Prepared by Batsman A.

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GEO-
SEMIOTICS
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What does it mean?

Geosemiotics
is the study of signs/discourses in place to understand meaning-making in the
physical world (as presented by scholars such as Scollon & Scollon, 2003).
A geosemiotic approach must be complemented by (re)presentations of space-as-socially
produced as methodological and theoretical considerations of place evolve beyond static
representations of place-as-context. 

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It “no longer seems sufficient to conceive space as a neutral container of talk and place merely a
location where language is sampled” (Lou, 2017, p. 514) when the construct of context is viewed
dialogically (Duranti & Goodwin, 1992). Space is socially constructed by language in its various
modalities and material forms and at its relationship with other semiotic resources, such as visual
display and spatial arrangement (Lou, 2017). It is the complexity of relationships—between the
interaction order, the discourses, the semiotic aggregate, and the material resources in place—
that comprises space. Thus, geosemiotic approaches capture the elements that compose the
relationship; social geography attends to the complexities of the relationship.
Although literacy scholars have taken up social geography and geosemiotic approaches over
the last few decades for different and separate purposes, the utility of a geosemiotic approach
when complemented by the lens of social geography affords a more complete investigation of
the dialogic relationship between place and space. Whereas until now geosemiotics and social
geography have served as different and separate lenses, place and space are different but
related constructs. For literacies researchers, meaning-making that produces places can be
studied through geosemiotic, an analytical method for considering how places are produced
through literacy interactions—the intersections of semiotic systems, people, and resources for
meaning-making. From a social geography perspective, understanding space as socially
constructed through these dynamic and discursive intersections affords analytical attention to
these intersections.
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Video about geosemiotics study