FROM SOCIAL SEMIOTICS TO MULTIMODALITY: THE ORQUESTRATION OF MEANINGS

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in researches that investigate the multiplicity of language, modes or semiosis in texts in social circulation in printed, digital or audiovisual media. Aesthetic organization of several semiotic modes impregnates and makes contemporary texts mean. Thus, this paper aims to propose a brief discussion on the articulation of semiotic modes in the construction of meanings within the multimodal texts. This work is grounded in the theoretical and methodological assumptions of Social Semiotics and Multimodality postulated by Hodge; Kress (1988), Kress; Van Leeuwen (1996, 2006) and Kress (2010). In order to substantiate the discussion, an analysis of the orchestration of meanings in a report found in a women’s health magazine, from the analytical categories of Systemic Functional Grammar and the Grammar of Visual Design, is done. In the analysis, the parallelism and the intersemiosis of verbal and visual semiotic modes are evidenced in the construction of meanings that weave the text.