Icon


 * Definition**

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the term “icon” has as its etymological root late Latin and advanced Greek and generally denotes likeness, image, portrait, semblance, similitude, or simile (“Etymology: Icon”). Additionally, the term “icon” relates closely to its derivative terms—iconic (also late Latin and advanced Greek) and iconicity (which enters general usage in the mid-twentieth century) (“Etymology: Iconic,” “Etymology: Iconicity”). Contemporary scholarship utilizing or theorizing “icon” seems tied to its various denotations; according to the OED, the term has been used to denote art and/or religious images, computing or semiotic symbols, and prominent cultural representations (both objects and people).


 * Icon and Disciplinary Studies**

Disciplines that often use or theorize the term “icon” include but are not limited to: art, art history, architecture, religious studies, computer sciences and technology, visual communication, and cultural studies. Often, scholarship produced regarding the term “icon” sees disciplinary overlap. Work on icons in art history and visual communication, for example, looks similar; however, scholarship produced on icons in art history more often acknowledges religious connotations inherent in early denotations of the term. Likewise, visual communication’s and cultural studies’ work on icons shares broader theorization of the term outside of its religious context; yet, visual communication work more often includes analysis of specific symbols—what we might deem more traditional notions of “art”—rather than, for instance, real-life persons representative of a movement or culture (although they also often are included).


 * Icon and Communication**

In much communication scholarship, “icon” remains a go-to term for characterizing historical and/or contemporaneous public persons of some sort of fame—used largely as a means of denotation rather than theorization. “Icon” often appears in article titles or their respective texts as a given (e.g. Rachel Dubrovsky’s (2002) “Allie McBeal as Postfeminist Icon: The Aestheticizing and Fetishizing of the Independent Working Woman” or Susan Herbst’s (2004) “Illustrator, American Icon, and Public Opinion Theorist: Norman Rockwell in Democracy”). Why particular persons achieve status as icons sometimes appears (e.g. W.J.T. Mitchell’s (2009) “Obama as Icon”) but remains relatively scarce in the scholarship (perhaps because that phenomenon often gets classified as Celebrity). To this point, health communication scholars have examined the extent to which sports icons may influence public health behaviors (e.g. in the context of attitudes about drug use and abuse); the literature, however, often uses "icon" and "celebrity" interchangeably (see Brown and Chavan de Matviuk, 2010).


 * Icon and Visual Rhetoric studies**

In contemporary visual rhetorical studies, many scholars use and theorize the term “icon.” The most consistent use of the term “icon” seems to be as a theorization tool for understanding various cultural habits and/or ways of knowing. Catherine Palczewski’s (2005) “The Male Madonna and the Feminine Uncle Sam: Visual Argument, Icons, and Ideographs in 1909 Anti-Woman Suffrage Postcards,” for instance, contrasts verbal arguments for women’s suffrage with (visual) postcards depicting icons that competed with those verbal arguments, thereby normalizing traditional conceptions of gender (366). As perhaps the most recognizable theorists and/or critics of rhetorical icons, Robert Hariman and John Lucaites have published many articles and several books on various iterations of the term, as that term relates to democratic processes. In their most recent book, //No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy//, Hariman and Lucaites (2007) trace popular photographs throughout the twentieth century to illustrate the shift between an American public culture emphasizing democratic liberalism to one highlighting liberal democracy. Situating their studies specifically within photojournalism, Hariman and Lucaites offer a concrete definition of the concept:


 * Photojournalistic icons**

We define photojournalistic icons as those photographic images appearing in print, electronic, or digital media that are widely recognized and remembered, are understood to be representations of historically significant events, activate strong emotional identification or response, and are reproduced across a range of media, genres, or topics (27).

This book, also articulated across many articles, continues a career project for the authors, In their (2002) article “Performing Civic Identity: The Iconic Photograph of Flag Raising on Iwo Jima,” for example, Hariman and Lucaites argue essentially that iconic images illuminate and manage fundamental tensions in public life such as autonomy/collectivity, hope/despair, and liberalism/democracy (367). They contend these images remain performative because they call viewers to action, positioning them to choose a definitive stance on an issue (387).


 * Academic Disciplines and "icon"**

More broadly, scholars working across disciplines find the term “icon” an important one. In public address studies, Michael Leff (1990), for example, drew upon linguistic “‘iconicity’” to articulate a methodology of “close reading” that suggests “meaning in a rhetorical work results from an interaction between discursive form and representational content” (257). By stressing the term’s religious roots, Eric Jenkins’ (2008) article in [|Visual Communication] argues that Apple iPod advertising and its status as cult-object remains influenced by visual nuances of Orthodox religious icons (466). The concept "icon" is also invoked as an inspirational symbol for minority groups. For instance, in his work on revisioning the critical cartographies of the U.S. South, Scott Herring (2009) contends that pop star Tina Turner has served as an icon for the queer community, as her biography illustrates the restructuring of South-Midwest relations that Southern revisionists are championing (see pp. 248-49). Arguing that “icon” has gained theoretical ground in cultural studies and political science, Benjamin Dreschel (2010) emphasizes its visual, public nature and posits a definition of media icons, using the Berlin Wall as visual exemplar for his analysis (7). Going even further, in his illumination of historical Rome between the second and fourth centuries, C.E., James Francis (2003) suggests a visual turn in literacy that connected “art, literature, and culture” wherein (human) icons, not “just a symbol,” have “the power to effect what [they] represent” (592). Specifically referencing Apollonius, Francis writes: “He is a true icon, an image that embodies and transmits what it signifies” (592). Francis’s focus on embodiment and transmission also may be seen in communication scholarship a with focus on technology and computer sciences, wherein the term “icon” often refers to the denotative symbol on a computer screen that represents access to a particular program or set of information. Theorization of the term in this context, as John McNair (1996) demonstrates in Technical Communication Quarterly, for instance, might include addressing whether or not (visual) desktop icons ought to include a corresponding descriptive word (e.g. a picture of a trash can and the word “trash” beneath) (82). Additionally, some neuroscience scholars use “icon” to denote mental imaging of thoughts/ideas (e.g. Shin et al’s (2008) “Objects and their icons in the brain: The neural correlates of visual concept formation”). Thus, throughout different disciplines, “icon’s” ability to represent (an idea, a culture, an emotion) remains integral to its conception.

Edited by Katie Irwin (August 2012).

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 * References**

Brown, W. J. & Chavan de Matviuk, M. A. (2010). Sports celebrities and public health: Diego Maradona's influence on drug use prevention. Journal of Health Communication, 15(4), 358-373.

Dreschel, B. (2002). The Berlin Wall from a visual perspective: Comments on the construction of a political media icon. Visual Communication, 9(1), 3-24.

Dubrovsky, R. (2002). Ally McBeal as postfeminist icon: The aestheticizing and fetishizing of the independent working woman. Communication Review, 5(4), 265-284.

Francis, J.A. (2003). Living icons: Tracing a motif in verbal and visual representation form the second to fourth centuries C.E. American Journal of Philology, 124(4), 575-600.

Hariman, R. & Lucaites, J.L. (2002). Performing civic identity: The iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 88(4), 363-392.

Hariman, R. & Lucaites, J.L. (2007). No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Herbst, S. (2004). Illustrator, American icon, and public opinion theorist: Norman Rockwell in democracy. Political Communication, 21(1), 1-25.

Herring, S. (2009). The Hoosier apex. Southern Communication Journal, 74(3), 243-251.

Icon. (n.d.) In Oxford English Dictionary online. Retrieved from http://dictionary.oed.com

Iconic. (n.d.) In Oxford English Dictionary online. Retrieved from http://dictionary.oed.com

Iconicity. (n.d.) In Oxford English Dictionary online. Retrieved from http://dictionary.oed.com

Jenkins, E. (2008). My iPod, my iCon: How and why do images become icons? Critical Studies in Media Communication, 25(5), 466-489.

Leff, M. & Sachs, A. (1990). Words the most like things: Iconicity and the rhetorical text. Western Journal of Speech Communication: WJSC, 54(3), 252-273.

McNair, J.R. (1996). Computer icons and the art of memory. Technical Communication Quarterly, 5(1), 77-86.

Mitchell, W.J.T. (2009). Obama as icon. Journal of Visual Culture, 8(2), 125-129.

Palczewski, C.H. (2005). The male Madonna and the feminine Uncle Sam: Visual argument, icons, and ideographs in 1909 anti-women suffrage postcards. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 91(4), 365-394.

Shin, Y-W., Kwon, J.S., Kwon, K.W., Gu, B.M., Song, I.C., Na, D.G., and Park, S. (2008). Objects and their icons in the brain: The neural correlates of visual concept formation. Neuroscience Letters, 436 (3), 300-304.

[1] Summational information comes from the author’s observations of academic database searches for “icon” in conjunction with “communication,” “visual communication,” “art history,” and “culture.”