Social Semiotics

 
Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols and their interpretation today. The idea of social semiotics came about in 1978 with the publication of Michael Holiday's book Language as Social Semiotic. This is important because social semiotics changes everyday with trends coming and going and widespread communication due to the internet. In the article General Sociolinguistics, social semiotics and semiotics of culture - ex pluribus unum? Forty years after Language as Social Semiotic by Suren Zolyan they state that social semiotics is associated with three sources: 

1. Functional linguistics
2. Discourse analysis
3. Semiotics of culture

In the article Visual social semiotics: understanding how still images make meaning by Claire Harrison states that there are three categories of images:

1. 
   Icons, which are images that give off the feeling of similarity.
2. Index, are images that are recognizable due to the fact that we understand the relationship between the image and what it stands for
3. Symbol, when the image has no connection to an object or person.

In the blog post Theories of Visual Communication it explains what the information in a picture can mean:

1. Top, holds ideal information
2. Bottom, holds the actual information
3. Left, holds given/know information
4. Right, holds new information
5. Center, holds the whole image together

Mountainside Medical

This image to the left follows the five components of analyzing a picture through the lens of visual semiotics. The top defines depression, the bottom has information about the different types of depression, the left holds information about how depression works, the right hold the symptoms of depression, and the center is an image that ties the whole poster together. 

Behance

The image to the right does not follow the five visual components of visual semiotics perfectly. While it has information on the top and bottom it does not hold information specifically on the right and left as well as not having a central image.