Search results for "Social Semiotics"
showing 10 items of 18 documents
The Semiotics of Test Design: Conceptual Framework on Optimal Item Features in Educational Assessment Across Cultural Groups, Countries, and Languages
2021
This paper offers a conceptual framework on test design from the perspective of social semiotics. Items are defined as arrangements of features intended to represent information, convey meaning, and capture information on the examinees’ knowledge or skills on a given content. The conceptual framework offers a typology of semiotic resources used to create items and discusses item representational complexity—the multiple ways in which the semiotic resources of an item are related to each other—and item semiotic alignment—the extent to which examinees share cultural experience encoded by items. Since the ability to make sense of items is shaped by the examinees’ level of familiarity with the s…
The soundslide report : innovative journalism or misplaced works of art?
2014
Published version of an article in the journal: Nordicom Review. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/nor-2014-0007 Open Access The audio slideshow-or soundslide report-represents a new format for journalistic reporting on online news sites. It is not very widely used, but it has certain discursive and aesthetic potentials indicating that it could contribute substantially to the ecology of journalistic genres. The article offers an illustration and discussion of these potentials, asking how the format communicates and how it affects journalism in general. Starting out with a close reading of a sample text and a discussion of the format's position in a network of g…
Modality and Uncertainty in Data Visualizations: A Corpus Approach to the Use of Connecting Lines
2020
In data visualizations, connecting lines may have various semiotic functions, including the semiotic potential of indicating modality and uncertainty. The goal of this article is to find out how this semiotic potential is realized in current best practices of data visualizations and what conventions exist for the visual manifestations of these functions. This issue is addressed by using a corpus-based approach and a two-level analysis method within a social semiotic framework. First, the article offers a theoretical discussion on how the concepts of modality and uncertainty interrelate. Second, a method for investigating how these concepts are visualized at different levels is presented. Th…
Studying social media as semiotic technology: a social semiotic multimodal framework
2018
How do we study social media technology? While social semiotics provides an extensive toolkit for analysing multimodal texts and semiotic practices, the study of social media as semiotic technology poses a significant challenge to existing research methodologies. In this article, we present a social semiotic framework that allows us to describe in analytical details the multimodal meaning potentials offered by digital social media technology and connect these to multimodal text-making and semiotic practices while underscoring the role of technology. Our framework is organized around seven interrelated and inherently informed dimensions: (1) multimodality, (2) practice, (3) the social, (4) m…
Modernity and the articulation of the gender system: Order, conflict, and chaos
2009
Gender system can be understood as a cultural system rooted in biological differences. Semiotically speaking, it is a binary sign system (male/female) with some variation involved (transsexuals, homosexuals, etc.). In the process of modernity, the biological motivation of the gender system is being loosened by technological innovations such as contraception and mother's milk substitute. At the same time, the state has replaced family and kin as the organizing structure of society and the cultural ideal of equality has gained a strong position. These and similar changes together have made gender flow in 'post-traditional' societies. The paper deals with this process in paying attention to th…
The Marginalisation of Finely Tuned Semiotic Practices and Misunderstandings in Relation to (Signed) Languages and Deafness
2014
AbstractWhen people draw on the available modal resources (e.g. gestures) in specific contexts over time, those resources come to display regularities. The more a community uses and regulates those resources, the more fully and finely articulated their regularities and patterns become. Modes, organised by regular means of representation, are constantly transformed by users, depending on what the community needs. This paper discusses the way semiotic resources and practices, i.e. social actions with a history, used by sign language signers in visually oriented communities, as well as the research in such domains, have been marginalised. The paper reflects some of the main reasons for such ma…
Visual Representa of a Woman in the Semiotic Landscape of the Baltic States
2014
Linguistic landscape (LL) research of nine cities of the Baltic States shows that feminine discourse is of an essential significance in the public space. This is linguistically proved by feminine person’s names in ergonyms, also by female ergonyms and graffiti themes. However, there are multi-modal advertisements reflecting women and female items in the public space, and they are to be viewed from the perspective of the semiotic landscape. There are 294 photos reflecting a woman excerpted from the LL data base to describe visual images of a woman, focusing on the archetypes and concepts on woman’s role in society. There is a semiotic landscape research method, perception of a visual identit…
Peirce and Greimas from the Viewpoint of Musical Semiotics: An Outline for a Comparative Semiotics
1982
In semiotics it has become more and more evident that the dream of a unified semiotical science is an unreachable ideal. In this situation of extreme heterogeneity it is also legitimate to ask what kind of unifying metatheories one might develop in general semiotics, as well as in its special branches, like that of musical semiotics.
Peppa Pig
2014
Peppa Pig è la regina delle serie tv rivolte per prima infanzia. Le sue puntate sono trasmesse in tv più di cinquanta volte al giorno da Rai YoYo e altri canali tv. Rappresentano un intrattenimento immancabile e, per certi versi, ineludibile per i piccoli. Il successo di Peppa Pig supera gli argini della programmazione televisiva ed è diventato fenomeno di costume, proliferando nei media più diversi (cinema, tv, internet e quant’altro). Estende anche il potere di fascinazione al mondo delle merci: Peppa si vende in ogni forma e modo, dai quaderni alle magliette, dai pupazzi ai gadget portatili. Peppa è diventata una metafora dei nostri tempi. Ma cosa davvero ci chiede la simpatica maialina …
Talking about something real: the concept of truth in multimodal non-fiction books for young people
2016
AbstractWithin social semiotics we discuss how different semiotic resources alone or in multimodal texts are used to communicate truth. This is one of the parts of the multimodal theory that are least developed and discussed. The discussion on truth within social semiotics is mainly focused on the relationship between a corresponding type of truth that is common in natural science and a more everyday perception of truth. This can give an incomplete and stereotypical image of how truth is portrayed. This essay attempts to nuance the picture by suggesting that our theoretical conceptions of how we portray truth visually can be nuanced and developed by combining the theory of multimodality wit…