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An ideogram is an image or graphic symbol (such as @ or % ) that represents an object or an idea without expressing the sounds that make up its name . It is also called ideography .
Some ideograms, says Enn Otts, “are only understandable by prior knowledge of their convention, while others convey their meaning through the pictorial resemblance of a physical object, and can therefore also be described as pictograms or pictographs.
Ideograms are one of the most important forms of communication for humanity. Ideograms are used in some current writing systems, such as Chinese and Japanese.
The diversity of ideograms
The image of a pointing finger is an ideogram. It does not represent a sequence of sounds but rather a concept that can be expressed in different languages in various ways; for example, ‘”go that way”, or in “that direction”, or “there”, “there”, and in combination with other words or ideograms we can understand it as “the stairs are to the right”, or “pick up your baggage in that place. Ideograms are not necessarily images of objects; the arithmetic minus sign is an ideogram that does not represent an object but a concept that can be translated as “less” or “subtract the following from the previous” or “negative”.
A modern ideogram is the diagonal cross, which has a wide range of meanings ranging from confrontation, nullification, cancellation, opposing forces, obstacles, obstruction, to the unknown, indecisive, and unstable.
Let’s look at a series of examples of specific meanings of X in different systems : a cross between different species, varieties or races ( in botany and biology ), take ( chess ), printing error ( printing ), we can’t continue ( emergency code of ground-air), unknown number or multiplication (mathematics), unknown person (Mr. X), and road obstruction (military).
The diagonal cross is also sometimes used as a symbol of Christ, whose name in Greek begins with the Greek letter X. It also represents the number one thousand in ancient Greece and even represented Chronos, the god of time, the planet Saturn, and the god Saturn in Roman mythology.
The difference between pictograms and ideograms is not always clear. Ideograms tend to be less direct representations and one may have to learn what a particular ideogram means in order to understand it clearly and concisely, while pictograms tend to be more literal. For example, the no parking symbol that consists of the letter E inside a red circle with a slanted red line through it is an ideogram, it represents the idea of no parking in an abstract way. A parking symbol showing a car being towed is more literal, more like a pictogram.
The Rebus Principle
When an ideographic system becomes too unwieldy, the Rebus principle could be used to improve its efficiency. The Rebus principle is an important aspect in the development of many modern writing systems because it is the link to represent spoken language. Unlike pure ideograms, Rebus symbols are based on how a term sounds and are therefore specific to a particular language. For example, if in the English language the symbol of the drawing of an eye will be used to represent the word eye, which would be considered an ideogram, it could also be used to represent the pronoun I, which in English has a pronunciation similar to eye; in this case we would have a Rebus symbol for the pronoun I. To understand that the drawing of an eye can also mean the pronoun I, it is necessary to know English; This Rebus symbol could not be used in Spanish.
Sources
Anita K. Barry. Linguistic Perspectives on Language and Education . Greenwood, 2002.
Carl G. Liungman. Thought Signs: The Semiotics of Symbols—Western Non-Pictorial Ideograms . IOS Press, 1995.
CM Millward and Mary Hayes, A Biography of the English Language , 3rd Edition, Wadsworth, 2012.
Victoria Fromkin, Robert Rodman, and Nina Hyams. An Introduction to Language , 9th ed . Wadsworth, 2011.
