A Semiotic Framework for Traditional Textile Patterns: Extending Morris's Theory to Visual Cultural Heritage

Traditional textile patterns, as significant carriers of visual cultural heritage, embody profound cultural connotations, yet existing research lacks a unified theoretical framework. Based on the classical semiotic tripartite model, this study constructs an extended semiotic framework specifically applicable to traditional textile pattern analysis through interdisciplinary theoretical integration, encompassing three dimensions: visual syntactics, cultural semantics, and social pragmatics. Visual syntactics analyzes pattern elements, color systems, spatial composition, and craft techniques; cultural semantics explores historical background, meaning evolution, regional features, and value representation; social pragmatics examines usage contexts, group differences, social influences, and contemporary practice. This research employs Chinese traditional dragon-phoenix patterns as a case study, conducting in-depth analysis of representative works from three periods (the Warring States, Qing Dynasty, and contemporary era) to validate the effectiveness of the extended framework. Results demonstrate that the framework can systematically reveal the multiple attributes and complex values of traditional textile patterns, overcoming the limitations of traditional single analytical methods and achieving unified analysis of form, content, and function. This study provides new directions for the development of semiotic theory toward multimodal visual symbolic systems and offers systematic methodological tools for visual cultural heritage research and traditional cultural transmission practice.