The Formation of the Socio-Semiotic Approach to Multimodal Discourse Analysis: Foreign Experience Review

Abstract

The article provides a brief overview of the origination of the foreign socio-semiotic approach to multimodal discourse analysis. Using the methods of diachronic analysis, interdisciplinary synthesis, abstraction and analogy, the author describes the formation and development of complex socio-communicative research technologies in combination with socially constructed cultural resources. Primary attention is paid to the development of multimodal research in social semiotics. The article characterizes M. Halliday’s idea of metafunctionality in relation to language and human social life, which paved the way for the study of the joint functioning of semiotic resources in various discourses to achieve communicative goals. The theory of R. Hodge and G. Kress, which accorded a semiotic status to everything related to humans and their activity, is described. In addition, G. Kress and T. van Leeuwen’s contextual approach to investigating multimodality and M. O’Toole’s visual grammar are presented as universal technologies for the study of semiotic resources. Some features of contextual and grammatical approaches within the framework of systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis are outlined. Particular emphasis is given to the description of R. Scollon’s, S. Wong Scollon’s and S. Norris’ multimodal interactive analysis. The importance of R. Scollon’s idea about discourse as a dynamic social practice and language as a tool for performing actions is highlighted. S. Norris’ attempt to establish a universal unit of multimodal analysis as the smallest unit of pragmatic analysis in communication involving any modality is presented. Visual transcription is described as an effective method of analysing communication mediated by modern digital technologies.