ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the gradual move towards semiotic and multimodal research in the field of language, gender, and sexuality. The move signals a significant and necessary step in widening the semiotic lens to consider language as one among multiple modes of meaning and sense-making that occurs in discourses pertaining to gender and sexuality. The range of modes discussed in the chapter includes language, gestures, colour, visual images and photography, music and song, dress and props, materialities, represented affect, typography, and embodied performances. All these are semiotic resources that may be mobilised towards the provision of holistic analyses of gendered/sexed texts and talk.
In the chapter, five semiotic and multimodal approaches for the study of gender and sexuality in discourse are selected for discussion: Goffman’s approach to visual gender displays, a critical social semiotic approach, approaches to multimodal digital discourses, a semiotic landscape approach, and multimodal approaches to conceptual metaphor analysis. In discussing each of these approaches, two studies are chosen (including the studies in Part VII ) in order to show how a semiotic and multimodal lens is used to address a range of research concerns about gender and sexuality in various social contexts. Although these approaches are dealt with separately, they are by no means mutually exclusive, and in fact can be combined productively by the analyst depending on the objectives of the research.
