This document discusses semantic dilemmas that arise from the visual presentation and user perception of websites. It analyzes how visual forms and links on website pages generate expectations in users, expressed through metaphorizations from other media. However, these metaphorizations contain inconsistencies and transformations. The document presents a case study analyzing a science museum website, finding users perceive it as analogous to a brochure or pamphlet. It concludes digital media form "apparati" that establish new relationships between users and online information by defining the interactive situation and production of meaning.

1. Semantic dilemmas in interactive visual
perception of the « website » object: an
interplay of « ambiguous » mediatic
metaphors
Pergia Gkouskou-Giannakou
(CELSA, Paris IV)
LUTIN (La Villette, Paris)

2. Research topic
 The relations of consistency/ambiguity between
visual semiotic forms in a website and its
semantic structure, through traversals and
interpretations of site contents by the users

3. Isotopy and isotopy
presumptions
 Isotopy : spotting the recurrent patterns in a
sense- inducing system (phrase, expression,
image, text).
 Isotopy presumption : extracting invariants from
recurrent patterns (themes) in a text.

4. Hypothesis
 The visual forms in a pagescreen and the
perception of links as metonymic indices
generate an isotopy presumption (Klinkenberg,
Rastier)
 Such expectations get expressed through
metaphorizations from other media universes.
 This metaphorization process contains by its
nature chains of transferts, d’inconsistencies,
break-offs and transformations.

5. Fieldwork
 On three scientific/technical institutions’ websites:
 http://www.arts-et-metiers.net/ (Musée des Arts et Métiers)
 http://www.cite-sciences.fr/ (Cité de Science et de
l’Industrie)
 http://www.onera.fr/ (Office National d’Etudes et de
Recherches Aérospatiales - ONERA).

6. Analysis over a double grid
 Semiotechnic approach:
 Morphodispositional analysis (zoning) (Bertin, 1967) applied to the site’s
pages
 Cartographic analysis on the site’s level
 Semiopragmatic approach: the object of the analysis
in the actors’ discurse (designers, users)
 Semantic analysis seems closely linked to:
 The communication strategies of the site designers,
 the study of the medium (support)
 the continuity /discontinuity features of the users’ traversals of sites

7. …The adventures of a brochure :
www.cite-sciences.fr

8. …The adventures of a brochure :
www.cite-sciences.fr
 « It really goes like a pamphlet »…« But maybe this is
because of flash, and because it’s like an ad » (O., 25
ans).
 « It could be, for instance, the summary of a booklet, it’s
clear to me, we could print it out straight and maybe after
this go searching in the Internet ». (O., 25 ans).

9. Isotopy :
Institution
activities
Inherent isotopy : Inherent isotopy :
Online presentation of Access to the online
activities’ contents activities of the
institution
Connoted isotopy :
Activities promoting:
↓
« Advertissement
document » (« Brochure »)
of the institution

10. Action frames and metaphor’s
metonymic aspect
 Metaphoric concepts induce situation and
action scenarii
 However, users’ discursive analysis allows to
discover the processes of differentiation,
evolution and of form mutation.
 Metaphors et metonymies are quite involved in a
presumption interplay based upon
metamorphosis of intermediatic codes

11. Conclusion and perspectives :
integrating apparati ?
 Digital media constitute apparati (Benjamin,
1939) of « preparation of phenomena» that is media
(milieux) defining not only the conditions in
which the production of sense is deployed from
an interactive situation, but overall specifying the
systems that establish new relation forms
between the « talking body » (the subjet) and its
surrounding reality.

12. Thank you for your
attention!