36.3615, Confs: Conveying Meaning through Iconic Visual Languages: Theory, Practice, and Didactics – An Interdisciplinary Exchange (Germany)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3615. Tue Nov 25 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3615, Confs: Conveying Meaning through Iconic Visual Languages: Theory, Practice, and Didactics – An Interdisciplinary Exchange (Germany)

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Date: 22-Nov-2025
From: Saghie Sharifzadeh [saghie.sharifzadeh at sorbonne-universite.fr]
Subject: Conveying Meaning through Iconic Visual Languages: Theory, Practice, and Didactics – An Interdisciplinary Exchange


Conveying Meaning through Iconic Visual Languages: Theory, Practice,
and Didactics – An Interdisciplinary Exchange

Date: 01-Jul-2026 - 03-Jul-2026
Location: Postdam, Germany
Contact: Saghie Sharifzadeh
Contact Email: saghie.sharifzadeh at sorbonne-universite.fr

Linguistic Field(s): Discipline of Linguistics; General Linguistics;
Linguistic Theories; Morphology; Semantics

Submission Deadline: 05-Jan-2026

Visual signs permeate all areas of communication, from everyday life
to science, art, technology, and education. In signed languages as
well as in certain written languages, comics, infographics, protest
signs, or emoji-based communication, iconic language enables the
transmission of complex content through visual resemblance, drawing on
cultural models embedded in specific media and social contexts. Iconic
communication operates neither as purely arbitrary nor as universally
intelligible – it is situated within distinct symbolic practices.
Building on a first conference held in Paris (2023) with the support
of the UFA/DFH and the DAAD, which explored the transdisciplinary
nature of semiotic thought in both theory and practice (see
Sähn/Schröer/Sinn 2025), this second meeting will focus on iconic
visual languages. The central question of this conference is how
meaning is produced, received, contextualized, and conveyed through
visual signs. Once again, semiotics will be understood as a
transdisciplinary framework – an adaptable toolkit for analyzing and
designing meaning-making processes across diverse scientific and
practical fields.
Conference Dates and Venue:
July 1–3, 2026, University of Potsdam
Organization:
Marie Schröer (University of Potsdam), Christian Sinn (PH St. Gallen),
Thomas Sähn (Sorbonne University, Paris), Saghie Sharifzadeh (Sorbonne
University, Paris)
Moderation:
International students of the interdisciplinary Summer School Picture
this! Visual Meaning Making in Theory and Practice, University of
Potsdam, June 29 – July 3, 2026
Abstract Submission Guidelines:
Abstracts (300–500 words, excluding references) should include:
 - a title
 - 5 keywords
 - a brief biographical note (max. 100 words)
Submissions should be sent in PDF or Word format to:
 - marie.schroeer at uni-potsdam.de,
 - Christian.Sinn at phsg.ch,
 - saghie.sharifzadeh at sorbonne-universite.fr,
 - thomas.sahn at sorbonne-universite.fr
Languages: English, German, French
Deadline for submissions: January 5, 2026
Notification of acceptance: January 30, 2026
Theoretical Background and Rationale:
Since Peirce’s tripartite division of signs into icons, indices, and
symbols (CP 2.247ff.), iconic signs have been defined as signs that
resemble what they represent “in certain respects” (Morris 1946: 191).
This notion of resemblance may seem intuitive: we expect the image of
a product to match the product itself, a city map to correspond to the
actual layout of the streets, or a diagram to faithfully represent a
process. Yet, “resemblance” remains a vague and contingent concept: as
Goodman (1976: 3) pointed out, a painting of Marlborough Castle may
have more in common with another painting than with the castle itself
(see also Peirce CP 2.634). It is therefore difficult to draw clear
boundaries between iconic, indexical (causal-existential) and symbolic
(conventional) signs. The permeability between semiotic categories,
observed by Peirce (EP 2.481) and hinted at by Saussure (1971/1916:
100–101), implies that iconicity must always be conceived as a matter
of degree (Morris 1946: 191).
Any iconic sign only shares a selected subset of features with its
referent – an inherently arbitrary – integrating these features into a
system of units that distinguishes the sign from the object it
represents and transforming them in such a way that they can only be
perceived as identical at a higher semantic level (Eco 1978: 153;
Groupe µ 1992: 138; Morgagni/Chevalier 2012: 142ff.). This perspective
leads to two main consequences.
First, iconicity must be understood as emerging from the combination
of distinctive units. It is thus unsurprising that the question of the
compositional rules of visual languages arose in early structuralism,
whether in cinema (Metz 1964), static images (Barthes 1964), or comics
(Krafft 1978). In general semiotics, however, once the existence of
universal linguistic codes had been established, scholars sought to
distinguish those specifically underlying iconic discourse (Hjelmslev
1971/1948; Jakobson 1966; Eco 1978; Greimas 1984; Groupe µ 1992;
Morgagni/Chevalier 2012; Dondero 2020). While these approaches
gradually moved away from linguistic modeled structuralist systems,
iconicity has regained importance in linguistics, particularly in
research on written and signed languages (Stokoe 1960; Padden 1988;
Cuxac 2000; Perniss et al. 2010).
Second, iconicity cannot be understood independently of the
communicative situation in which a sign is interpreted. Every
perceptual phenomenon carries iconic potential, yet cultural and
textual contexts at the moment of reception profoundly shape the
meaning attributed to what is perceived as iconic. Barthes’ analysis
of the mythical semantics of images (1957) and Lotman’s model of the
semiosphere (1990) show how culture, media, and collectively
stabilized meaning-making processes guide interpretation, leading to
significant variability in how visual phenomena are understood. Visual
communication, too, is only possible if a semiotic community possesses
a shared interpretive repertoire. Whether through standardized codes
or (proto)typical forms drawn from artistic, scientific, or social
domains, the meaning of images only emerges through culturally
specific reading practices, as does that of maps and diagrams (Eco
1970; Joly 2009/1993; Kress/van Leeuwen 1996; Krämer 2016; Burge 2018;
Dahan-Gaida 2023). Even image-recognition neural networks analyze
relational structures between visual elements so as to reconstruct
typified patterns – an approach which is reminiscent of structuralist
theories, yet conditioned by culturally biased training data (LeCun et
al. 1998; Krizhevsky et al. 2012; Tan/Le 2019). Machine interpretation
of visual signs thus relies on mechanisms of selection and
typification – much like human interpretation, yet without cultural
awareness.
Cultural-semiotic approaches therefore emphasize that iconicity is not
an inherent property of a sign but the result of interpretive
practices. It cannot be described independently of recipients, media,
and contextual conditions. What is perceived as iconic depends on
individual experiences, collectively stabilized knowledge, and medial
contexts – whether in human communication, automated image processing,
or even interspecies interaction (cf. Maran 2017: 71). This
perspective opens productive avenues for the didactics of visual
languages: iconic signs not only facilitate linguistic acquisition
(Nielsen et al. 2020) but also enable complex forms of knowledge and
meaning transfer (Mayer 2009; Henke 2014), provided that cultural and
contextual presuppositions are critically examined.
With the research program eikones (e. g. Belting 2007), the image
became a "separate representation of being analogous to the logos" in
the course of the so-called iconic turn, which unfolds its power
independently of language (Boehm 2007: 29). This shift towards a
genuinely pictorial episteme – continued, for example, in
Heßler/Mersch (2015) – has decisively shaped the cultural-semiotic and
pictorial discussion and forms a central theoretical point of
reference for current approaches to image didactic research.
Cultural-semiotic approaches, whose potential has recently been
highlighted for teacher training (Zimmermann et al. 2019), can
undoubtedly be leveraged for the didactic use of iconic visual
systems.
The eikones research program (Belting 2007) allows us to consider the
image as a fully-fledged representation of the world, comparable to
what language provides, yet without depending on it (cf. Boehm 2007:
29). This is characteristic of the iconic turn: images are understood
as possessing their own capacity for meaning. This shift toward an
authentically pictorial epistemé – which is further developed, for
example, in the work of Heßler/Mersch (2015) – has decisively shaped
cultural and pictorial semiotic discourse and constitutes a central
theoretical reference point for current approaches in image education
research.
Conference Objectives:
This conference aims to bring together current interdisciplinary
perspectives on the functioning of visual iconic communication. It
seeks to examine the structural, cultural-semiotic, social, and
technological conditions of visual iconic language systems. The
interdisciplinary dialogue aspires to foster new theoretical and
didactic approaches to the study and teaching of visual languages in
scientific and social contexts.
Given the growing importance of visual communication, a deeper
understanding of iconic signs in diverse media and cultural settings
is needed. The conference invites early-career and established
researchers from all disciplines concerned with the structure and
functioning of visual iconic language systems to submit proposals.
Particular attention will be given to contributions exploring the
didactic potential of these systems in primary, secondary, and higher
education. Proposals exploring current educational curricula,
presenting empirical studies on the effectiveness of visual iconic
systems in teacher training, or discussing concrete pedagogical
concepts for school and university contexts are especially encouraged.
Participants are invited to address the following questions,
integrating the theoretical, cultural, medial, and didactic dimensions
of visual iconic language systems:
1. Semiotic and Cultural-Semiotic Foundations of Iconic Languages
 - Which theoretical models (such as those of Peirce, Saussure,
Morris, or Lotman) best describe iconicity in a differentiated manner?
 - Do visual iconic language systems possess their own grammar, or is
it determined by medium-specific characteristics?
 - To what extent can iconicity be understood not as an inherent
property but as a culturally shaped interpretive relation?
 - How does the meaning of iconic signs evolve depending on cultural
patterns of perception, medial contexts, and collective knowledge?
 - What role does Lotman’s semiosphere play in shaping, translating,
or limiting iconic meanings within cultural spaces?
 - In what intercultural contexts do misunderstandings or
reinterpretations of visual signs arise?
2. Visual Signs in Public Space: Protest, Street Art, Urban Iconicity
 - How do practitioners of street art, graffiti, visual protest, or
visual campaigns use iconic signs to produce meaning?
 - What codes and strategies characterize visual political language in
urban spaces?
 - To what extent can visual forms of protest be analyzed as semiotic
systems with specific grammaticalization and iconicity strategies?
 - How do media technologies (e.g., digital reproduction, social
networks) affect the visibility, circulation, and recoding of such
signs?
3. Iconicity, Multimodality, and Digital Communication
 - What roles do emojis, GIFs, memes, or filtered images play in
communicating meaning in digital spaces?
 - How does iconic communication function within the multimodal
formats of social media?
 - How do visual meaning-making processes differ when enacted by
humans, artificial intelligences, or other non-human actors?
 - How do algorithms, image databases, and training sets influence the
semantic performance of automated visual recognition systems?
4. Art, Visual Narration, and Visual Language Systems
 - What articulatory principles govern the combination of iconic units
in written and signed languages, comics, animated film, design, or the
visual arts?
 - How can media with varying degrees of iconicity (e.g., abstract
paintings, photographs, diagrams) be semiotically distinguished?
 - To what extent can visual narratives be understood as autonomous
language systems structured by syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations?
 - What roles do visual metaphors and typifications play in knowledge
representation and transmission?
5. Didactics of Visual Language Systems: Education, Inclusion,
Literacy
 - How can visual communication support the acquisition of languages
(first or foreign), disciplinary knowledge, or practical skills?
 - What is the role of iconic representations in inclusive and
multilingual education?
 - How can visual literacy be developed in educational contexts – for
example, through gesture-based communication, comics, or pictograms?
 - How can cultural-semiotic approaches inform critical reflection on
visual signs in pedagogical settings?
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