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Abstract
Along with the development of semiotic theories by Saussure and Peirce, there emerged another branch of semiotics, social semiotics, in the last few decades. In a way, it is a natural development of general semiotics, and is complementary with it. In contrast to general semiotics, it focuses on parole and the application of the semiotic theories to other fields. In the present article, it shows its features different from the Saussurian and Peircian semiotics,traces its path of development and proposes six characteristics which characterize it as appliable semiotics; social in nature, practical in orientation, resource for meaning-making, cross-discipline, variable and changeable, and multimodal. As appliable semiotics, social semiotics works with the following four aspects; resources for social interactions, liability to change along with the change of contexts, following certain semiotic principles, and performing two major functions; representational and interactional. The result of the application of social semiotics is multimodal discourses, whose areas of research include the following four aspects; discourse and social practice, genre, style and modality. Multimodal discourses are coherent in terms of the following four aspects; rhythm, composition, information-linking and dialogue. Finally, a relative comprehensive theoretical framework of social semiotics as appliable semiotics is designed and presented.

Intro -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Figures -- Tables -- Foreword (second edition) -- Foreword (first edition) -- Preface I -- Preface II: Text and context -- 1 Taking over the predecessor's relay baton -- 2 Attaching importance to theoretical innovation -- 3 Emphasis on applied research -- Acknowledgements -- Part I: Theoretical research -- 1. Text coherence: retrospect and prospect -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Theoretical development -- 1.3 Conditions for text coherence -- 1.3.1 The context of culture -- 1.3.2 The cognitive models -- 1.3.3 The context of situation -- 1.3.4 Thought patterns -- 1.3.5 Semantic connectivity and relevance -- 1.4 Formal cohesive mechanisms -- 1.4.1 Non-structural cohesive mechanisms -- 1.4.2 Structural cohesive mechanisms -- 1.5 Discussion -- 1.6 Existing problems -- 1.6.1 Insufficient theorization for the concept of coherence -- 1.6.2 Unclear relation between part and whole -- 1.6.3 Lack of an overall theoretical framework -- 1.6.4 Insufficient specificity -- 1.7 Prospect development -- 1.7.1 Research on the concept of text coherence -- 1.7.2 Holistic and systematic research -- 1.7.3 Micro-research -- 1.7.4 Applied research -- 1.8 Summary -- Note -- 2. Theoretical research on the concept of coherence -- 2.1 The origin of the concept of coherence -- 2.2 The relations between cohesion and coherence -- 2.2.1 The status of the concept of cohesion -- 2.2.2 The scope of the concept of cohesion -- 2.2.3 The role of register -- 2.3 The status of coherence in the linguistic system -- 2.4 Characteristics of the concept of coherence -- 2.5 Summary -- Part II: External factors for text coherence -- 3. Sociocultural factors and text coherence -- 3.1 External conditions for text coherence -- 3.2 Sociocultural factors -- 3.3 Genre -- 3.4 Context of situation -- 3.4.1 Field of discourse.