Page 55 - Literacy in the New Media Age

44 LITERACY IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE

signifier(s) chosen will always be apt for the signifieds. So the signs will never
bean arbitrary conjunction of form and meaning, and from the shape of the
signifier the reader/viewer/hearer will form their hypothesis about the sign as a
whole.
This is the approach to sign, in any mode and at any level, which I adopt. It
applies to writing and speech no less than to image. It means that signs are always
meaningful conjunctions of signifiers and signifieds; it means that we can look at
the signifiers and make hypotheses about what they might be signifying in any
one instance, because we know that the form chosen was the most apt expression
of that which was to be signified. The theory demands that we assume that all
aspects of a sign represent their maker’s interest in representing that which they
regarded as most salient, at this moment, about the object or phenomenon to be
represented. It entails that all aspects of form are meaningful, and that all aspects
of form must be read with equal care: nothing can be disregarded. In a
multimodal approach to writing this is essential. In social semiotics this is the
key to unlocking meaning.
The making of signs, outwardly as articulation or inwardly as interpretation,
complex or simple, large or small, in the socially shaped environments of
everyday lives, is the process of semiosis. That process is ceaseless, and for most
of the time the process is invisible. At particular moments it does become
noticeable – visible, audible, tangible, tasteable – when there is an occasion to
make signs outwardly. There is at that moment a decision about the mode in
which the meaning which is to be made should be realised. I have used the
metaphor of fixing, as in the (now old-fashioned) chemical process of developing
photographs. It matters which mode, and therefore which materiality, is used to
‘fix’ the meanings. Of course, for most of these moments the mode in which that
fixing is to happen is already settled: news appears in print, in sound, in sound
and image, in sound, image and writing. Ph.D. theses by and large still appear in
print; fashion magazines as much as Playstation magazines appear in print and
image – with colour a foregrounded mode. But at other times there is the
possibility of choice – how much writing, if any, to use on a website, how much
image, what colour, whether soundtrack and moving image. In fact in the present
period these possibilities of choice are increasing, which constitutes an important
reason for a focus on design.
This approach to signs entails that representation is always ‘engaged’, it is
never neutral: that which is represented in the sign, or in sign complexes, realises
the interests, the perspectives, the positions and values, of those who make signs.
The outwardly made sign, the sign made in the process of articulation, functions
in communication, and so it must necessarily fit into the structures of power
which characterise situations of communication. The sign-maker must factor that
into the making of the sign – it must be fit for its role in the social field of
communication. Communication is ‘outward’; interpretation is inward. The sign
that comes to the receiver in communication is taken by her or him as an object
for interpretation; in the act of interpretation, a new sign is formed. Interpretation