Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

sensibilities, and methods of analysis’ to uncover the complex relations and movements through
which social realities are constructed by groups (or collectives) (Law 2009). Although my research
is clearly not an ANT study, here I would like to mention certain characteristics of the material
semiotic method, which is relevant to the analysis of socially constructed meaning potentials.
Sociologist John Law (1992) frames the objectives of the material semiotics by social relations,
particularly including and emphasizing the enactment of power and organization as network
effects. For Law (1992), the theory of actor-networks is essentially concerned with ‘the mechanics
of power’, and the methodological task should be to study ‘how this comes about’ in heterogeneous
networks (Callon and Law 1997).
Most of our everyday interactions are mediated through objects, and it is possible to argue that all
these socio-technical networks participate in the making of the ‘social’ (Law 1992); thus, they
should be included in the study of material semiotics. For social action to occur as a material
practice, the environment in which the action unfolds needs to be able to accommodate it in certain
ways. Therefore, ANT’s description of non-human actors is also closely related with the notion of
affordance (i.e. Gibson 1986, Norman 1988, 1998, 1999, 2008, McGrenere and Ho 2000), which I
have introduced as a part of design theory.
An 'actor' in ANT is a semiotic definition (Latour 1997). Actors, in this perspective, include not only
the people but also the places, the artifacts and the media that they use to interact, as “any thing
that does modify a state of affairs by making a difference is an actor” (Latour 2005: 71). The
material semiotics of the social world considers all the participating actors as constituents of the
social ordering, and asks how the materials become resources or constraints (Callon and Law
1997). Therefore, this approach shares many practical links with ethnomethodology in terms of its
search for local connections (Latour 1997).
It is also important to characterize the networks heterogeneously (Callon and Law 1997), and to
stress on the effects of organizations, inequality and power (Law 1992). People and machines are
not only networks, but they are also processes of transformation, compromise and negotiation
among actors (Callon and Law 1997). Therefore, the methodological approach in material
semiotics foregrounds the exploration of the ‘strategic, relational, and productive character’ of
actor-networks (Law 2009). It provides an empirical account of the theory of agency, knowledge
and machines in order to answer the ‘how’ questions about structure, power and organization
(Law 1992). This perspective provides an ontological framework, as it covers the enactment of
realities, as well as epistemological and methodological ones, as it concerns itself with the making
of knowledge and the ways in which social science can unravel the complex meaning formations
(Law 2009).
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