Colour as a semiotic mode : Notes for a grammar of colour
Contenu
Type de document
article de périodique
Titre
Colour as a semiotic mode : Notes for a grammar of colour Voir tous les contenus avec cette valeur
Revue/Ouvrage
Visual Communication
Volume-no
Vol. 1, n°3
Auteurs/Editeurs scientifiques
Kress, Gunther
Van Leeuwen, Theo
Nombre de pages
26
Date de publication
oct. 2002
Pagination
343-368
Mot-clés
Langue
ang
ISBN/ISSN
1741-3214
Résumé
This article presents a brief review of several approaches of ‘grammar’, as the basis for a discussion of culturally produced regularities in the uses of colour; that is, the possibility of extending the use of ‘grammar’ to colour as a communicational resource. Colour is discussed as a semiotic resource - a mode, which, like other modes, is multifunctional in its uses in the culturally located making of signs. The authors make some use of the Jakobson/Halle theory of ‘distinctive features’, highlighting as signifier-resources those of differentiation, saturation, purity, modulation, value and hue. These are treated as features of a grammar of colour rather than as features of colour itself. The article demonstrates its theoretical points through the analysis of several examples and links notions of ‘colour schemes’ and ‘colour harmony’ into the social and cultural concept of grammar in the more traditional sense.