ABSTRACT

Visual representations serve a multitude of crucial functions in the creation and dissemination of knowledge and information. They may take many different forms and refer to different phenomena or processes. Making valid decisions how particular visuals should look like presupposes a thorough insight in the nature of the referent or subject of the visual representation, the complex intermediate processes and technologies that are used to produce it, the final form and context of the visual, and the purposes it needs to serve. While often oblivious to its producers and their users or consumers, these insights and practices are firmly grounded in cultural processes of meaning-making, and therefore benefit from a socio-semiotic approach. The proposed socio-semiotic instrument builds upon my earlier taxonomic work in visualization practices. It incorporates many aspects and observations into a practical model that can be used to guide the production of new materials, or as a tool to interrogate the usefulness of existing visual representations for distinct purposes.

摘要

视觉表示在知识和信息的创建和传播中起着至关重要的作用。它们可能采用许多不同的形式，并涉及不同的现象或过程。做出有效的决定，特定的视觉效果应该是对视觉表示的对象或主题的性质，用于产生视觉效果的复杂中间过程和技术，视觉的最终形式和上下文以及视觉效果的全面了解。它需要服务的目的。尽管这些见解和实践常常被生产者及其用户或消费者所忽视，但它们牢固地立足于意义形成的文化过程，因此可以从社会符号学方法中受益。拟议的社会符号工具是基于我在可视化实践中的早期分类学工作而建立的。