Abstrakt: | While most traffic signs in Europe are purely pictorial, some also employ text. The
article discusses two-code (image plus text) traffic signs on examples from a few
countries: the UK, Germany, the US, the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Poland.
Special emphasis is placed on various possible sense relations between text and
image in such signs. In some of these relations (such as intersemiotic translation
or emphasis) the text does not modify the meaning of the image, whereas in others
(such as restriction, complementation or elaboration) it does. Drivers who do not
know the local language, however, are neither able to understand the text nor to
determine its function towards image. Therefore, the text is always prone to affect
them negatively. |