That Is To Say The Binary Relations Which Oppose Two Concepts (such As

That is to say the binary relations which oppose two concepts (such as light/dark, masculine/feminine, new/old), the first of which, in western philosophical thought, is positive, while the second one is negative. Anyway, this are simple suggestions about how Derrida's concepts might be applied to images, since the French thinker was mainly concerned with traditional written texts, rather than communication in its broadest sense.
It is interesting to note how one of the most esteemed masters of linguistics can be quoted in order to explain why sometimes images can communicate by means of the same elements that are found in literature. Saussure thought that every author has in mind a verbal theme, a sort of visual and phonetic leit motif that he repeats throughout the whole text. The same is true in visual communication, where some forms are repeated in order to achieve a particular dramatic effect or to enhance their meaning (it is the case, for instance, of the photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, or Elsa Thiemann). Also his syntagmatic and paradigmatic associations may be helpful to explain why many scholars think that visual communication is more direct than language. On the one hand, the first class of associations is necessary to language in order to produce a chain of words with a meaning; such associations are dependent upon the structure of the language itself, so that they are conventional and cannot be disposed of at one's own will (they are connected to the langue). On the other hand, paradigmatic associations are individual, and are highly influenced by someone's personal experience or background culture (the personal use of a language was called parole by Saussure). In images objects are juxtaposed but, as has been noted above, they do not need a linear reading, so usually the eye of the observer can move up and down, right and left without affecting the comprehension of the message. So, if they are looked from the point of view of Saussure's linguistic theory, the meaning of images can be emitted and received even though they do not obey any rule of syntagmatic association. Sometimes they even acquire a further meaning that might not be achieved using language. This is due to the fact that everyday everybody is used to experience the world mainly through the sense of sight, so that anybody is accustomed to visual confusion (such as that typical of the main streets of big cities) and can make a sense out of it, while the same could not be possible if speeches and books were not subdued to the rules of syntagmatic associations. Thus, as a final consideration it may be said that images can be more communicative than language, since they are not ruled by the same amount of norms and do not have to obey the same conventions. Nonetheless, as has been explained by W. J.