What the Symbol Can’t, the Icon Can: The Indispensable Icon/Symbol Distinction

In recent years, Scott and McQuarrie and Mick have highlighted a critically important deficit in research on visual persuasion: the failure to engage and understand the richness and complexity of images. A science of visual persuasion cannot be fully developed until our rudimentary understanding of the semiotic ad system, within which stimuli are encoded, more nearly matches our relatively sophisticated understanding of the psychological human system that processes ad stimuli. This chapter suggests that the rejection or devaluing of Peirce’s icon/symbol distinction in past research partly explains why more progress has not been made in developing an adequate understanding of the ad system. While acknowledging the symbolic resonance of images, the chapter focuses on the deep structure/surface structure relationship between referents and the icons that variously imitate them. It outlines a research program that explores different levels of the ad system, including specific transformations that link the deep and surface structures of images.