Browsing by Subject "picture"

In the linguistic research of the last decades one can observe a development towards image-centricity. However, there is no clarity about what is meant by the word image. The varying lexicalization of the complex phenomenon in different languages (Bild in German, image/picture in English) additionally contributes to the confusion. Building on the idea of linguistics as cultural studies, in this study the concept of the image is approached as a cultural phenomenon constituted on a linguistic basis. Following the objective of contrastive lexical semantics, the goal of the work is to investigate language-bound differences in image concepts and word fields, and to identify lexical/conceptual gaps in German- and English-language image theories. Due to the traditionally central role of the German language in philosophy and the long tradition of German-language image research (Bildwissenschaft), the German concept of Bild (image/picture) has a special relevance, which also stimulates international discussions about the German word Bild. As can be seen from the research literature, words are not only used as a vehicle of theorization, but the image sciences (Bildwissenschaften) deal intensively with various aspects of the word Bild, its etymology, word formation, semantics, and word history as well as its equivalents in English and other languages. In order to trace the lexical influences and semantic problems, the considerations of the image theorists are supplemented and commented on with linguistic sources. As a general summary of Chapter 2, it could be said that etymologies and word histories offer a (with time growing) selection of word (sub) meanings for various theoretical needs, which can be used as required to emphasize suitable readings and thus etymologically substantiate one's own argumentation, so to speak. Subsequently, the question of an intuitively used word field concept arises, which serves as an invitation to further discussion of the lexeme Bild from the point of view of lexicology and word field theory using on corpus-based resources of contemporary German. Chapter 3 introduces the central concepts of lexical semantics and presents the background as well as fundamental methodological considerations and newer, especially ideologically critical approaches to word field research. Building on these thoughts, in Chapter 4 a philosophically oriented (i.e. not a conventional) word field analysis is carried out based on the procedure of word field modelling proposed by Lutzeier (2007) and Staffeldt (2017). In other words: the word field analysis is adapted for the linguistic foundation of image sciences. The complexity of the German concept of the image is reflected in the analysis of the selected sub-areas of the word field around Bild in the reading 'artistic representation' ('künstlerische Darstellung'). The role of encyclopedic knowledge in word field modelling is discussed using as an example the new digital art form of NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), which challenge not only the conventional understanding of the image/picture (Bild), but also legislation and the art market. This raises questions of image migration as well as the agency and subject status of the image, which require further consideration. An important challenge for research is to look not only at the different modes and media, but also at what surrounds the media: the system in which the media are embedded. In contrast to the considerations of the image theorists that sculptures can also be referred to with the word Bild in German, in the analyzed work "Blinder Gallerist" (König 2019), the word Bild is largely used 1) to refer to two-dimensional artworks, and 2) to be synonymic with the word Gemälde (painting). Thus, the use is in line with the discussed translations of the research texts as well as the results of the word field analysis. In the contemporary German language the word Bild in the reading 'artistic representation' is mainly used in the meaning 'painting' and Skulptur (sculpture) is to be understood as a cohyponym to Bild. How to deal with expressions for which there are no equivalents in other languages is a central challenge for a global image science. As demonstrated here, a comparison of language-related research questions may prove useful, since concepts that are diffuse in one language can be made clearer using another language. In addition to the Western concepts, the image science (Bildwissenschaft) discourse not only increasingly discusses selected aspects of image concepts outside the Indo-European language area, but also strives for a dialogue and polylogue, which counters the challenges of an inter-/transcultural and dia-/polylogical image science. The research must include not only translinguistic aspects, but also the multi- or transmodality of communication instead of building on a hegemony of one mode, medium, language, or scientific discipline. Thus, the desiderata that can be formulated as a result of this study can be described as translinguistic multimodality research.

This thesis deals with the visual preferences of Japanese Instagram users. Concentrating on the question of whether they prefer photographs with people in them over other types of photo-graphs and what are their reasons for preferring specific photographs. Material used in this study is collected with an online survey and analysed quantitatively and qualitatively with the theories and concepts of cultural studies and semantics in visual communication. Previous studies have shown that people are drawn to human faces, but as photographs with partly covered faces are also common on social media the study focuses on photographs of people where the faces are not fully visible. The survey was conducted online in Japanese language and aimed for Japanese Instagram users. 60 participants answered the survey from which 50 were eligible for the survey. The aim of the survey was to get the participants report their preferred photographs of sets of photo-graphs presented to them, and explain their choices. Gender, age and types of accounts fol-lowed in Instagram are also taken into account in analysis. The participants are mostly of ages 20–29 which makes the data highly the results for the case of these ages. The results show that no clear preference of photographs with people over other kind of photo-graphs is noticed based on the data, but the people as content in a photograph are an important factor for the preference amongst Japanese Instagram users. Other important factors that seem to affect the preference of the Japanese users were colours of the photograph, nature without any indications of people, a clear message of the photograph and highly polished visual appearance in case of food photography.

The study examines various uses of computer technology in acquisition of information for visually impaired people. For this study 29 visually impaired persons took part in a survey about their experiences concerning acquisition of infomation and use of computers, especially with a screen magnification program, a speech synthesizer and a braille display. According to the responses, the evolution of computer technology offers an important possibility for visually impaired people to cope with everyday activities and interacting with the environment. Nevertheless, the functionality of assistive technology needs further development to become more usable and versatile. Since the challenges of independent observation of environment were emphasized in the survey, the study led into developing a portable text vision system called Tekstinäkö. Contrary to typical stand-alone applications, Tekstinäkö system was constructed by combining devices and programs that are readily available on consumer market. As the system operates, pictures are taken by a digital camera and instantly transmitted to a text recognition program in a laptop computer that talks out loud the text using a speech synthesizer. Visually impaired test users described that even unsure interpretations of the texts in the environment given by Tekstinäkö system are at least a welcome addition to complete perception of the environment. It became clear that even with a modest development work it is possible to bring new, useful and valuable methods to everyday life of disabled people. Unconventional production process of the system appeared to be efficient as well. Achieved results and the proposed working model offer one suggestion for giving enough attention to easily overlooked needs of the people with special abilities. ACM Computing Classification System (1998): K.4.2 Social Issues: Assistive technologies for persons with disabilities I.4.9 Image processing and computer vision: Applications