Iconic signs appear natural because viewers decode them through shared perceptual codes

Evidence

It is a visual sign with strong, supplementary aural-verbal support. It is one of the iconic signs, in Peirce’s sense, that, whereas the form of the written sign is arbitrary in relation to its signified, the iconic sign reproduces certain elements of the signified in the form of the signifier. As Peirce says, it “possesses some of the properties of the thing or object represented.” 17 Actually, since the iconic sign translates a three-dimensional world into two representational planes, its “naturalism” with respect to the referent lies not so much at the encoding side of the chain, but rather in terms of the learned perceptions with which the viewer decodes the sign. Thus, as Eco has convincingly argued, iconic signs “look like objects in the real world,” to put it crudely (e.g., the photograph or drawing of a cow, and the animal cow), because they “reproduce the conditions of perception in the receiver.” 18 These conditions of “recognition” in the viewer constitute some of the most fundamental perceptual codes which all culture-members share. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 800

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies Peirce’s iconic sign and locates the ‘naturalism’ of images in the decoding side, not the encoding side.
• XREF: connects to: Conventions set the perceptual frames by which we experience time, color, and music — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 134