Sobre a veracidade dos ícones: a representação imagética à luz do pragmaticismo de Charles S. Peirce

Abstract

The essential question we intend to analyze in this research is due to an old concern: why some social journalistic photographies are efficient in the sense of promoting an effective social action related to the fact denounced while others are not? Trying to go forward over the topic, we bring up the hypothesis by which the iconic and indexical aspects that constitute the photographic sign organize themselves in an specific way in order to let efficiency occurs. According to our hypothesis, this type of image, named here as efficient photography, keeps an indexical aspect that results from physical contact between object luminous emanation and the photographic apparatus. It confers on this photography enough similarity to logically represent its object, which is a characteristic of factual journalistic discourse. But this type of image has also a high iconic profile that comes from art and allows the image to metaphorically represent this object. Such hypothesis, theoretically based on Charles Sanders Peirce’s Pragmaticism, particularly on his semiotic theory, points out to the possibility of that photographic signs are constituted as indexical icons and that they determine predominantly emotional interpretants. This specific signal condition enable a considerable efficiency to this sort of photography concerning to its own purpose of causing enough social effects to determine new norms of conduct