Restroom Icon Icons of Elimination

Restroom Icon

Icons of Elimination

Interpersonal communication would be completely impossible without the use of symbols. A simple examination of the most common forms of communication shows the truth of this assertion: speech consists of nothing more than agreed-upon auditory symbols (i.e. spoken words) that stand for the multitude of objects, actions, and concepts of a given language. The sound of A-P-P-L-E bears no actual relationship to the red or green fruit that grows on trees, is crisp and juicy when ripe, and has seeds in the middle, but by general (and largely unconscious) consensus of English speakers the world over, these sounds have when combined are known to refer to this fruit. The same is true of written language; the constituent letters of the word "apple" bears as little resemblance to the fruit as their auditory components, yet a word so spelled creates the meaning -- through the same consensus -- of that particular fruit.

Icons are a different and far more simplistic, though no less profound, form of visual communication. Though the term originally referred to religious pictures and objects, the word "icon" has come to refer to any visual representation that the consensus of a culture or other group of people has bestowed with symbolic and/or communicative value. Any reduction of meaning necessarily creates some loss in the clarity of the communication, and generally speaking the simpler the means of communication are, the less clarity exists. Think, for instance, of the language employed by a toddler and that used by the average college student -- a college student is (one would hope) capable of far more subtlety, shading, and complexity in their communication. Just so, words are the most complex and clear forms of visual communication, whereas icons tend to be far more simplistic and far more general in their meaning. But though they seem to limit meaning, icons can also be seen to reflect a great deal of culture.

An examination of the various restroom icons included in the text bears this out. In general, each of these icons serves the same function -- to identify a place where one can relieve oneself, usually as segregated by gender (or, in the case of at least one of the icons, by species). That is, most of these photographs in the book contains one culture's method of denoting "Men's" and "Women's" on a restroom door. All of the representations are pictorial, though some also include words or letters (such as "WC" for "water closet"), and its here that the breakdown of clarity can be observed. The icons from Thailand, for instance, might be taken as rather humorous and somewhat naught pictures by outsiders, rather than being immediately understood for what they are (though no doubt seeing them in context, while not necessarily eliminating the humor, would probably have enhanced the clarity of meaning). The examples from China, with their purely geometric design, would be even more confusing.

But these examples of how limiting icons are for communicating specific and clear meaning also illustrate the vast amounts of inferred knowledge that they can provide about a culture who uses them. The very fact that each culture has its own very unique way of representing this meaning (i.e. "restrooms") is evidence of this, but the specific examples can again be quite helpful in understanding the true import of cultural knowledge received through icons. The icons from Thailand reveal a people who are fairly literal minded and certainly unabashed about bodily functions. The Chinese icons represent a culture that is almost diametrically opposed on these counts; there is a marked attempt to refrain from representing the human form, while at the same time the complimentary asymmetry of the two icons is similar to other symbols of Chinese philosophy.

Though rudimentary in their ability to directly communicate meaning, icons are invaluable in their cultural communication. The American icons for male and female restrooms, quite similar to the example from Hong Kong in the text, attempts to typify men and women in the simplest terms possible, making a clear differentiation in the genders while at the same time attempting to deemphasize any gender-based differences in the actual structure of the bodies -- only the triangular dress on the female icon belies her different status. This is a subtle yet clear example of the meeting between egalitarian political correctness and long held contradictory beliefs that is so prevalent in American society and culture. Words could never capture the same juxtaposition so eloquently or so effortlessly; we must be thankful to icons for providing so much color and expression, if not meaning, to communication.