Tatiana McGuire

Social semiotics is the study of different forms of communication, such as symbols, icons, and images. It was developed by Linguist Michael Halliday, focusing on how we construct meaning from language. Gunther Kress extended this focus to multimodality, looking at communication through visuals, sound, and digital text. The use of visuals can be traced back since the beginning of human existence, with drawings on cave walls telling stories about that time. Evolutionary theory explains how our way of seeing things has evolved in a way that we are able to process many images at one time, which means that the use of visuals can be an easier and quicker way of communicating with the world around us ( PwC Australia ). We remember the things we see, and the feelings they invoke, better than words we read. When interpreting photos there are certain things to look for that help convey a message that anyone can understand. At the top of a photo are desires or things that are imagined, whereas th...