ABSTRACT
Social semiotics assumes that meanings are the product of social (inter-) action, hence meaning is seen as arising out of (and intricately linked with) social actions. Social semiotics aims to outline the semiotic principles underlying meaning-making and to provide accounts of the means for making meaning-material. Two central terms are sign (as the basic unit of meaning) and mode (as the socially shaped material means for making meanings evident): e.g., sound as speech; movement (of part of the body) as gesture; marks on surfaces as image; etc. “Social life” is a constant process of meanings made with apt means in one site and transposed with apt means in a different site. That requires accounts of the site-specific mode-resources for making meaning and of the site-specific mode-resources for transposing meaning. This chapter provides examples of meanings made in one site and transposed as meanings apt for, and in, a different site. The process outlined in this “sketch” is intended to account for processes of making and re-making of meaning within one “culture” and its resources; and, equally, for processes of making meaning in one culture and its resources, and its transposition in another culture with its resources.
