Word-graph relation in a professional genre of Economics: Monetary and Financial Statistics Monthly Report

Abstract

Studies from a multimodal perspective, as a new paradigm, imply that research must contemplate that meanings do not only arise from words, but from all existing semiotic systems present in a text, for example, graphs and tables. These systems have been developed historically in a society, therefore their use is situated. On the other hand, studies describing discourse genres have focused mainly on academic grounds, and to a lesser extent on professional domains. Helping to fill in this research space, the current study describes the way in which meanings are constructed in the professional economics genre called Monthly Report on Monetary and Financial Statistics. To achieve this objective, a qualitative methodology was used, centered on the complementarity of three analyses: Rhetorical-functional organization, multisemiotic artefacts and intersemiotic semantic relations. These analyses, in an integrated approach, allowed to observe the multisemiotic features presented by the report under study, thus revealing the semiotic systems that intervene in the construction of meanings. The results reveal that the predominant systems in this genre are the graphic-visual system in conjunction with the verbal system and that its predominant discourse organization mode is explanatory.