The history of flowcharts

Flowcharts were first introduced in engineering in the 1920s to show the workings of automated systems. Today they are often used to represent the steps in a process in the form of boxes connected by arrows. The same format is used for descriptive and prescriptive processes. The boxes may include decision point boxes (often diamond-shaped) and/or action boxes (usually rectangular).

The vagueness of arrows

Although there are context-specific classifications of types of flowchart with approved vocabularies of participants and connections, flowchart style diagrams come in many different guises and have many different functions. In the social semiotic analysis of flowchart style diagrams and instructional pictures we assume that arrows always mean does something to, but what kind of doing is intended is often unclear The arrows between whole clauses or their visual equivalents are conjunctive and may indicate temporal sequence or causality, but which of these two applies. This can be problematic as diagrams are meant to be precise and unambiguous, often thought to be universally comprehensible.

The layout of diagrams

Not all flowchart style diagrams are designed to be read from top to bottom. In centre-margin diagrams, participants are arranged around a central element, and thereby represented as, in some sense, subservient or dependent on, or complementary to, the central element. In horizontally oriented flowchart style diagrams, the rightmost

element will have special emphasis as the New.

The colour of diagrams

Colour is used in many diagrams, often according to a consistent colour code, or legend. But sometimes it is not clear how we are to interpret the colours and we must assume that the effect is meant to be aesthetic and emotive

Hypoglycaemia text
Text Linear Diagram Centre-margin layout visually indicates the central concern Narrative processes Differently coloured processes but no code provided Colour code classifies participants Risk and protection are Goal and Actor causal chain Idea of balance not expressed

Material and relational processes Explicit processes (increase, decrease, reduce etc.) Are risk and tendency the same thing? Risk and protection are Goal

Idea of balance expressed

Hydrological text
Text Only three material processes (soak, reach, use) (Passivized) naming action of scientists included (verbal and mental processes) Rainfall nominalized Diagram Additional processes: evaporation, rain, flow of water along surface No representation of naming or other scientific work Rain as the action of clouds: transactional model of interpretation Accuracy of scale and differential thickness of water arrows. Labelling within picture selective and not fully corresponding with participants and processes in the text

Some relational processes but imprecise: long, deep, well below, large amounts

Food web text

Text
Generalization realized by usuality (many, usually)and genericity (decomposers) Classification: decomposers, first-order consumers etc)

Diagram
No generalization

Some classification through vertical ordering, but not explicitly labelled

Material as well as relational clauses Selective examples of feeding and feeding often passivized.

Exclusively narrative Web appears to be complete, but there are inconsistencies (Mosquitoes and larva not fed; duck, turtle and snake not eaten; plants and fungi do nothing)

(Passivized) action of scientist included (in describing how the web is designed)
Appraisal (important) and ideological interpretation (natural recycling of materials)

No representation of the work of the scientist

No appraisal or interpretation