ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to develop theoretical and methodological tools to account for the changes in text making. While changes in and contemporary usage of writing in digital environments have attracted significant attention from sociolinguists with an interest in new media. It proposes to develop an encompassing framework for understanding how young people use a range of modes of representation – writing, typography, image, moving image, speech, colour. – to make text in facebook. The chapter develops an integrated account of contemporary text making. It recognizes changes in text making in relation to the technological affordances of contemporary platforms for text making, as well as current social change; more specifically, changes in power and in principles and agencies of control. The chapter discusses a social semiotic framework and considers the pedagogic implications of a multimodal social semiotic account.
