The analysis of the structure of an interface is therefore one way to bring the
ideology, hidden agenda or curriculum of an application into the ‘open’. The way in
which image, writing, sound and video are designed to actualise information and
ideology in CD-ROMs has also been explored (Zammit and Callow, 2000). These
papers offer interesting insights and starting points for the social semiotic analysis of
new technologies in this thesis. However these papers and indeed the majority of
work from a semiotic and social semiotic perspective tend to focus on the resources
of the computer screen as a text and do not explore what happens when users engage
with these resources. There are a few notable exceptions to this, for instance in their
analysis of a short animation made by secondary school students Bum and Parker (in
press) explore the students use of the resources of digital drawing and animation
software in media education.
One of the goals of my thesis is to contribute to a better understanding of how the
design and ideological positions of multimodal texts as they appear on the screen
might influence, shape and reshape, people’s use of them. To this end I argue for the
need to look not only at the screen as a text but also to look beyond the screen to the
practices of students.
The De-centring of Speech and Writing
It is almost a cliche to say that the form of a sign shapes its meaning but ‘the medium
is the message’ (McLuhan, 1967) is a slogan which is all the more pertinent in the
context of new technologies. This relationship between form and meaning is apt and
crucial because the multiplicity of representational modes that most computer
applications make (easily) available demand an answer to the question of what mode
to use, and when. Although the continued role of writing in these multimodal texts is
not in question, they do raise important issues regarding the choice of the mode used
(image, word, sound, etc.) (Lanham, 2001). The need to understand the
communicative and representational potential (the affordances and commitments) of
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