Verflechtung von Bild und Text

The discussion initiated in the 1960s by McLuhan concerning the interrelationship between what is said (orality) and what is written (literacy) has been replaced by a new approach focusing on the connection between image and text. This shift of attention results, among others, from the increasing role of technical media and computers and the decreasing role of the traditional written culture in the shape of books and print. The contemporary media are becoming something more than just a passive tool for information transmission. The text and the word itself are undergoing technologization, as Walter Ong, has put it, and they are often accompanied by the image. Linguistics cannot ignore these changes, and investigates the evolving materiality of communication, focusing on design, the so-called text performance, visual layer, and the whole emerging from both the image and text. The last two are becoming so strictly connected, especially in internet hypertexts, that the phrase “iconic turn” is often used. Apart from that, there appears text fragmentation, which leads to changes in the process of reception: ordinary reading recedes replaced by holistic reading (based on whole images).