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46 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 6 2o20 (Travel) Rhian Waller | Postcolonial Pictures any combination of roles as icon, index and symbol. For instance, the cover of Dark Star Safari (2002) is an icon-sign of several elements, including a train, a forest and a rising (or setting) sun. It also acts as an index-sign for the contained narrative, and as a symbolic-sign for the act of journeying, travel, human movement and Africa as a conceptual space and geopolitical entity. The unstable and culturally dependent status of index and symbolic signs makes them fertile ground for cross-association and subjective interpretation. For instance, the colour red (as in the title font of Deep South, 2019) signifies danger and is a sign of warning to western viewers. However, in some Asian cultures, red is a sign of good luck (Burrows, 2016). Like the meanings embedded in the individual words of book titles, key objects of symbolic significance (trains, buildings, bodies) are singled out for further discussion. A new category is also created to operationalise Harrison’s notion of “interpersonal meta- function” in order to look at what is not present, as well as what is depicted. When discus- sing representational metafunctions (what the image is about, whether it shows people, places, objects and narrative links between objects), Harrison (2002) argues that the interpersonal metafunction of an image is one of its most important signified concepts. The viewer is invited to form a parasocial relationship with the represented human subject(s) in particular ways; an image of a father holding a baby, for instance, may be designed to evoke tenderness, sympathy and recognition of shared humanity. The covers of the most recent Penguin editions can roughly be categorised by the proximity or absence of human figures. The No Interpersonal Metafunction set (NIM), includes those covers where humans are entirely absent. In contrast, the Distant Interpersonal Metafunction (DIM) set incorporates wide shots that place people in the “far social distance” and “public distance” (Harrison, 2002). Subjects in this set are far enough from the ‘position’ of the viewer that their expressions and facial features are difficult to distinguish, but close enough that their body language is visible. Finally, the Close Interper- sonal Metafunction (CIM) is comprised of those books that feature medium-close and close-up images, such as portraits, which allow for a simulated interpersonal rela- tionship to be established between subject and viewer. These categories interlink with Dann’s conceptualisation of “people zones”, which features in his semiotic analysis of how native peoples are depicted in relation to travellers, which will be expanded on below (Dann, 1996). As an example, the categorisation and broad-strokes analysis of one book cover looks like this: [see Fig. 2]. The categorisation of these images will enable compa- risons to be made between subjects and locations. Locati- ons are particularly important, as the book covers will be grouped according to the geographies and societies they depict. Any commonalities detected in those book covers that depict cultures traditionally assumed to be ‘subaltern’ will be discussed, as well as any divergence from those covers that show developed, Western environments. Fig 1: Dark Star Safari (Theroux, 2002)