Intersemiotic Texture: analyzing cohesive devices between language and images

TLDR

Recent research on multimodal discourse has explored the nature of semantic relations between different semiotic resources. The study proposes Intersemiotic Texture as a key property of coherent multimodal texts, introduces a preliminary framework and discourse‑based model for image–text cohesive devices, and develops a meta‑language to describe how intersemiotic cohesion integrates modes and expands meaning in real time. The authors draw on language as a social semiotic resource to propose Intersemiotic Texture, present a preliminary framework illustrated by print‑media analysis of image–text relations across experiential, textual, and logical meanings, suggest a discourse‑based model complementary to grammar‑based approaches, and develop a meta‑language for describing intersemiotic cohesive devices. The framework demonstrates that image–text relations are meta‑functionally orchestrated across experiential, textual, and logical meanings, and the meta‑language shows that intersemiotic cohesion integrates modes and.

Abstract

Recent research on multimodal discourse has explored the nature of semantic relations between different semiotic resources. Drawing on the interpretation of language as a social semiotic resource, this article proposes Intersemiotic Texture as the crucial property of coherent multimodal texts and presents a preliminary framework for cohesive devices between language and images. The framework is illustrated through examination of print media to demonstrate how the image–text relations are meta-functionally orchestrated across experiential, textual and logical meanings at the discourse stratum. A discourse-based model is suggested to analyze image–text logical relations complementary to existing grammar-based approaches. This research also develops a meta-language to describe Intersemiotic Cohesive Devices from two complementary perspectives: Intersemiotic Cohesion not only functions to integrate different modes together when multimodal discourse is conceptualized as a finished product, it also constitutes essential text-forming resources for semantic expansions across language and images during the ongoing contextualization of meanings in real time.