Running Head: SOME WAYS THAT GRAPHICS COMMUNICATE Some Ways that Graphics Communicate

A century and a half ago, a young Ojibwa woman sent the letter in Figure 1 to someone she was interested in (Mallery, 1972). The letter portrays a schematic map with a message superimposed. The map is to her home, marked by her totem, and is addressed to the man she wishes to visit her, marked by his totem. The message is her arm beckoning him to her home. Graphics such as these appear dispersed across space and time. They Everywhere, graphics preceded written language. Even today, graphics are in common use as they are more readily understood by speakers of disparate languages than are written languages. This chapter presents an analysis of graphics produced by children and adults across time and across space. The primary interest is in the semantics of graphics, in particular, how they use space and the elements in it to communicate in cognitively natural ways. This is in contrast to words, which communicate primarily symbolically. The visuospatial nature of graphics, then, gives them both advantages and disadvantages relative to language. Graphics can use space and the elements in it to convey concrete concepts directly and abstract concepts metaphorically. However, many abstract concepts do not have natural analogs. Such concepts, for example, nonexistence or counterfactual, may be better expressed in language. Kinds of Graphics Consider the varieties of graphics humankind has produced. The prototypic graphic, of course, is a depiction of something in the world, or something imaginary that is similar to something in the world, a picture. Although such depictions bear enough resemblance to things in the world to be recognizable, they are not necessarily attempts to Some Ways that Graphics Communicate 3 reflect the world as accurately as possible. On the contrary, many early depictions routinely violate spatial and temporal principles presumably in order to portray more than a particular view of a scene or object. Depictions, ancient and modern, from many cultures display inconsistent, often multiple, perspectives. Mixing or violating perspectives allows a communicator to convey more information than could be conveyed from a single consistent perspective. Thus multiple perspectives can relate more of the meaning or essence than a single consistent perspective, a device used to great effect by modern artists, notably Cezanne and Picasso. Similarly, many depictions mix time, portraying in the same painting or vase or relief scenes from different time periods, often ordered by importance rather than by time …