The Icon And The Perceptual Process

Abstract

This paper aims to explore the nature of the relationship between the icon, as a visual sign, and the process of it’s perceived within different social and cultural contexts. And that is from the point of view of semiotic studies, specifically the semiotics of Pierce, Echo and the µ group, based on the question: How is the iconic visual sign perceived? This paper has concluded that visual patterns are not isolated from their social and cultural context, as they are governed by this context through production and perception. One cannot produce a meaning, based on a visual pattern, without taking into account the social and cultural conditions within which this pattern was crystallized as a sign, and that the realization of this sign must evoke this context and its constraints