The Minority AD: Creativity in Audio Descriptions of Visual Art

摘要

Several studies have described the most frequent features of visual art audio description (AD), but less frequent or minority features have received less attention. This article offers a description and discussion of minority features in visual art AD as instances of more creative practices that can foster a variety of experiences for the diversity of users of this type of intersemiotic translation. For this purpose, a qualitative analysis of a multilingual corpus of visual art ADs and their context of creation and implementation was carried out, drawing on Langacker's Cognitive Grammar (1987/2008) and its further development by Croft and Cruse (2004). The results show that some ADs conceptualize the artwork as a process and utilize an internal viewpoint. The focus of attention is sometimes shifted to the technique or the subjective impressions elicited by the work, with a few ADs showing especially high levels of subjectivity. In a group of ADs, universal accessibility translates into low specificity, understood as the amount of information and detail. The prevalent constitution of the work is altered so the identification is postponed, and the interconnections between the visual components are profiled. The typical general-to-specific progression is not followed and, instead, the AD imitates the artwork's composition. In a small number of ADs, the location of the visual components is not conveyed through lexis but implied in the discourse sequence, while the paralinguistic features of voice tempo, tone, and intensity are utilized to translate the composition and sensory impressions elicited by the artwork.