Connotative Localization of an HIV Prevention Image to Promote Safer Sex Practices in Ghana
2015; Routledge; Volume: 49; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2691-5529
Autores Tópico(s)Language, Metaphor, and Cognition
ResumoABSTRACTWhen designers localize an image's denotative elements according to the users' cultural preferences, research shows that it improves user experience and cross-cultural usability. However, this paper reports that, even when localized denotatively, culturally-based disparities-dissonance between how the designer communicates and how the user interprets from a cultural perspective-can still impede or entirely obstruct the image's connotative performance. Localization needs to facilitate adaptation of the image on a connotative level particularly when the goal is to bring about behavioral change hyper-locally, on a transnational and transcultural scale, with a community of users. This paper presents findings from a case study of a campaign for HIV prevention in Kumasi, Ghana that advocates for condom use. I conducted fieldwork over a period of two years during which I interviewed lay people in Kumasi about the denotative and connotative performance of an HIV prevention image called the Red Card. My data confirms the existence of cultural dissonance between my Westernized esthetic sensibilities and Ghanaian interpretive capacities. My data also corroborates that the use of connotative localization through an interactive communication design process (CLIC) can reveal hindering the image's connotative performance prior to its final production.KEYWORDScross-cultural, transcultural, denotative, connotative, connotative localization, HIV preventionDesign education researchers who follow the creed of social consciousness advocated by the Things First Manifesto (Barnbrook, 1999; Garland, 1964) and other related literature in the discipline, including Berman (2009), Heller and Vienne (2003), and Frascara (1997) may use their creative expertise and communication design resources to annihilate or at least prevent the further spread of HIV/AIDS. Those, with global humanitarian interests may opt to communicate HIV/AIDS awareness information and prevention images to lay people in different parts of the world. However, when they engage in transnational communication of this sort, disparities between their culture and that of the users of the images can cause varying levels of noise. The phrase semiotic noise refers to cultural interferences that hinder the ability of an image to communicate meaning in such a way that resonates culturally with the user(s). Preventing a health-based image for transnational communication from succumbing to can be the difference between the life or death of the users. Consider the following example told to the late graphic designer, Phillip Meggs, by the late graphic designer, Sylvia Harris:A group of American students tried to encourage inhabitants of a village in Nepal to take certain sanitation precautions. They presented the inhabitants with a three-foot-tall graphic of a fly contaminating food with an infectious bacteria. It was the intent of the American students to persuade the inhabitants to take the recommended precautions. Instead, the inhabitants of the village only laughed because they felt they [need not worry]. After all, the flies in their village were miniscule compared to the giant ones in the graphic. (Meggs, 1992, p. 4)It is evident from this example that cultural difference can prevent visual language from communicating properly across cultures.Applying Barthesian semiotics to the analysis of designed images, Frascara (2004) and Tyler (1992) argue that meaning occurs on two levels: denotation and connotation. Denotation, according to Frascara, is the user's objective reading of what the image represents; whereas, connotation refers to the user's more subjective, emotional reading. In the Nepalese example, cultural differences between the Nepalese villagers and the American design students created that hindered the ability of the students to communicate in the way intended. …
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