摘要
The unprecedented outbreak of COVID-19 presents a public health crisis on a global scale.Various measures have been taken to communicate crisis risks to the general public.These measures are meant to keep the public well informed,stay alert,and take precautionary measures to help curb the spread of the virus.The current study is part of an ongoing project aimed at exploring patterns of communication in the COVID-19 crisis discourse.Based on a collection of posters designed for public use during the outbreak,this paper analyses the richness of semiotic resources that combine to construct and convey the intended message of the posters.Drawing from scholarly insights into understanding the situatedness of meaning-making,the paper revisits some of the classical concerns about the relationship between text and image in semiotic artefacts and reveals the meaningmaking patterns in the semiotic designs of risk communication posters.The patterns are found to rest upon a host of textual and graphic features that contribute to the essential semiotic encoding of entity,condition,action,and sentiment.The findings are summarized by conceptualizing the assemblages of resources in the poster as a semiotic ensemble where the coordination and collaboration among semiotic resources can work to reduce potential ambiguities and amplify the communicative effect.
