Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

perspective, analyzing the human and the non-human factors that contribute to the construction of
multimodal sign systems is important for the epistemological dimension. Therefore, the social
actors, the mediational means and the collaborative practices are considered as fundamental
constituents of the social semiotic framing of the context of situation in the three case studies. In
fact, the first two analytical chapters – the analysis of social contexts and multimodal semiotics –
constitute a tightly-bound composite for the analytical framework, through which I discuss the
nexus of discourses and practices as a part of the multimodal analysis. In other words, I am
interested in understanding how SL represents both the content and context of communication as a
complex semiotic nexus; that is a virtual place in which participants collaboratively design places.
Design activity shapes and transforms the environment in which it takes place; in turn, the
environment also shapes the potential designs in terms of both the process and the product. In a
social semiotic framework, sign-makers assess the environment in which they intend to
communicate and participate in the communicate world by using socially available resources that
these environments present to them. They engage in socially transformative relationships with
their environments in order to (re-)semiotize the resources within their own cognitive and creative
capabilities. As the co-designers individually make use of the platform in accordance with their
purposes and capabilities, they also evaluate whether the use of other platforms and resources is
necessary and whether SL could accommodate their choices. The use of Internet and other digital
platforms support SL’s affordances, and help the co-designers to bridge the gap of the constraints.
The methodological intention for considering place semiotics as one of the fundamental situational
components of social semiotic analysis is this reciprocal interaction between design and its
environment. For this purpose, I focus on exploring the patterns of intertextuality of real and
virtual places in a convergent collaborative media landscape as an analytical objective. Although
forms and shapes are initially designed as mental constructs (and often as sketches on paper), they
are actualized by the affordances and constraints for digital content production. In all three cases,
the perceived affordances and constraints of SL were observed to have significant effects on the codesigner
practices. To sum up, the analysis of collaborative design processes points towards a
complex and dynamic nexus of semiotic and material resources that are used in co-production
processes, and the semiotic effects of the co-designers’ interpretations of the affordances and
constraints on their practices. The following chapter will outline the multimodal systemicfunctional
analysis of virtual places and artifacts with the aim of unraveling their experiential,
interpersonal and textual meaning potentials, often by referring to the discussions that are
presented in this chapter.
188