Figure and Ground:The Techniques of Emphasis in Cao’s Picture Books

• Main Authors: Chen, Yun-Chu, 陳韻竹
• Other Authors: Chen, Kuang-Ming
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/82779055677569364155

碩士 === 國立臺東大學 === 語文教育學系碩士班 === 96 === This study is to investigate the relationships between the text and the pictures in Cao’s picture books with figure and ground. Through the study, we saw Cao’s way to prominence in text and picture. This study took two picture books in prose of Cao “Bare-Foot Land” and “Backside Mountain” as an object of research. According to the integrity of the picture, these two books were divided into 29 groups, each was discussed about the collocation of figure in picture and text of whether two of them were connected or not. And then, we counted the number of techniques which Cao used to express the prominence in text and in picture. According to the above description, we found that Cao’s two picture books have at least four characters below: 1. The phenomena which the figure was identified in text and in picture are more than which was not. The main reason is the protagonists are usually used as the figures in picture but which are variable in text. Besides including human noun phrase, the figure in text also had non-human noun phrase, and verb phrase expressing an action, or adjective phrase expressing emotion. Even though the figure in text is human noun phrase, it would not be protagonist. 2. The protagonist is usually used as figure in picture. There are more features of protagonist to become figure originally settled by Cao. For examples, they frequently appear in the middle or the Golden ratio position; be complementary with the background color; have dynamic effect. 3. Without any special mention, the subject or topic would be the figure in text. But Cao always uses Ba-construction to change the figure into the verb phrase or the complement in the end of sentence. 4. When the figure is not identified in text and in picture, Cao usually uses actual line, implied line or psychic line to indicate the element in pictures, taking reader’s attention of figure in reading the text.