Anna's Blog

       Social semiotics is a communication approach focusing on making sense of the way people communicate dependent on their social settings. An element of this is called multimodality, which acknowledges how meaning is created through different "modes", like speech, gestures and pictures. It is concerned with signs and symbols, and the same these change based on context (Veltri, 2). It was championed by Michael Halliday, a British linguistic who developed the core principles of systemic functional linguistics ( O'Hagan , 2). More modern social semiotics has continued to build on his work even critiquing it. Scholar Lauren Alex O'Hagan explains that the theory has "come under scrutiny for the way in which it derives context from texts without accounting for the broader social practices, processes and people involved in their production or reception" (O'Hagan, 2).       Some rules associated with the methodology are focusing on cultural context, s...

For this discussion I chose this  online Reddit discussion about the season 46 Survivor winner.  (Spoiler warning). This was the discussion I selected as I am a huge fan myself. Season finales and winner picks always cause a lot of stir. People either love or hate who the jury of previously voted off contestants choose to win a million dollars and the title of sole Survivor. With a loyal fanbase, I expected this discussion might reveal some of the negative elements of online communication we have learned about.  One issue I have with this argument is commenting on someone's real life experience as if they are characters. In this TV program, the contestants are real people who are authentically themselves on national television. Some speakers in this thread seemed to speak about the contestants as if they were merely characters. Similarly, a user called winner Kenzie's story about her upbringing, which was one of poverty and struggle, a "sob story". This is offensive ...