ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an informal account of a long period of working collaboratively with Theo Van Leeuwen. It is worth reflecting on the extent to which a professional socialisation constantly shapes—or twists out of shape—attempts to get to somewhere new. Theo and the author had set out to remake an established academic/intellectual — and commonsense — position in fundamental ways; yet all the time, they used the conceptual/theoretical tools that had shaped the world we were trying to get beyond. In 1986, they decided to turn shared interest and occasional conversations into real work. They imagined something akin to a 'grammar', which would describe elements and relations in the designs evident in images; it would provide a basic frame of meaning relations. In needing to account for a radically changing social, social semiotics will have to re-orient to deal with a new set of issues.
