Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

5. The analytical framework
Introduction
In this section, I outline how the analytical framework in this PhD research was constructed among
theoretical and methodological traversals among several relevant disciplines, to discuss the ways in
which I structure the strategies of the data production and analysis. As mentioned before, my
overarching epistemological perspective to collaborative place-making is framed by the systemic
functional and multimodal approach to social semiotics. On the other hand, I also argue that there
are certain shortcomings to the systemic functional framing of the multimodal approach; especially
when the research objective in focus is collaborative design in mediated social contexts. A designoriented
theoretical perspective can supplement the analysis by focusing on motivations, tools and
methods of the designers. I aim to foreground the social aspect of semiotic sign-making through
reaching the actual designers, or sign-makers, in collaborative design cases, and including their
perspectives on virtual places and SL’s affordances and constraints. For this purpose, in this
section I discuss how I frame the multimodal analysis and support it by considering the sociocultural
contexts, the actors, the places and the mediational means as parts of my overall analytic
viewpoint. In the following sections, I will outline the systemic functional analytical framework, as
well as the ways in which I analyze mediated social practices of co-production through a practiceoriented
socio-semiotic view.
5.1. Systemic functional framework and analysis of mediated social
practices
The overall methodological goal is to bring together the study of texts – virtual places and the
artifacts that constitute them –, the study of social interaction – processes of collaborative design,
building, and evaluation – and the study of the material world – affordances and constraints of
available tools and resources -. For this purpose, two specific approaches to social semiotic theory
have been used to build the analytical framework: (1) Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s
multimodal analysis (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001; also see O’Toole 1994, 2004, van Leeuwen
2005a, 2005b, Jewitt 2009, Kress 2010); and (2) mediated discourse analysis (MDA) – a different
but closely related variation – that was outlined by Ron and Suzie W. Scollon’s ‘nexus analysis
(Scollon 2001, Scollon and Scollon 2004) and ‘place semiotics/discourses in place’ approaches
(Scollon and Scollon 2003), and a series of articles on analyzing mediated action edited by Sigrid
Norris and Rodney H. Jones (Lemke 2005, Scollon 2005, van Leeuwen 2005b).
100