Social Semiotics
Have you ever scrolled past an ad or political post and felt something, but you didn’t know why? That reaction might not be random. Images are chosen carefully, and their placement, color, and content all carry meaning. This is where Social Semiotics starts to come into play. Social Semiotics is a way of understanding how images, colors, layout, and other visual elements communicate meaning in society. Why is this important? Because images do more than just decorate, they persuade, position, and influence how we see the world. Social Semiotics helps decode those messages so we can understand the intentions behind them. The roots of Social Semiotics go back to linguist Michael Halliday , who created Systemic Functional Linguistics , a theory focused on how language works in social contexts. Later, scholars Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen expanded this into the visual world. Their book, " Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design" , laid the foundation for applying sem...
