Contenu du sommaire

This article attempts to delineate, within the wide fields of communication and image, the parameters which would lead to a more complete mastery of iconic communication. The object and the method of iconography are described as well as the language structures that this science has brought to light. An analytic framework is suggested that would involve the evaluation of an image as a meaningful system.

The author develops a framework to be applied in the analysis of comical images that integrates the relationship between iconic and rhetorical codes. By a series of commentaries she explains the minimal units of analysis of a comical image and the main humoristic techniques found in the image. A short lexicon completes the article.

This study of caricature in the press has two main objectives : to describe the sociopolitical representation of McCarthyism in the caricatures published in the New York Times between 1950 and 1954 and to suggest a general model in the analysis of the semiolinguistic modes of representation that are the mean of communication of all caricatures.

Using a method of semiological analysis based on the Saussurian sign theory, this article explores the meaning and social significance of the OSE campaign promoted by the government of Quebec. The functioning of these bi-significant, linguistic and visual messages is also examined in reference to the six functions of communication defined by Jakobson.

Making use of the results of his research on the governmental communication in Quebec, the author shows how the concept of communication is gradually displaced by that of governmental information and how this change can camouflage the transition from informative communication to persuasive communication. He also points out why their status as civil servants makes it impossible for government communication officers to accurately evaluate the citizen's reactions to governmental communication.

Research on the Bolivian press is just beginning to develop. This article provides a summary of the main results of a study, carried out by the author, of the principal characteristics of the press in Bolivia.

After recalling the main dimensions of the dependency of the African States, as well as the rest of the Third World, with regard to the industrialized nations, the author evokes an experience which, for the written media of five African countries, placed in competition African sources and the AFP. Using this example the author demonstrates how basic inequality of sources continues to characterize the production of information, despite all the pious declarations concerning a new information order.