Abstract
At the turn of the twentieth century, French society was shaken by a scandal that affected it at many levels to varying degrees and that is still considered as a symbol of injustice, miscarriage of justice and antisemitism. The Dreyfus Affair started in 1894 when an artillery officer of Jewish descent was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for communicating military secrets to the German embassy in Paris. Only years later was Alfred Dreyfus exonerated and rehabilitated, due mainly to the role of the media and the famous article by the novelist Emile Zola, “J’accuse”. The press, in general, played a fundamental role in the narration of the event and in the complex chemistry that led a confidential case of espionage to become a broad public debate, exemplifying the constant struggle against prejudice and irrational impulses that implies democracy. From the impressive volume of publications, I selected two drawings issued when the truth about captain Dreyfus’s innocence began emerging. One is by Félix Vallotton, “That’s why she was not coming out!”, the other by Gustave-Henri Jossot, “She was too naked”, and they both give an interpretation of the truth and of the reasons why it—the truth—came out so late. The semiotic approach of the drawings and of Zola’s pamphlet in terms of visual message leads us to distinguish three aspects. The first is iconic and consists of establishing the links between a signifier, a signified and a referent in order to recognize the immediate message but also the connoted signification; the second is linguistic and consists of the captions; and the third is plastic, focusing on size, colors and shapes. These analyzes of the mode in which visual artefacts produce meaning and provoke an interpretative process are made in terms of rhetoric insofar as rhetoric is considered, not only in terms of figures of speech, but as a method of persuasion and argumentation.
Highlights
The purpose of this article is to shed light on the mechanisms by which a visual sign develops and transmits messages, how they are apprehended, according to what semiotic mechanisms they present
Everything seemed lost for the Dreyfusards at the time, and the Affair seemed buried forever, they did not count on the intervention of the famous writer Emile Zola, who shouted with all his might: “J’accuse !”: “I accuse!” and predicted that “truth is in progress, and nothing will stop it” [35]
Contrariwise here, to find out if the “she” of the caption refers to Truth, as I stated earlier, we must question the link established between the icon and the verbal messages, especially in Jossot’s drawing, considering that the anchoring here takes the form of a rhetorical “suspension” [1] in so far as the reader does not get to see but has to imagine who or what is hidden behind the personal pronoun
Summary
The purpose of this article is to shed light on the mechanisms by which a visual sign develops and transmits messages, how they are apprehended, according to what semiotic mechanisms they present. Martine Joly proposes an analytical method that consists of approaching the image from the angle of meaning and not that of emotion, or aesthetic pleasure, for example [15] It is her lead I choose to follow when discussing my small corpus, in addition to the method exposed by Roland Barthes when he interpreted an advertising image in terms of rhetoric in 1964 [1]. I will first consider the iconic message of my corpus; I will turn to the linguistic message and to the plastic message, which is studied separately as an independent system of signs Isolating these messages is somewhat artificial in so far as every image—graphic or not—is always complicated, and the eye perceives none of the variables independently. It is the interaction of these three signs that produces meaning, meaning that a systematic decryption should allow us to better understand
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callMore From: International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
