Abstract
The social semiotics approach examines the meaning-making process in order to demonstrate how meaning is constructed in social actions and contexts. The rising interest of researchers in social media and its widespread use in society have both highlighted new challenges for data analysis. Social semiotics can provide a deep understanding of the visual grammar of the social media meaning-making process by assuming that this process is considered a social practice. The main objective of this chapter is to guide researchers and enable them to use the social semiotic approach as a research tool for the analysis of visuals in the social media environment. The chapter introduces the key elements, principles, assumptions, and rules of using the social semiotics approach in the analysis, understanding, and interpretations of social media visuals and how to explore the role played by visual elements in the meaning-making process in a social media within a specific social context.
TopIntroduction
The social semiotics approach examines the meaning-making process in order to demonstrate how meaning is constructed in social actions and contexts (Van Leeuwen, 2009: p. 6). The focus of this chapter is to explain the possibilities of utilizing social semiotics in analyzing and interpreting the meaning-making process through visual elements on social media within a specific social context. The content of the chapter is organized around social semiotics as an approach and research strategy, beginning with an explanation of the meaning of semiotics, sign, and semiotic resources. Some insights are given as well on social semiotics principles, assumptions, and basic questions with an emphasis on visual social semiotics and multimodal visual semiotics.
The chapter also discusses aspects and issues related to the social media visuals from the semiotic perspective, showing how social media are considered, semiotically, an environment for communicating multimodal and multilayered content. During the scientific contributions made in the field of social semiotics, some analytical frameworks were developed. This chapter presents these analytical frameworks with an emphasis on the aspects that can be applied to the visual elements of social media. The analytical frameworks addressed in the chapter include the tripartite model that divides meaning generated by visual elements into three categories: representational, interactional, and compositional meaning. Another tripartite division of a sign into icon, index, and symbol is also discussed.
Finally, this chapter sheds light on an important aspect of the analysis of visual elements in social semiotics, which is the analysis of connotation and denotation meanings. Within this point, the model of the Peircean triad is discussed.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Semiotics Resources: A concept used in social semiotics to describe a means for a meaning-making process. Semiotic resources are the materials, actions, and artifacts one can use for communicating, whether they are produced physiologically, such as voice apparatus, making facial expressions and gestures, or technologically, such as pen, ink, or computer applications, as well as the methods by which these semiotic resources could be organized.
Visual Social Semiotics: A research field (originating in the 1990s) that focuses on the description of semiotic resources, what can be said and done using images and other visual means of communication as well as how what people say and do with images that may be interpreted within a social context.
Social semiotics: Social semiotics is a method, an approach, an analytical perspective, and research strategy that enables researchers to investigate the systematic relationships between social reality and signs, texts, and discourses. Social semiotics is considered a body of critical and interpretative theory for examining the meaning-making process in order to demonstrate how meaning is constructed in social actions and contexts.