Word and Image: Beyond or for Good Measure?

Abstract

This paper aims at offering a brief survey of the relationships between word and image, language and the visual. If no image can do without discourse, conversely, language is imbued with the visual. If the two representing systems cannot be conflated, it seems nevertheless justified to observe, describe and draw conclusions from what happens when they are at work. Transposition, transaction, translation are the terms used to describe and analyse the process of exchange, of conversion, ensuring the passage between the two media. The moot point then is to know whether there is a ‘common measure’ between them. ‘Writings on art’ as by V. Woolf or J. Winterson, for instance, provide extreme cases of works the generic status of which still has to be clearly defined. Numerous examples of such hybrid texts are to be found in contemporary British works which may provide a corpus fit for a stimulating intersemiotic critical approach.