individual images as well as to the design of overall visual media or genres such as websites.