Van Leeuwen - Introducing Social Semiotics

Concepts and Issues - the social in social semiotics - motivation of the sign - sign reconsidered as a resource: signs come into existence by being used as a resource - sign-making rather than alignment of given signified with signifier. - design: as a marker of literacy (developed further in Kress, Multimodal Literacy) - What seems like a leap from meaning to ideology. Signs are always motivated and always engage ideology, but how does the analyst determine the specifics of that ideology? Interviews provide evidence. - position and role of ideology in analysis. It often seems like the analyses are assuming stated ideological positions. that is, Van Leeuwen presents how a discourse engages or participates in an ideology but doesn't provide evidence for the argument. - **style**. not well defined. problems in individual style and meaning. concept that individual style might not be a resource but only a marker of identity is an interesting one. Means the style is really defined w/in the social.

Multimodal Cohesion