Sculpting the interpersonal: towards a social semiotic framework for analysing interpersonal meaning in statues.

This article focuses on how statues convey interpersonal meaning to viewers by developing a revised social semiotic analytical framework. Integrating features from Kress and van Leeuwen's *Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design* (2006) and O'Toole's *The Language of Displayed Art* (2011), the framework incorporates elements from gesture, body language, and facial expression research to systematically analyze how statues interact with viewers through Contact, Social Distance, Attitude, and Modality (truth value). Using system networks, the model maps potential material and semantic features of figurative statues and their configurations, providing a tool for social semioticians, art educators, and students to explore how statues position viewers interpersonally within specific cultural and situational contexts. While primarily addressing interpersonal meaning, the article acknowledges the interdependence of interpersonal, representational, and compositional meanings and suggests future research to examine their interactions in relation to socio-political tensions surrounding statues.