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Title A Social Semiotic Analysis of the Websites of Top Rated HEC Recognized Public and Private Universities of Pakistan

Author(s) Yusra Niaz

Abstract Websites are an important telecommunication tool as all around the world people rely on the websites as means of communication and retrieving information. Especially the educational institutes use websites to facilitate national as well as international students by providing important information and a chance to interact with the university officials. The aim of this research is to investigate the semiotic resources exploited by the websites of Top rated HEC recognized public and private universities to account for the technology utilized by these websites and their interactivity level. It throws light on various tactics used by the producers and organizers of the educational websites to attract the audience and explores the ideologies propagated by these websites. At the same time, it also throws light on the variations present in various educational websites in terms of basic layout and design features and the use of written, visual, verbal and sonic modes of representation to create meanings. The homepages of websites of ten public and private universities of Pakistan were analysed by applying a social semiotic multimodal framework of website analysis proposed by Pauwels (2012). Insights from Kress & van Leeuwen’s (2006) multimodal framework and van Leeuwen’s (2006) modal of typography were incorporated into Pauwels’ modal and this triangulation of methods helped in providing comprehensive results supported by authentic proofs. The results have indicated that the interactivity of these websites is independent of the sector to which they belong and most of the universities like LUMS, CIIT, Riphah, IIUI, UoK, BZU and PU have adopted unique ways to provide the means of interaction to the target audience. Both the private universities and Public universities like BZU, CIIT, UoK and IIUI have focused more on increasing interactivity through social media sites and blog posts while PU is the only one that provides a chance of one-to-one interaction between the users and the producers. Keywords: Multimodality, websites, social semiotic analysis

Type Thesis/Dissertation MS

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Department English

Language English

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