The Semiotics of Typography in Literary Texts. A Multimodal Approach

This article explores from a multimodal perspective the extent to which the visual aspect of printed verbal language is meaning-making in its own right, and how it interacts with other modes of meaning in a complex process of semiosis. To this end, the article deploys and examines the approach to multimodal discourse proposed, for instance, by Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001) and Baldry and Thibault (2006), and, more specifically, the multimodal approach to typography suggested by Van Leeuwen (2005b; 2006), in order to sketch out a methodological framework applicable to the description and analysis of the semiotic potential of typography in literary texts.