Motivated signs and multimodal analysis in Gunther Kress’s semiotics

IF 0.8 3区 文学 Q3 COMMUNICATION
Text & Talk Pub Date : 2024-01-15 DOI:10.1515/text-2022-0064
Bob Hodge
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Abstract

Abstract This article addresses the issue of motivated signs in semiotic theory and practice. It examines two influential versions of the term, Saussure’s and Kress’s, focussing on and triggered by Kress’s influence. It claims Kress’s importance lies not so much in theory as such, as in his analytic practice, multimodal analysis, as underpinned by this theory. Accordingly, it deploys a version of this practice on Kress as he is ‘doing theory’. It uses his late work Multimodality (Kress, Gunther. 2010. Multimodality. London: Bloomsbury) as the main source of examples of theory and objects of analysis, and applies a similar approach to Saussure. The outcome is a theoretically-informed corpus including many examples of motivated signs in use. From this empirical corpus the article makes some indicative generalizations about the role of these signs in semiotic practice. It shows how pervasive these signs are, and how important these are for analysis. It connects them with a crucial but under-researched aspect of all social uses of meaning, the modality meta-function (checking validity/modality of all semiotic acts), in which motivated signs play an essential role. It reveals a more complex Saussure, more complementary to Kress, and enables more powerful multimodal analyses of social meanings and functions of text and talk.
冈瑟-克雷斯符号学中的动机符号和多模式分析
摘要 本文论述了符号学理论与实践中的动机符号问题。文章研究了索绪尔和克莱斯对该术语的两个有影响力的版本,重点关注克莱斯的影响,并由克莱斯的影响引发。文章认为,克雷斯的重要性并不在于他的理论本身,而在于他的分析实践--多模态分析--以这一理论为基础。因此,该书在克雷斯 "实践理论 "的过程中,对他的这一实践进行了部署。本研究以他的晚期著作《多模态》(Kress, Gunther. 2010. Multimodality. 伦敦:布鲁姆斯伯里出版社)作为理论实例和分析对象的主要来源,并对索绪尔采用了类似的方法。其成果是一个有理论依据的语料库,其中包括许多使用中的动机符号实例。文章从这一经验性语料库出发,对这些符号在符号学实践中的作用做出了一些指示性概括。文章显示了这些符号的普遍性以及它们对分析的重要性。文章将这些符号与所有意义的社会使用中一个至关重要但研究不足的方面--模态元功能(检查所有符号行为的有效性/模态性)--联系起来,动机符号在其中扮演着重要角色。它揭示了一个更加复杂的索绪尔,与克雷斯的互补性更强,能够对文本和谈话的社会意义和功能进行更有力的多模态分析。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
Text & Talk
Text & Talk Multiple-
CiteScore
1.70
自引率
16.70%
发文量
70
期刊介绍: Text & Talk (founded as TEXT in 1981) is an internationally recognized forum for interdisciplinary research in language, discourse, and communication studies, focusing, among other things, on the situational and historical nature of text/talk production; the cognitive and sociocultural processes of language practice/action; and participant-based structures of meaning negotiation and multimodal alignment. Text & Talk encourages critical debates on these and other relevant issues, spanning not only the theoretical and methodological dimensions of discourse but also their practical and socially relevant outcomes.
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