Chapter published in:
Producing Figurative Expression: Theoretical, experimental and practical perspectives
Edited by John Barnden and Andrew Gargett
[Figurative Thought and Language 10] 2020
► pp. 55–84

Metaphor and one-off pictures

Touch and vision

| University of Toronto
All representational media support tropes. This chapter considers pictures and asks how pictorial metaphors can be devised by people with relatively little experience in the medium. The examples considered are raised-line drawings devised by blind children and adults. In some, the shapes of objects are anomalous but apt. In others the use of a line contrasts with its use in outline drawings – for example, atmospheric lines surround a target object. The blind and sighted concur on the meaning of pictorial metaphors. The theory of metaphor in drawings presented here treats perception, outline, realistic shape and departures from realism. Pictures have primary meanings, and metaphoric pictures require secondary meanings.
Keywords: picture, metaphor, tactile drawings, blind, children, line, outline, surface, edge
Published online: 17 December 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/ftl.10.03ken
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