Meaning-making Resources Research Articles

‘No work, No pay’: A multimodal discourse analysis of selected online images on industrial actions by Nigerian public universities

This study investigates the social semiotics of online images on selected social media platforms, newspaper websites and other internet sites to explore the meaning-making resources used to visualise the 2022 Academic Staff Union of Universities’ strike in Nigeria. Using a multimodal discourse analytic approach, this study conducts qualitative data analysis of 50 purposively selected online images (cartoons and memes) to uncover their underlying themes and discursive strategies. The analysis reveals that the images predominantly depict students as victims of the strike, the government as perpetrators and the Academic Staff Union of Universities as victims and instigators. These depictions highlight the victimisation of Nigerian students while emphasising the negative other-representation of both the government and the union. Through this examination, the paper contributes to current research on cartoons and the broader academic field of memes as tools of dissent by offering valuable insights into how online images convey dissenting messages and engage with socio-political issues within the context of Nigerian public universities’ industrial actions.

Unpacking Evaluative Meaning-Making Resources in Verbal Movie Descriptions: A Comparative Study of Native and Non-Native English Speakers

The present study explored how native speakers (NSs) and non-native speakers (NNSs) of English exploit evaluative meaning-making resources of English when sharing their judgements and opinions on English movie descriptions. To this end, 10 native speakers of Australian English and 10 Iranian non-native speakers took part in on-line informal interviews, based on an approach known as snowball sampling. The study employed a combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis. The results revealed significant differences in the use of evaluative language between the two groups, with NNSs focusing more on Affect, Judgment and Appreciation respectively, while NSs prioritized Appreciation, followed by Affect and Judgment. The findings are discussed by reference to cultural and linguistic differences in the use of evaluative resources. Moreover, NSs relied more on invoked evaluation whereas NNSs showed a preference for inscribed evaluation. However, both groups utilized a higher frequency of positive descriptions in during their descriptions of English movies. These findings can provide valuable insights for language teaching and research, highlighting the significance of incorporating evaluative language resources into language instruction. The study further brought attention to the interconnectedness of diverse evaluative resources such as reference to emotions and judgements with complex linguistic and cultural domains.

‘Al-Hay As-Sini’ explored: the linguistic and semiotic landscape of Dubai Mall ‘Chinatown’ as a translated space and transnational contact zone

ABSTRACT Dubai in the UAE is a poster child of the region. The ‘Chinatown’ within Dubai Mall is an artificially-made theme-park-style place and a commodified space designed for consumption, which stands in contrast to traditional and naturally-occurring Chinatowns in North America, Europe and Southeast Asia. A new addition to the luxurious Dubai Mall, the ‘Chinatown’ features shops and restaurants in a China-inspired environment. Representing a different ethnolinguistic ecology, the ‘Chinatown’ is a unique existence in a superdiverse and mobile country made up of local Arabs and foreign workers/expats from the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and beyond. This study explores how various linguistic and multimodal elements participate in the making of the linguistic/semiotic landscape of Dubai Mall ‘Chinatown’. This study highlights that both linguistic (Chinese characters) and non-linguistic elements (e.g. red colour and neon lights) are strategically combined as meaning-making resources to give the area authenticity and a unique image and identity. Conceptually, this ‘Chinatown’ is theorised as a case of ‘translation’ and cultural (re)contextualisation, where cultural elements from a far-away land are localised/recontextualised to adopt new social meanings. This study contributes to scholarship in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, especially in commodified man-made spaces in transnational urban zones in our globalised world.

English as a ‘local’ language in Russia: the practice of meaning-making in in-group communication

The unprecedented global spread of the English language has become the catalyst for its transformation into the local meaning-making resource encoding the communication needs of various speech communities in different parts of the world. This dual process of globalization and localization is particularly evident in the Expanding Circle countries, where originally English had the status of a foreign language and was used primarily to communicate with foreigners. In Russia, which is one of the Expanding Circle countries, various aspects of “glocalization” of English, especially in the sphere of vocabulary, have attracted considerable attention. However, they have not been systemically studied, and our analysis aims to fill this gap. This paper describes the function of English as a language of in-group interaction in Russia. Taking a multiple case study approach and using a constant comparative technique, we reviewed our previous research on the use of English in different communities of practice, namely, the Russian offices of international companies, the young biking community, and the community of popular music professionals. We re-examined all previously collected material, including observational linguistic data and ethnographic interviews, and identified the following three features of English as a “local” language: truncated repertoire, bilingual creativity, or translanguaging, and ingroup-only function. We have also searched the Russian National Corpus for the frequency of several commonly used Anglicisms and English-derived tokens recorded from each community of practice. Based on the multiple case analysis and the Russian National Corpus study, we argue that English and Anglicisms are perceived by community members as an integral part of group repertoire, and group membership hinges on the knowledge of these terms and the ability to use them creatively.

Multisemiotics, Race, and Academic Literacies

This study examines the trajectories of two multilingual, racialized academic writing faculty, presenting how we brought our Southern onto-epistemologies (e.g., Santos, 2016) to curriculum, teaching, and assessment. Although plurilingualism has become a significant dimension of Canadian higher education (Marshall, 2020), monolingual norms that emphasize native-like competence continue to be a mainstream discourse in many academic writing courses. Building on the recent raciolinguistic critique (Rosa & Flores, 2017) of the lack of discussion of racism in academic literacies discourse, we acknowledge that academic literacies continues to force plurilingual, international students into a white subject position. Acknowledging the tension between the monolingual ideal and multilingual realities, we explore how two plurilingual, non-white faculty challenge an academic writing tradition that is constructed by the white listening subject. By co-creating duoethnographic narratives that provide insight into our complex biographical journeys as cycles of becoming (Thibault, 2020), our story shows how teaching academic writing is not simply teaching a skillset but involves constant negotiation between students’ and teachers’ lived experiences. Through this process, we conceive of teaching academic literacies as both an ideological construct and a multisemiotic process that involves multiple histories and meaning-making resources across diverse time and place scales.

Discourses of risk in public health advertising about underage alcohol consumption

Abstract Underage alcohol consumption has been linked to major risks, the practice of which has been linked to parental responsibility and management and a major topic in public health advertising campaigns. The aim of the current study is to investigate how risk discourses are constructed in public health advertisements against underage alcohol consumption. To achieve this aim, I apply the framework of social semiotics to analyse a series of public health campaigns in Australia to understand the construction of risk across multiple meaning-making resources. The analyses of the advertisements provide insights into the choices of semiotic resources to construct multiple perspectives of risk discourses to communicate alcohol-related risks and persuade parents to not supply alcohol to their children. The study opens up new agendas of research, by complementing textual analyses with audience interpretations, to provide deeper insights into how alcohol-related public health advertising is perceived, as well as improve its effectiveness and impact in the real world.

Turning a Curve: How People Use Everyday Resources to Negotiate Recovery From Cancer Treatment With Curative Intent.

Many more cancers are treated with intent to cure now than in previous decades, but for most, this involves significant effects from which people need to recover psychologically and socially, as well as physically. This longitudinal photo-elicitation interview study uses grounded theory to explain how people discharged from specialist care made use of everyday social and material resources to manage this process at home. Recovery is presented as a curve in life's pathway requiring gradual reorientation, drawing on social worlds and domestic resources to calibrate this process. Findings are described in three stages: (1) responding to diagnosis and treatment, (2) using social resources for meaning-making, and (3) developing assets for recovery. During treatment, participants drew on past identities to reinforce their sense of self, and personalized health care communication supported this process. In the weeks after treatment, new frameworks of understanding were constructed from perspectives on cancer encountered in the family, workplace, and outpatient clinics. Recovery processes included the negotiation of personal change, the renegotiation of close relationships, and the use of everyday resources to regain three sensations: control, comfort, and continuity. Supportive care would benefit from an individualized exploration of the assets that can help people to negotiate this challenging phase as treatment comes to a close. Possibilities for self-care (the maintenance of health and well-being in the context of everyday life) can be explored and assessed through personalized discussion around the identities, social worlds, and everyday resources available to each individual.

Insurance Discourse Analysis: Identifying Register Variables and Generic Stages in English Cross-border Complaint Calls

Interpersonal meaning-making resources are construed by customer service representatives (CSRs) and customers in call center telephone conversations. The purpose of the present study is to explore the contextual features—specifically, register variables and generic stages—that American customers and Filipino CSRs employ to create meaning potentials in cross-border insurance calls. The results of this study reveal that register variables, specific generic stages, and various lexicogrammatical choices play significant roles in call center negotiation. The theoretical framework used in this research is Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), which provides valuable insights into the study of text at the register level, including field, mode, and tenor, as well as semantically, in terms of metafunctions. A data set of over 2000 English conversations from an insurance call center in the Philippines was examined, and 20 longer complaint calls involving complex negotiations were carefully selected for transcription. These calls amounted to approximately four hours of talk, resulting in a total of 39,440 words, and the findings highlight the register variables and common generic stages observed in the analyzed calls. It is observed that customers frequently use the recount strategy in call center encounters. Recounts are typically used by the customer in the Objection stage and are associated with delayed refusal in generic stages, contributing to the formation of experiential meanings. It is hoped that the present study provides insights into call center discourse in the insurance industry by identifying the register and generic features of cross-border complaint calls.

Teaching Grammar as Meaning-Making in the Writing Class: An Inclusive Approach

This article addresses the question of how teachers can adopt an inclusive approach to the teaching of grammar that attends to the diverse language learning abilities of students in an English Language(EL)writing class. This article suggests that teaching grammar as a meaning-making resource in an EL writing class empowers students of various language learning abilities to make meaningful grammatical choices in their writing. Teaching grammar as a meaning-making resource entails adopting a descriptive view of grammar. This is as opposed to adopting a prescriptive view of grammar where the avoidance or remediation of errors in writing is the emphasis. Two primary school EL teachers engaged in an action research project in a primary school in Singapore on teaching grammar as a meaning-making resource within writing in the EL classroom were interviewed. Three strategies on how to teach grammar as a meaning-making resource in writing were identified. The three strategies are a) visualisation of links between grammar and writing, b) discussion of grammatical choices in writing and c) provision of clear feedback on grammar in writing. In teaching grammar this way, students of varying language learning abilities are empowered to make grammatical choices in creating meaning in writing.

"God was with me": A qualitative study of Christian meaning-making among refugees.

In this consensual qualitative research study, we investigated the role of refugees' Christian faith in meaning-making coping. High percentages of religiosity in refugee populations support the need to understand the role of religion in their coping processes. Interviews with 20 Christian refugees from 10 African and Asian countries revealed that participants drew heavily from their faith resources to cope with their experiences. Specifically, refugees reported coping practices that included trust in God, prayer, intimacy with God, spiritual surrender, lament, worship, and social support. Although many participants described spiritual struggles, including doubting God, feeling distant from God, and questioning God, most found meaning amid refugee-related suffering and reported perspective shifts, a deepening of faith, seeing suffering as part of God's plan, experiencing a deepened sense of purpose, and growing in the likeness of Christ. Refugees also reported growth through suffering in the form of gratitude, altruism, testimony, and humility. Clinical implications include encouraging the use of religious resources for meaning-making and supporting the resolution of spiritual struggles.

Columns: The Future is Now: Activating Home Pedagogies:The Importance of Connections in Localized Learning

Jacey de la Torre explores strategies for creating humanizing classrooms that welcome students’ assets and mobilize their ability to tap their localized knowledge as a rich meaning-making resource.

Translating figurative language

Abstract This article brings together the extensive literature on figurative language and translation into a single framework to serve translators in a directly practical way in their practice/training. It encourages a view of figurativeness as the norm rather than the exception and figurative language as a flexible meaning-making resource rather than an obstacle to contend with. All language is characterized as figurative because of the indeterminacy of language and the partial nature of meaning making; all translation is viewed as non-literal because of the lack of exact correspondences between languages and the need to use near equivalents. Two approaches are recommended: (1) recreating the ‘semantic space’ of the source rather than mechanically matching its lexicogrammar; (2) viewing metonymy and metaphor as ‘master tropes’ and translating other tropes in terms of relatedness. The challenges of translating metonymy and metaphor in discourse at the level of the whole text are also explored.

Asset-based Approaches to Multilingual Students’ Computer Science Identity Development

While computer science identity development has been examined in several studies, there is much to learn about the development of multilingual students’ computer science (CS) identities. To develop strong CS identities, multilingual students must engage in culturally and linguistically sustaining curriculum, pedagogy, and interaction that draws from their rich and varied resources. This theoretical paper is grounded in a justice-centered, asset-based framework that views the traditions and practices in students’ cultures and communities as strong contributors to knowledge construction in STEM. We draw on multiple studies exploring multilingual student CS identity development to better understand how their personal, familial, community-based, and intersectional experiences can be leveraged to promote equitable CS participation. Based on a synthesis of these studies, we find that educators should engage in the following practices: 1) leveraging multilingual students’ multiple meaning-making resources, 2) connecting classroom learning to informal learning spaces, 3) providing broader contexts for disciplinary practices, 4) offering multiple opportunities for self-expression, and 5) drawing on multilingual students’ strong intersectional identities. Through these practices, we discuss how researchers, practitioners, and policymakers can strengthen multilingual students’ disciplinary identification and overall persistence in CS.

Exploring the Alignment of Visual Languaging with a Pluriliteracies Model for Deeper Learning in English Language Classrooms

Impacted by globalisation, shifts in conceptualisations of language and literacy call for alternative pedagogic practices. This study explores how learner-driven, teacher-learner ‘owned’ learning spaces can be constructed to promote learners’ pluriliteracies development involving transcultural language use with multimodal resources for meaning-making. To contribute to current shifts in thinking, this research investigates the role of visualisation in English language classrooms to explore the alignment of a visual strategy within a pluriliteracies model to enhance learning, teaching, and learner agency. Sixteen younger learners from a primary school in China experimented with drawings for English language learning via an online platform to examine the complementary coordination between visualisation and languaging. Implications for furthering the study of visualising and communicating learning in Learning Conversations will be discussed.

Justice-Centered STEM Education with Multilingual Learners: Conceptual Framework and Initial Inquiry into Pre-Service Teachers’ Sense-Making

ABSTRACT When pressing societal challenges (e.g., COVID-19, access to clean water) are sidelined in science classrooms, science education fails to leverage the knowledge and experiences of minoritized students in school, thus reproducing injustices in society. Our conceptual framework for justice-centered STEM education engages all students in multiple STEM subjects, including data science and computer science, to explain and design solutions to pressing societal challenges and their disproportionate impact on minoritized groups. In the first part of this article, we extend our conceptual framework by articulating the affordances of justice-centered STEM education for one minoritized student group that has been traditionally denied meaningful STEM learning experiences: multilingual learners (MLs). Justice-centered STEM education with MLs leverages the assets that MLs bring to STEM learning, including their transnational knowledge and experiences as well as their rich repertoire of meaning-making resources, thus refuting deficit narratives of these students. To illustrate the affordances of justice-centered STEM education with MLs, we draw on examples from our instructional unit that engages students in the pressing societal challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the second part of the article, we report on an initial inquiry into how 14 undergraduate pre-service teachers made sense of our conceptual framework after participating in lessons from our COVID-19 instructional unit. Findings indicated that pre-service teachers perceived both opportunities and obstacles of justice-centered STEM education with MLs. We close by discussing what it might take to prepare the next generation of teachers to disrupt systemic injustices in and out of school.

Negotiating Religious Discourses in English Language Teaching: Reorienting and Reframing Dominant English Ideologies

ABSTRACT Efforts to decolonise foreign/English language teaching involve recognising the importance of diverse meaning-making resources rooted in speakers’ socio-cultural realities, traditions, and values alongside English practices. This focus highlights the value of multicultural and multilingual environments, particularly in dominant English-speaking contexts, and emphasises how languages and their embedded worldviews can enrich language pedagogy. Although progress has been made in acknowledging and affirming linguistic, cultural, and epistemological diversity, little attention has been given to the role of religious discourses in transformative pedagogies that challenge the finitude of Global English. Based on interviews conducted as part of a larger study, this research explores how religious discourses shape the professional practices of two English teachers in Indonesia. It argues that these discourses, as temporal occurrences, can disrupt the notion that religiously inspired education is dogmatic and closed. Conversely, a religiously-inspired English pedagogy can serve as a potent means to resist dominant English ideologies and the inherent dogmas they perpetuate.

#Twospirit: Identity construction through stance-taking on TikTok

Digital platforms offer users various meaning-making resources to express their stances towards specific issues, and, as a result, to perform and manage their identities. Drawing on multimodal discourse analysis, this paper explored how individuals who identify as Two-Spirit, an umbrella term used within Native American communities to refer to non-binary people, discursively construct their identities on the popular video-sharing platform TikTok by enacting varied practices of stance taking. Specifically, this paper provides a detailed analysis of three videos marked by the hashtag #TwoSpirit in which the content creators explain the meaning of the term to their audience. The findings not only illustrate the approaches taken by three content creators to the explanation of the term (i.e., contrastive, pedagogical, and metamorphic), but also shed light on the multimodal nature of stance-taking on TikTok and the centrality of embodied practices in the mediated era. In detail, embodied practices are seen as particularly relevant to disrupting colonial heteropatriarchy.

Deployment of gestures in the semiotic construction of scientific knowledge: a systemic functional approach to pedagogic semiosis

Abstract A variety of semiotic resources makes the construction of scientific knowledge possible and meaning-making resources are conveyed by certain semiotic modes. Next, numerous studies have demonstrated the pedagogical importance of gestures in the demonstration of scientific knowledge in the classroom. Drawing on social semiotic systemic functional theory and legitimation code theory, this study explores the types and the role of gestures in the semiotic construction of scientific knowledge in pedagogic semiosis and their pedagogical values for the meaning-making of science content. With this aim, a gesture observation protocol (GOP) is developed to annotate and analyze data. Two science lectures, which are broadcast remotely for middle school students including gifted students, are observed. Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) method is employed to analyze and evaluate data. Results demonstrated that the deployment of gestures that contributes to the construction of scientific knowledge is low and deployed gestures mostly do not have pedagogical value. It is recommended that teachers should be more conscious and educated about deploying gestures to present scientific knowledge efficiently.

EMI teachers’ agency in the context of international education in China: language choice, identity construction, and cultural negotiation

ABSTRACT English medium instruction (EMI) has now become a ubiquitous education phenomenon due to the driving force of globalization and the prospective socioeconomic benefits associated with English proficiency. Although expanding rapidly in higher education, EMI in secondary education is a much less researched area. Specifically, EMI teachers’ agency in the implementation of EMI has remained relatively less known. This study, informed by an extended framework on teacher agency, seeks to investigate how such agency has been manifested while the EMI teachers address various tensions and contradictions in the course of implementing EMI. Drawing on qualitative interviews and classroom observations in an international high school in Shenzhen, China, it reveals that the participants have exhibited moderately high levels of agency by constructing themselves as translanguagers who orchestrate different languages and meaning-making resources, jugglers of the roles of content teachers and L2 teachers, as well as duty-bond multicultural educators who negotiate the international curriculum to accommodate local educational and cultural mandates. The study calls for reconceptualizing EMI as a translanguaging space for the teachers to act as culturally responsive agents qua multilingual educators featuring multiple identities.

The familial canopy as thought space for meaning making, emotional calibration and planful action around inherited cancer risk

• The identification of genetic cancer risk often induces a reconsideration of self-concept. • Familial context is salient to individuals' engagement with elevated risk and subsequent action. • Familial generations offer distinct resources for meaning-making that are not temporally bound. • Generational peers can be salient for integration of hereditary cancer into individual identity.