THE VISUAL MESSAGE
THE VISUAL MESSAGE

Summary/Abstract: Cultures, languages, colloquial ways of communication do not change overnight, but they do change. It is amazing how much of the lexicon specific to computer, mobile phone, internet, mass-media fields has been invading and influencing our language and culture in the last decade. Words like googling, texting, viral, sms, site, etc. have become part of the common day Romanian communication, especially for the younger generation. This proves that languages and cultures can be enriched, or impoverished, by the contribution of a generation. Modern times can be rightfully labeled as a period of prevailing image over word, mainly in its written form. Foucault‘s theory of dominant discourse, with its connection between the physical and discursive realities, the linguistic signs and their cultures, has probably never been so obviously necessary as during the 21st century. Interesting enough, the motility of linguistic signs can be observed even in the transpositions, from the conservatory language into a contemporary one, of classical texts as it is the case of the Bible. In The Message, Professor Eugene Peterson remains in the trends of his time, of the word – image, while transposing the formal Bible version into a colloquial one, in the simple, ordinary, common day English. Therefore, the biblical text becomes both accessible to the inexperienced and to the theologian scholars alike and enjoyable, as if the reader found oneself seated in front of a large screen ready to unfold timeless truths uttered in a modern manner.

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