A thousand words - or a few?

“A picture says more than a thousand words”. I think most of us have said or heard this, but maybe without giving it much thought. The implicit meaning is the more words you convey, the better. Is that always true?

Persons with communications impairments often need some sort of augmentative or alternative communication (AAC). Spoken language can be complemented or replaced by manual signs, speech synthesis, photos, pictures etc. Each person needs an individually adapted AAC system. Since photos and pictures carry a lot of information, they should be optimal as as augmentative or alternative communication. Let’s think about it.

I come up to you and show you this picture:

What am I trying to say to you? When you start guessing, you’re likely to guess at some of the basic communicative functions (even if you don’t think in the terms of “communicative functions”, you will probably guess at something that we often try to express). Communicative functions are different ways to use language, and some of the basic ways we use language are to

• get attention
• express what we want
• express what we don’t want
• to comment on something
• request information (ask)
• supply information (answer)
• express “social function”, such as “thank you”, “hello”, “goodbye” etc

This gives you a lot of options when trying to find out what I’m trying to tell you. For example:

Expressing what I want

• I want something to drink
• I want a glass
• I want to go to the place where they sell glass
• I would like a glass like this for my birthday

Expressing what I don’t want

• I don’t want to drink (note that the glass is empty!)
• I don’t want my drink in this glass
• I don’t want any more of these glasses

Commenting on something

• Look at this glass; I really like it
• I saw that you have the same glasses as I have at home
• The pattern on this glass reminds me of summer

Requesting information

• Is there any more milk?
• Where did you buy this glass?
• Where can I put this?
• When are we going to have lunch?

Supplying information

This is an anwer to a question, so this should be easier. For example:

A: “do you want tea or milk?” B: [shows picture of glass] = I want milk

Social function

• Thank you for the glasses you got me for my birthday

The possibilities are practically endless. If we’re lucky, you will guess at the right thing pretty quickly. If we’re not, we will never get to what I’m trying to tell you.

So, to sum things up: to convey a thousand words in an instant may not always be an advantage. Sometimes it better to communicate just a few words, but the right ones. That it is not to say that AAC or picture communication is a bad thing, just that it’s much more complicated than we sometimes realize.

To read more about AAC: ISAAC