Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sunybcs!dmark
From: dmark@cs.Buffalo.EDU (David Mark)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng
Subject: Re: Cross-linguistic issues in the design of Icons
Message-ID: <9446@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 20 Aug 89 19:09:09 GMT
References: <9268@cs.Buffalo.EDU> <1985@softway.oz> <1989Aug20.005726.27233@utzoo.uucp> <30767@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Reply-To: dmark@sunybcs.UUCP (David Mark)
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Geography
Lines: 40

In article <30767@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> thom@dewey.soe.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Thom Gillespie) writes:
>In article <1989Aug20.005726.27233@utzoo.uucp> henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes:
>>In article <1985@softway.oz> gary@softway.oz (Friend of Elvenkind) writes:
>>>If you are interested in creating universal icons then you are going to have 
>>>to design them with aliens from another planet in mind as your readers.  

  This is a very good way to think about it, as long as the aliens had body
  structures very similar to ours, and their planet had similar characteristics.
  I put those constraints on because I think George Lakoff had the right idea
  when he interpreted Rosch's "basic-level" categories as arising from the way
  we and our bodies and senses interact with the environment of this planet.
  (At least, that's how *I* interpret George's interpretation!)

>>>I have
>>>a feeling that for every icon useful to your own culture there will exist
>>>an alternate culture which would not understand it.  Can anyone suggest a
>>>universal icon?
>>
>>I think the one for "explosion hazard" is probably fairly universal; you
>>have to make some fairly drastic assumptions to make it incomprehensible.
>
>My vote for possible universal icon word be the christian cross. How many
>cities around the word do you think do not have one sticking up in the air
>somewhere? True universal icons are an impossibility, much as a true universal
>language -- same problems.
>
>--Thom

  The Christian cross is *NOT* at all the sort of thing that I was looking for,
  or thinking of, in that it (presumably) would have meant nothing to someone
  2500 years ago, or to the Dani in New Guinea on first European contact this
  century.  The "meaning" of the cross, which presumably *is* one of the most
  widely-recognized icons, probably is not at all "natural", but has to be
  learned.  The explosion hazard one probably does have wide inherent
  meaning.  How about the International negation icon, the red circle with
  diagonal bar?  I wonder if that makes sense to most people the first time
  they see it?

David Mark
dmark@cs.buffalo.edu