Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

them, and (b) experiential and interpersonal features of the virtual places that make them suitable
to accommodate social interactions in SL.
For this purpose, I employ a place-based understanding to digitally mediated technology, and
develop a new analytical model for the systemic-functional analysis of three-dimensional virtual
places. In this approach, I mainly use O’Toole’s social semiotic framing of architecture (O’Toole
1994, 2004) and Maree Kristen Stenglin’s (2008, 2009a, 2009b) theses on the three metafunctions
of three-dimensional space. Both of these perspectives advocate that there is a partwhole
relationship between three-dimensional space and its components (‘elements’ or ‘ranks of
scale’), including those which frame the spaces (i.e. walls, windows, elevations). In fact, the idea
framing is helpful for describing the interrelations between space and place in a social semiotic
framework. As a central analytical concept in social semiotics, framing (Van Leeuwen 2005, Kress
and Van Leeuwen 2006 [1996]) refers to both “physical boundaries around a space” and “the
impact such physical boundaries have on the social inter-action between participants within a
space” (Stenglin 2009: 54). This dualistic view of space and place results in a similarly dualistic
methodological framing, following what Stenglin (2009) calls the “logogenesis of a building” which
covers both the static descriptions of three-dimensional spaces and the ways in which their
meaning potentials unfold dynamically (to create a sense of place).
As outlined in previous chapters, the systemic-functional framework that I use to analyze the
multimodal discourses within the three case-studies is developed upon O’Toole’s analytical model
on the Experiential, Interpersonal and Textual meta-functions of architectural design (O’Toole
1994, 2004). In his hypertextual model of multimodal analysis, the semiotician has at her disposal
“a map of the total 'meaning potential' and can pinpoint the rank of unit and semiotic function of
any element or combination of elements” (O’Toole 1994: 84). This provides the analysis with a
perspective that includes the dynamic interplay between semiotic resources and the social
situations in which they are used. The analysis of each meta-function indeed helps to interpret the
others, since the three meta-functions are not totally independent in the construction of the overall
meaning potentials (Lemke 2002).
In terms of the Experiential meta-function, I aim to explore the ways in which the practical
functions of virtual places are represented. Following Stenglin (2009: 38), I admit that the “ways of
construing representations of human experience” has two implications: “the first is concerned with
field; the second is concerned with [two 1 ] types of structures”. Here, it is important to note how the
designed places and artifacts afford movement and orientation of avatars, and how the
1 ‘Serial’ and ‘orbital’ structures (Stenglin 2009). Brackets by the author.
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