The Critical Dimension and Power of Social Semiotics:An Examination from the Perspective of Historical Materialism

Marx’s profound analysis of such social signs as commodity,money,and capital shows that inversion and negation are universal and rule-governed social signs and that social signs attain historical characteristics in certain social formations.The basic contradiction arising from human practice,i.e.,their contradictory movement of objectification and nonobjectification,is determined by the dialectical nature of practice,that is,by the relationship of negativity as a medium,and is the concrete expression of the dialectics of negativity in signs.The critique of social semiotics from the perspective of historical materialism is based on practice and reality,and points to the future;it is revolutionary and constructive.At present,the scientific construction of social semiotics can not only promote the development of semiotics,but can also be an important step in deepening historical materialism.

Rank Badges of Official Costumes ofMing and Qing Dynasties from the Perspective of Social Semiotics

The official dress systems of Ming and Qing Dynasties were formulated by the rulers of those feudal societies to maintain their ruling status.As well as being a functional indication of the type and power of officials,the rank badge,Buzi or Bufu(补子,补服),on official clothes indirectly declared the elegant and brave characteristics of civil and military officers,and also reflected the philosophy of the unity and harmony between human and nature.Informed by social semiotics theory,the Buzi patterns embody the culture and arts of ancient Chinese clothing,producing novel meaning within corresponding social contexts,which can be inherited and developed in today's society.Moreover,the wearing of official unified clothes and rank badges by officials and civil servants should be encouraged since those persons often serve as a role model and are subject to public's scrutiny.Thus ancient Chinese culture and arts can flourish,a good social order and law be maintained,and a harmonious and civilized society built.

Recovering from cultural blindness:multimodal Positive Discourse Analysis of metaphors in hand-drawn sketches about Islam

This paper extends Nartey's model of Positive Discourse Analysis(PDA),examining the visual metaphors(VM)in the representations of Islamic identity.The paper highlights how hand-drawings operate as a positive discourse resisting negative accusations in hegemonic discourses about Islam.This PDA study is an intellectual proximity between semiotics,VMs and cultural studies.Through the constructed framework,I argue that PDA can utilize VMs to construct/construe homogeneity and inclusiveness.Through the findings of this study,we can construe the imageries as a reflection of the physical and cultural environments whose cognition is attained by examining how semiotic signs reflect and are reflected by conscious awareness and perception.A major criticism of PDA is its lack of contextual framing,that's why this paper provides a contextual framing mixing semiotic visuality and the sociocultural construal of discursive representation of Muslim identity.The interpretation of the findings is contextualized after the adaptation of the philosophical view of Molymeux's question,the issue of blindnessfrom birth,and the capability of seeing things properly if someone,hypothetically,gains his sight again.

Visual representation of ASUU strikes in Nigeria:a semiotic analysis of cartoons in selected Nigerian newspapers

Until recently,the study of language and meaning of cartoons,the media discourses they generate,and their analysis as a creative means of exploring meaning-making processes as semiotic resources have not received much scholarly attention in Nigeria.Although cartoons that involve the use of satire and humour as visual representations of reality have gained prominence across many media platforms in Nigeria,only a few scholars have examined this from a social semiotics perspective.This has created a gap in the literature,thus creating room for a para-digm shift in the field of social semiotics.This study explores the semiotics of car-toons in selected Nigerian newspapers to examine the meaning-making resources employed in the visual representation of ASUU strikes in Nigeria.The study,there-fore,examines how cartoonists manipulate symbols,signs,and other semiotic resources to convey specific meanings through visual and textual representations.The study adopts a qualitative research design;data comprising cartoons sourced from selected Vanguard Newspapers and websites are analyzed using Kress and Van Leeuwen's visual semiotics and interpreted from the standpoints of Halliday's Systematic Functional Linguistics(SFL)approach and O'Halloran's position on metaphorical constructions of meaning.Here,metaphorical manipulation and rep-resentation of visual elements in the selected cartoons are interrogated.Findings from the study show the use of semiotic resources in the portrayer of reality in the context of the seemingly intractable ASUU strikes and their consequences on aca-demic activities in Nigeria.This scholarly intervention deserves attention as it significantly contributes to the field of social semiotics through its visual represen-tation in portraying challenges faced by the educational systems in Nigeria vis-a-vis poorgovernment funding.

#Take Responsibility:Non-Verbal Modes as Discursive Strategies in Managing Covid-19 Public Health Crisis

This paper examines different modes of non-verbal communication deployed as discursive strategies/safety protocol measures during the Covid-19 crisis to warn people against contracting the disease and to contain its spread.The data,which consist of forty purposively selected images used by the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control and remodified logos of some international brands shared on the social media space—NCDC website,Facebook and Twitter,are divided into four broad categories and analysed qualitatively using Kress and van Leeuwen’s Social Semiotic framework to examine their representational meanings.These non-verbal modes of communication are used as representations to create awareness about the pandemic,depict its manifestations(signs and symptoms)and educate people on the important guidelines to observe in order to prevent contracting the infectious disease.Thus,different semiotic resources are deployed as meaning-making processes to interrogate these thematic categories.The study concludes that the choice of the non-verbal modes/images are intentional and strategic as their specificity projects the intended meaning of the message,enhances wider reach and enables effective communication of proper management of the health crisis.

Memes as Ideological Representations in the 2019 Nigerian Presidential Campaigns: A Multimodal Approach

This paper explicates the linguistic and non-linguistic aspects of ideological representation in selected Nigerian political campaign advertisement memes on Instagram. Four memes pertaining to each of Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar’s presidential campaigns on Instagram were selected and analysed using a combination of Kress and van Leeuwen’s(2006) Social Semiotics and van Dijk’s(1998) Critical Discourse Analysis. Key ideological stances of positive self-presentation and negative otherpresentation were discovered in the memes and the aspirants largely deployed both stances. However, while aspirant Muhammadu Buhari maintained the positive selfpresentation strategy for continuity of government, aspirant Atiku Abubakar concentrated more on the negative other-presentation in order to undermine the incumbent candidate/party. All these were achieved with the reinforcement of social semiotic resources such as the meta-functions: facial and body gestures/expressions, and bright colours.

Genre and gender at work:the antithesis of man from pictorial analysis in Portuguese advertisements

This study presents a pictorial analysis of Portuguese advertisements from a visual semiotic perspective,particularly the symbolic attributive and suggestiveprocesses.Aiming toelucidate the relationship between genreand gender,the study explored advertising genre,masculinity in advertisements,and the antithesis of man as primary theoretical concerns.The data consisted of five pictures from Portuguese advertisements.The analysis suggests that advertisements are a textual arena where not only genre but also gender is constructed and modified in collaboration.The image of the antithesis of man coexisting with the one of normative masculinity in the five Portuguese advertisements indicates that genre and gender are mutually and simultaneously fluid,with their boundary often blurred.That advertisements are often prone to changes in their function to attract customers implies new and evolving presentation forms of genre and gender.The combination of new and conventional images of masculinity,as shown in the analysis,impacts social and linguistic practices,particularly the fact that traditional norms of defining genre and gender,despite their resemblant quality,might be occasionally challenged or reconstructed inlate-modern culture.