Abstrakt
One of the most dominant viewpoints in the study of signs has been their social character, as proposed by social semiotics. However, recent findings in the sphere of advertising have suggested the possibility of the 'global' nature of meaning-making.
One of the tools has successfully emerged from the blend of cognitive linguistics and multimodal studies, incorporating the use of 'image schemas' in car branding (Perez Hernandez, 2013). This resource is predominantly used unintentionally in the choice architecture based on the assumptions and cognitive patterns people globally share.
This presentation aims to question the social semiotic property of sign, in the context related to 'burning issues' of modernity, namely, environmental or COVID-19 representation. A corpus of environmental infographics has been analyzed with a view to spot generalities in eight, randomly picked, texts.
Our findings might suggest that multimodal image schemas have a huge potential to make multimodal texts globally comprehensible. Additionally, the research is aimed at confirming the predominantly unintentional nature of visual and textual intersemiosis between pictorial and verbal representations.
The researcher takes into consideration only the most salient features of environmental infographic, which bear little reference to other contextual or social factors.