metafunctional—basedphonological,grammaticalanddiscoursesystemswhich
fortheanalysisofmultimodalityevents.
Aswhatpeople
use
Vail
are
used
Leeuwen(2005)has
put,socialsemioticsis
concerned谢tll“the
events
way
semiotic‘resources’both
them…inthe
on
toproduce
communicativeartifactsandand
tointerpretcontextofspecificsocialsituationsandpractices”.Whenthe
semiologists
thecontinenthavebeenstrugglingtomakeDeSaussurerelevanttothe
analysisoffilmandPeirceansemioticsconnectionbetween
photography(Metz
sign-theoryis
1974,1977;Barthes1977),and
inAmerica
andan
flourishing嘶th
theworkofSebeok(1994),the
explicitlysystemic—relationalapproachto
meaningmakingand
theanalysisofsemiosisotherthanlanguageis
just
abouttobemade.
Figure2.1:Multifunctionality
31
forthemodalitiesofverbiageandimage(Martin
2001:
1)
2.2The
Western
Studiesof
MDA
as
Halliday’SSFtheory
sees
language
socialsemioticsystem
and
turnsanewleave
forthewesternscholarswhoseinteresthasbeendrawntothispromisingresearchfieldofmultimodaldiscourse.AfterArt
MichaelO’Toole’S(1994)The
vail
Language
ofDisplayed
and
Kress
andGuntherKressandTheo
Leeuwen’S(1996)ReadingImages:The
Grammar
ofVisualDesign,themultimodalfieldofresearchrapidlyexpanded.O’Toole
.13.