Peirce’s diagrammatic reasoning and the cinema: Image, diagram, and narrative in The Shape of Water

Yunhee Lee; Paul Cobley

doi:10.1515/sem-2019-0025

Article

Peirce’s diagrammatic reasoning and the cinema: Image, diagram, and narrative in The Shape of Water

Yunhee Lee and Paul Cobley

Published/Copyright: October 12, 2020

Published by

Become an author with De Gruyter Brill

Submit Manuscript Author Information Explore this Subject

From the journal Semiotica Volume 2020 Issue 236-237

Abstract

This article aims to examine the relationship between image and narrative by means of Peirce’s first trichotomy of qualisign-sinsign-legisign or, for the purposes of the current argument, image-diagram-metaphor. It is argued that narrative, as an extended metaphor, can be examined in three modes: in the image; schematically, in the imagination; and allegorically or in a thought experiment, through hypothetic interpretation. The article outlines two kinds of diagrammatic reasoning emphasized by Peirce: corollarial deduction in which the image is ‘literally seen’ and the reasoning steps are manifest in its conclusion; and theorematic deduction where the conclusion in a diagram is subject to a hypothesis which transforms the image into something new. Demonstrating the breadth of diagrammatic reasoning with reference to the 2018 film, The Shape of Water, the article seeks to explore how allegory and diagram are mutually cooperative, based on three ontological modes: the expressive, the cognitive, and the symbolic. Its primary focus, then, is not so much on the story events of the narrative, as the way that they are visualized and characterized as the fairy story unfolds. It is suggested that the interpreting activity involved in allegory and diagram ties interpretation to metacognition, ultimately (re)recognizing the image in The Shape of Water in an attempt to ascertain the meaning of love.

Keywords: narrative; image; diagram; metaphor; diagrammatic reasoning; corollarial reasoning; theorematic reasoning; allegory; The Shape of Water

Corresponding author: Paul Cobley, Middlesex University, London, UK, E-mail: P.Cobley@mdx.ac.uk

Funding source: Hankuk University of Foreign Studies

Funding source: National Research Foundation of Korea

Award Identifier / Grant number: NRF-2010-361-A00013

Acknowledgments

The first author’s work on this article was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund of 2019; this work was also supported by National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government [NRF-2010–361-A00013].

References

Block, Ned. 1982. Introduction. In Ned Block (ed.), Imagery, 1–18. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Search in Google Scholar

Buchler, Justus (ed.). 1955. Logic as semiotic: The theory of signs. In Philosophical writings of Peirce. Chapter 7. New York: Dover.Search in Google Scholar

Cobley, Paul. 2013. Narrative, 2nd edn. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203494929Search in Google Scholar

Crawford, Jason. 2017. Allegory and enchantment: An early modern poetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198788041.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Deely, John. 2006. Animals, ethics and communication, with an emphasis on the last. Unpublished Presentation of 10 March. London: London Metropolitan University.Search in Google Scholar

de Waal, Cornelis. 2013. Peirce: A guide for the perplexed. London: Bloomsbury.Search in Google Scholar

Fludernik, Monika. 1996. Towards a “natural” narratology. London & New York: Routledge.10.1515/jlse.1996.25.2.97Search in Google Scholar

Hull, Kathleen A. & Richard Kenneth Atkins (eds.). 2017. Peirce on perception and reasoning: From icons to logic. New York & London: Routledge.10.4324/9781315444642Search in Google Scholar

Johansen, Jørgen Dines. 2002. Literary discourse: A semiotic-pragmatic approach to literature. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.10.3138/9781442676725Search in Google Scholar

Lee, Yunhee. 2018. Intermediality of Peirce’s diagram and narrative allegory: Aesthetic experience and meaning. In Between word and picture: Intermediality of diagram. Seoul: Huine. (Semiosis Book Series 10), 89–148.Search in Google Scholar

Lewis, Clive Staples. 1982. On stories and other essays on literature. Orlando: Harvest.Search in Google Scholar

Liszka, James. 1996. A general introduction to the semeiotic of Charles Sanders Peirce. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Olteanu, Alin. 2015. Philosophy of education in the semiotics of Charles Peirce: A cosmology of learning and loving. Oxford: Peter Lang.10.3726/978-3-0353-0718-4Search in Google Scholar

Peirce, Charles S. 1931–1966. The collected papers of Charles S. Peirce, vol. 8, Charles HartsCChorne, Paul Weiss & Arthur W. Burks (eds.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. [Reference to Peirce’s papers will be designated CP followed by volume and paragraph number].Search in Google Scholar

Peirce, Charles S. 1998. Essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings, vol. 2 (1893–1913), Peirce Edition Project (ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [Reference to vol. 2 of Essential Peirce will be designated EP 2].Search in Google Scholar

Pietarinen, Ahti-Veikko & Francesco Bellucci. 2017. Two dogmas of diagrammatic reasoning: A view from existential graph. In Kathleen A. Hull & Richard K. Atkins (eds.), Peirce on perception and reasoning: From icons to logic, 174–195. New York & London: Routledge.10.4324/9781315444642-13Search in Google Scholar

Pombo, Olga & Alexander Gerner (eds.). 2010. Studies in diagrammatology and diagram praxis. London: King’s College.Search in Google Scholar

Popova, Yanna B. 2015. Stories, meaning, and experience: Narrativity and enaction. New York & London: Routledge.10.4324/9781315880488Search in Google Scholar

Sheriff, John K. 1989. The fate of meaning: Charles Peirce, structuralism, and literature. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9781400859979Search in Google Scholar

Stjernfelt, Frederik. 2007. Diagrammatology: An investigation on the borderlines of phenomenology, ontology, and semiotics. Berlin: Springer.10.1007/978-1-4020-5652-9Search in Google Scholar

Thagard, Paul. 2011. The brain is wider than the sky: Analogy, emotion and allegory. Metaphor and Symbol 26. 131–142. https://doi.org/10.1080/10926488.2011.556509.Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2020-10-12

Published in Print: 2020-12-16

You are currently not able to access this content.

Articles in the same Issue

https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2019-0025

Keywords for this article

narrative; image; diagram; metaphor; diagrammatic reasoning; corollarial reasoning; theorematic reasoning; allegory; The Shape of Water