On the Road to Multimodality: Semiotics

Abstract

Given the various perspectives that can be adopted to understand multimodal texts, a theoretical model intending to study multimodality for translation purposes needs to combine different approaches. Indeed, literature capable of contributing to the multimodal debate comes from various fields: semiotics-and particularly social semiotics-analyses how different modes are organised, their similarities/differences, and their meaning-making abilities; literature on visual-verbal relationships accounts for the way modes interact; pragmatics has relatively recently joined the multimodal debate, offering support to understand multimodality in context; translation studies has investigated to some extent the challenges posed by non-linguistic textual resources. This chapter reviews the relevant literature on semiotics (in particular social semiotics) to pave the way to the construction of the model.