Stylisation and Visual Metaphor: 3 Stylisation, Modality, and Visual Metaphor — An Integrated Framework

Having examined degrees of iconicity and modalities as engines of visual metaphor, we now synthesise these insights into a coherent framework. Visual meaning is generated not only through relational perception but also through the interplay of stylisation and the metaphorical potential of each modality.

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1. Iconicity and Stylisation as Semiotic Parameters

Images and animations exist along a continuum of iconicity:

• Naturalistic / high iconicity: Forms resemble perceptual reality, promoting immersion and direct identification.

• Stylised / moderate iconicity: Simplification or exaggeration foregrounds salient features, enhancing affective or narrative impact.

• Schematic / low iconicity: Abstraction amplifies interpretive and metaphorical engagement, prioritising relational and evaluative meaning over perceptual fidelity.

Degrees of iconicity function as semiotic parameters that modulate how each modality contributes to meaning. Stylisation does not reduce clarity; it redirects attention, structures temporal flow, and shapes metaphorical interpretation.

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2. Modalities as Distinct and Relational Semiotic Channels

Each modality — shape, colour, motion, depth, and sound — possesses independent metaphorical potential:

• Shape: Curvature, angularity, scale, and distortion encode affective and evaluative relations.

• Colour: Hue, saturation, and brightness modulate emotional, moral, and symbolic significance.

• Motion / trajectory: Speed, direction, and kinetic exaggeration structure narrative and relational interpretation.

• Depth / spatial organisation: Proximity, perspective, and vanishing points guide attention, hierarchy, and relational positioning.

• Sound: Tone, rhythm, and timbre integrate with visual channels to reinforce or contrast metaphorical meaning.

These channels operate both independently and relationally, producing emergent metaphorical effects across the semiotic field.

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3. Interaction of Stylisation and Modality

Stylisation modulates the expressive potential of each modality:

• In stylised or schematic forms, simplified shapes or exaggerated gestures make metaphorical relations more salient.

• Colour and lighting can be exaggerated or symbolically codified to convey affect or moral value.

• Motion lines, trajectory exaggeration, or compressed temporal sequences enhance narrative clarity and relational metaphor.

• Depth and perspective can be manipulated to foreground key elements or relational dynamics.

Systemically, stylisation acts as a semiotic lens, shaping how modalities generate and align metaphorical meaning in the viewer’s perceptual field.

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4. Analytic Consequences

This integrated framework provides a toolkit for systematic analysis:

• Predictive insight: We can anticipate how different degrees of iconicity and modality choices affect immersion, attention, and evaluative reading.

• Comparative analysis: Stylised versus naturalistic media can be assessed for metaphorical density, relational clarity, and affective impact.

• Multimodal synthesis: Recognises that metaphor is distributed across channels, actualised in relational alignment and embodied perception.

• Pedagogical relevance: Particularly in children’s media, stylisation guides interpretive engagement, scaffolds narrative understanding, and supports affective learning.

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5. Towards a Relational Semiotics of Stylisation and Metaphor

By combining degrees of iconicity with modality-specific potential, we see that visual meaning is:

• Emergent: No single element carries meaning in isolation; it arises from alignment across channels and the viewer’s participatory construal.

• Flexible: Stylisation and modality choices can emphasise different relational, temporal, or evaluative effects.

• Relationally grounded: Meaning depends on immersion, attention, temporality, and the semiotic configuration of the perceptual field.

This framework extends the original Seeing Meaning series by integrating iconicity, stylisation, and modality into a systematic account of visual metaphor, offering both analytic precision and practical applicability for designers, educators, and scholars.

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Series Conclusion: Special Integration

Across these three special posts, we have:

1. Clarified that iconicity is a continuum, with naturalistic, stylised, and schematic forms each generating distinct semiotic effects.

2. Mapped the independent and relational metaphorical potential of shape, colour, motion, depth, and sound.

3. Synthesised these insights into an integrated framework where stylisation modulates modality, and modality actualises metaphor, producing relational meaning in perception and attention.

Visual media, whether in children’s picture books or animated narratives, are thus semiotic fields in which stylistic, perceptual, temporal, and evaluative dimensions converge — actualising meaning in relational, embodied, and metaphorical ways.