Hallidayan systemic functional descriptions of language, mainly focussed on verbal grammar, with the social semiotic descriptions of the meaning-making resources of images described in a grammar of visual design proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen. However, current research indicates that articulating discrete visual and verbal grammars is not sufficient to account for meanings made at the intersection of language and image. This paper adopts a systemic functional semiotic perspective in outlining a range of different types of such meanings in different kinds of texts, suggesting the significance of such meanings in comprehending and composing contemporary multimodal texts, and the importance of developing an appropriate metalanguage to enable explicit discussion of these meaning-making resources by teachers and students
The article explores the changes in digital technology over the years and considers how these changes have impacted on the meaning making resources of multimodal ensembles.
A comparison of texts through the decades looking at how multimodal tools for textual analysis can explain changes from a social, pedagogic and semiotic perspective.
C. Coffin, and J. Donohue. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 11 (1):
1 - 3(2012)<ce:title>English for Academic Purposes: contributions from Systemic Functional Linguistics and Academic Literacies</ce:title>.