Page 154 - Literacy in the New Media Age

READING AS SEMIOSIS 143

Figure 9.1 ‘Early’ child writing: ‘look, I’ve done it’

Here is not the point to elaborate a theory of the sign, but it may be useful
simply to state my position on this (fuller accounts may be found in
Kress, 1993b, 1997a; Kress and Van Leeuwen, 1996). In the social semiotic
approach which I adopt (Hodge and Kress, 1988) signs are motivated
combinations of form and meaning (in the Saussurian parlance, of signifier and
signified) in which the form is already the best, the most apt, representation of
the meaning which the maker of the sign wishes to represent. That means that
form and meaning do not stand in an arbitrary relation to each other, but that the
relation is motivated: ‘this form best expresses the meaning that I wish to
represent’.
However, ‘the meaning that I wish to represent’ is only ever a partial
representation of the object or the phenomenon that I wish to represent. It is a
common misunderstanding or misapprehension that a representation is full, that
it fully represents some thing in the physical or semiotic world. But quite to the
contrary, representation is always partial. If I draw a car, I cannot draw all the
features that make up that car; if I tell you about my new car – however
enthusiastically I might do this – it will be a partial account only. However, the
partiality of my representation is not an accident: I represent that which
encapsulates or represents my ‘interest’ in the phenomenon that I wish to
represent at this moment. I might wish to represent the sleekness of my car, or its
size, or its white-walled tyres. The sign is therefore always both a representation
of what it was that the sign-maker wished to represent, and it is an indication of