A social semiotic multimodal analysis framework for website interactivity

The paper presents a social semiotic multimodal framework for the analysis of website interactivity. Distinguishing it from interaction, the work defines interactivity as the affordance of a text of being acted (up)on. It is actualized digitally in interactive sites/signs (hyperlinks included), having a two-fold nature, as places enabling actions producing effects and as forms endowed with meanings. They have also a two-dimensional functioning, syntagmatically on the page where they are displayed, and paradigmatically, opening to multiple text realizations based on choice. The framework adapts Halliday's (1978) Ideational, Interpersonal and Textual metafunctions to the analysis of the two-fold nature and two-dimensional functioning of interactive sites/signs. As exemplified in the analysis of a sample of blogs, the framework is designed to account for the interactive meaning potentials of a digital text, both in its aesthetics and structure, and is intended to complement the extant practices of text analysis of webpages.