Social semiotics reveals language s social meaning its structures, processes, conditions and effects in all social contexts, across all media and modes of discourse. This important new book uses social semiotics as a one-stop shop to analyse language and social meaning, enhancing linguistics with a sociological imagination.

Social Semiotics for a Complex World develops ideas, frameworks and strategies for better understanding key problems and issues involving language and social action in today s hyper-complex world driven by globalization and new media. Its semiotic basis incorporates insights from various schools of linguistics (such as cognitive linguistics, critical discourse analysis and sociolinguistics) as well as from sociology, anthropology, philosophy, psychology and literary studies. It employs a multi-modal perspective to follow meaning across all modes of language and media, and a multi-scalar approach that ranges between databases and one-word slogans, the local and global, with examples from English, Chinese and Spanish.

Social semiotics analyses twists and turns of meanings big and small in complex contexts. This book uses semiotic principles to build a powerful, flexible analytic toolkit which will be invaluable for students across the humanities and social sciences.

About the Author

Robert Hodge is an Australian academic, author, theorist and critic. While best known as a semiotician and critical linguist, his work encompasses a wide, interdisciplinary range of fields including cultural theory, media studies, chaos theory, Marxism, psychoanalysis, post-colonialism, post-modernism and many other topics both within the humanities as well as science. He is currently a professor at the University of Western Sydney.

Born in Perth, Western Australia in 1940, Hodge studied English at the University of Western Australia, and graduated with first class honours in 1961. He went to Cambridge University in 1965 on a scholarship and completed a BA in 1967 and a PhD in 1972 on Intellectual History. Thereafter his working career as a lecturer and later professor took him to the University of East Anglia, Norwich 1972-1977, Murdoch University, Perth from 1977-1993, and the University of Western Sydney 1993-.

His line of research has taken him from studies in ancient Greek and literature, through to linguistics, to semiotics, and towards a range of topics around cultural, media, social and political criticism. Hodge's increasingly interdisciplinary approach has grown to include history, chaos theory, critical management studies, Aboriginal issues and others. Of his twenty five published books, the most well known include 'Social Semiotics', 'Language as Ideology', and 'Myths of Oz'. Other output includes numerous articles published in journals and speeches at international conferences.

Reviews
"Few scholars are as qualified as Bob Hodge to reassess, in yet another sweeping and erudite synthesis, what social semiotics can mean in a world in which communication is changing fast and gaining more and more power and influence in the process. Hodge s eclectic approach brings out the best of recent decades of work in a truly innovative and refreshing text."
Jan M. E. Blommaert, Tilburg University

"This is a thoughtful, original and stimulating account of social semiotics as a uniquely powerful and inclusive framework for analysing the essential contribution of language and meaning in effective action: they are 'part of every problem and every attempted solution.' The book provides valuable insights into how this works in complex, digital and multimodal contemporary social practices."
Norman Fairclough Lancaster University



Book Information
ISBN 9780745696218
Author Bob Hodge
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Polity Press
Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Weight(grams) 476g
Dimensions(mm) 224mm * 150mm * 25mm