>So I would suggest that an "icon," in your usage, is really just a
>picture of a very commonly understood code. There really aren't any
>icons, just codes that different groups of people recognize more or
>less readily.
The problem with this view is than something need not be "universal"
to be iconographic. An iconographic image is sort of like an
onomotopoetic word: the fact that there are people in the world who
may never have heard an explosion doesn't mean that "boom" isn't
onomotopoetic, nor does the fact that some people dont think the
sound a cat makes is like "meow" mean that "meow" isn't onomotopoetic.
What it means is that images can be iconographic within a cultural
context. The difference between a code and an icon is the following:
if you know what a dog and a cat are and you can recognize a picture of
a dog, you should be able to recognize a picture of a cat. However,
the ability to recognize the word "dog" does not imply the ability to
recognize the word "cat."
This has nothing to do with universality. However, properly chosen icons
*may* be universally comprehensible (or effectively so), as a happenstance
of culture. This means that some icons may be better choices than others,
but there are many icons likely to be better choices than words from
particular languages.
--Andy