At risk of a Sapir Whorf debate, there is newer research that suggests your polemical statement isn't accurate[1], let alone a vast body of Postmodernist and Postcolonial theory[2].
Being an emergent / adaptive organism, we are taught and learn models and metrics, and in turn project those outward upon the world.
Not shocking that the models and metrics form the scaffolding for thought as expressed in language.
“Does Language Shape Thought?: Mandarin and English Speakers' Conceptions of Time”
My statement wasn't polemical. And contrary to the body of literature that likes to tout that "all is literature/language", there are many conceptual schemes that do not comport themselves to linguistic expression, which in turn simply implies that such schemes are not cognized in linguistic terms but meta-linguistic (or non-linguistic) terms. Diagrammatic reasoning is a case in point. Appealing to the cognitive limitations brought on by acculturation isn't a satisfactory refutation. Let there be no doubt: diagrammatic reasoning will figure in AGI.
Visual, wherever the arbitrarily privileged line is drawn, is another convention.
To suggest that somehow the nebulous “visual domain” doesn't require reading would be to ignore much of art history and theory.
Again, there is no “visual” realm that is not steeped in vernacular; cliche, symbology, context, etc.
In this way, the visual domain is not somehow more elevated / pure / true than any other language, despite the sad reality that many have been unexposed to understanding it as such.
Visual thinking, a more closely related subset of diagrammatic reasoning (which need not be visual, incidentally), is in no shape or form "privileged". Visual thought is in fact closer to the general form of thinking that might be found in other sentient creatures who are not "privileged" with human language. Stated another way, diagrammatic thought is closer in shape and form to domain general pattern recognition. Reasoning, or "illation", is of a peculiarly non-linguistic nature, such that you'd be hard pressed to point out, like Achilles, to the Tortoise, just what it is that makes a conclusion of reasoning one that necessarily follows from some set of premises, unless you made use of some diagrammatic method.
Not sure why you're arguing a priori that all thought must be "vernacular" - code for "linguistic", I'd assume. But thought is not merely verbalizing or grammatizing everything.
Being an emergent / adaptive organism, we are taught and learn models and metrics, and in turn project those outward upon the world.
Not shocking that the models and metrics form the scaffolding for thought as expressed in language.
“Does Language Shape Thought?: Mandarin and English Speakers' Conceptions of Time”
[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010028501... [2] Which, also likely not a coincidence, calls into question the veracity of narrative structure, and instead frames narrative as an ideological tool and construct.