The term 'geosemiotics' combines the elements of geography, the study of places, with semiotics, the study of sign systems. The term was created by Ron and Suzi Scollon to describe their approach to studying 'discourses in place' (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 1). This approach recognizes that the physical, material and symbolic aspects of places are resources in producing meanings for the signs and practices that are found in them. What has been in the background demands to be included in explanations of what is happening. The Scollons were interested in how people navigate through complex urban spaces, especially those that are sign-saturated and which host multiple kinds of activity, such as shopping malls. Literacy researchers in the sociocultural tradition have long drawn attention to the importance of attending to social context as helping to determine how reading, writing and multimodal text production are practiced (Graff, 1991; Street, 1995). At times, sociocultural studies have highlighted place as an element of context. One of the most influential studies in this tradition, Heath's (1983) ethnographic analysis of family literacy, clearly situated each of the three contrastive neighborhoods geographically as well as socially.