کد مقاله | کد نشریه | سال انتشار | مقاله انگلیسی | نسخه تمام متن |
---|---|---|---|---|
934781 | 923706 | 2012 | 11 صفحه PDF | دانلود رایگان |
Aristotle famously defined writing in a way that made it dependent on speech; and Saussure, in mapping out a place for language as part of a new field of ‘semiology’, has been seen as continuing this so-called ‘logocentric’ bias in Western thinking about signs. Kress, by contrast, in defining a new field of ‘social’ semiotics, emphasizes the differing materiality of speech and writing ‘as modes with related yet importantly distinct affordances’. This paper will use Saussure’s many-sided questioning of language, to show that Kress’s theoretical and descriptive project within Social Semiotics still needs something like Saussure’s model of linguistic meaning, and to suggest that a clearer theorization of language has positive implications for our understanding of other semiotic modes.
► Much recent work in multimodality claims to move away from language, but leaves language untheorised.
► Multimodal analyses often depend on language to ground interpretations of other modalities.
► Need for a double focus on the sociality (Saussure) and materiality (Burrows) of language.
► Work towards an inclusive semiology that treats language on par with other semiotic systems.
Journal: Language & Communication - Volume 32, Issue 3, July 2012, Pages 205–215