Variety Of Semiotic Resources Research Articles

How Can Language Education Contribute to Securing a Livable Planet?

AbstractThe aim of this study was to test the notion of ecological citizenship empirically in the English language classroom in an underrepresented region, Latin America. A pedagogic project aimed at the development of students as ecological citizens was designed and implemented in 2019 in four English language classrooms in a public secondary school in Argentina. Participants were 111 teenagers aged 15–17 taking their fourth or fifth years. The project addressed the theme ‘the world we want’ using the UN sustainable development goals as a foundation, in particular, those concerned with environmental issues. The study is theoretically grounded on the notion of ecological citizenship and the research question is: How can language education contribute to securing a livable planet? Data types include Instagram publications (video, text, and a variety of semiotic resources); Instagram comments; student artifacts created in class (graphs, charts, tables, icons); infographics sewed together to make a quilt; a project video; the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters; and a final student survey. Qualitative analysis was done in three phases and findings indicate that the creative arts and community engagement in combination fostered students' development as ecological citizens in this context. Implications for language education are considered.

Monolingual or translingual? Chinese–English bilinguals shifting orientations to English in the workplace

ABSTRACT Recent work has reconceptualized language and interaction in terms that blur lines between languages, modalities, and material resources, and much of this work has taken up terms such as translingual and translanguaging. These perspectives understand that bi/multilinguals draw on a variety of semiotic resources in interaction and prioritize communicative effectiveness over grammatical accuracy and standard pronunciation. While work drawing on these perspectives has been ground-breaking in rethinking language and language users, few studies explore the messiness of bi/multilinguals’ language ideologies. In this case study, we draw on the concepts of monolingual orientations and translingual orientations to analyse five Chinese–English bilinguals’ perceptions of their language practice and ideologies in their workplace from a dynamic perspective. Our study contributes to the understanding of language ideologies by viewing translingual and monolingual orientations as dynamic and not mutually exclusive, and highlights the impacts of translingual experience on language ideologies.

The ordinariness and extraordinariness of resistance: Young Bangladeshi professional women doing/undoing gender

This article is part of a larger study that considers how middle-class Bangladeshi women perform gender in online and offline contexts, the kinds of discourses they draw on, and the translingual resources that they engage with. In developing our argument, we first discuss colonial and post-colonial discourses about South Asian women. These historical discourses are still present in contemporary society and shape gender expectations as well as gender performativity. Four Bangladeshi professional women (aged 28–32) were part of the larger study, which combined digital ethnography with interviews. In this paper, we focus on one participant (called Katrina). We discuss, in detail, one Facebook interaction, where Katrina and her friends playfully subvert the discourses that are traditionally associated with South Asian women; gender expectations are challenged and a variety of semiotic resources are used in the carnivalesque performance of resistance. Following this, we consider the interview data which is less playful and translingual. In the interview resistance against gender norms is articulated differently, not as a playful collective engagement, punctuated with laughter, but as struggle and compromise. We argue that resistance to patriarchal gender norms is thus both ordinary and extraordinary: it is ordinary in the sense that it is everyday, and it is extraordinary in that it draws on highly creative forms of languaging and is embedded in struggles that reach back into history, while at the same time create unsettling anxieties and conflicted experiences in the here-and-now.

Multimodality and English for Special Purposes: Signification and Transduction in Architecture and Civil Engineering Models

The applied disciplines of architecture and civil engineering require students to communicate multimodally, and to manipulate meaning across media and modes, such as image, writing or moving image. In their disciplinary studies for example, students must be able to transform the language of lectures and textbooks into models and diagrams. In their future workplaces, they will commonly be required to transform reports and legal documents into floor plans and digital & physical 3D models. Such multimodal literacy, however, is not typically reflected in their related subject-specific English language courses, especially in Germany, where a text-centric approach is favored. To better reflect the demands placed upon them, students in two courses of English for Architecture and Civil Engineering were tasked with creating digital, multimodal artifacts to explain a concept from either of these fields to a lay audience. The resultant artifacts used a wide variety of semiotic resources to make meaning, including a total of 26 separate architectural and civil engineering models. This is a quantity sufficiently large enough to invite closer examination, and also reflects the important role models play in the fields of architecture and civil engineering, both at university and in the workplace. This paper suggests that models of this kind exist within a system of signs, in which meaning is created in the relationships between the signs. The process of transforming one resource into another also invites the consideration of the artifacts in terms of the notion of “transduction”, to discern how meaning changes between contexts, practices and modes and to contribute to existing literature on multimodal texts in tertiary education, particularly within a language-learning context.

Lotería in the Age of COVID-19: A Social Semiotic Analysis of Two Artistic Visions

The purpose of this project was to compare two different COVID-19 Mexican lotería versions by Mexican-American artists Ernesto Quiñonez Curiel and Pinche Raf. Their work was inspired by the most popular traditional lotería set Don Clemente Gallo, created by Don Clemente Jacques in 1913. Social semiotics was employed in the analysis of the images and text in the two COVID-19 artistic renderings with the objective of discovering the similarities and differences between the artists’ works, and the messages they sought to convey. The analysis also attempted to uncover how the artists expressed their Mexican-American identity and connected with their audience. The results reveal the use of English and Spanish in both works, and a focus on the medical and social aspects of the pandemic and mandatory quarantine. Additionally, both lotería sets incorporated linguistic and cultural elements connected to the artists’ Mexican-American heritage. The works differ in the way in which they were organized, the use of Spanish and English, and the medical and social topics included. The overall analysis shows that, through a variety of semiotic resources, both artists were able to reflect the different emotions brought about by the COVID-19 situation and to establish a connection with Mexican-American audiences.

Multimodally constructed dialogue in political campaign commercials

While discourse analysts have demonstrated that interactants use discursive strategies to frame situations and construct identities, few studies have taken multimodal approaches to analyzing important concepts they have developed and implemented (e.g., constructed dialogue). This study aims to fill this gap. My findings about the significant roles that different semiotic resources take on in constructing dialogue demonstrate the importance of using multimodal approaches to analyze such linguistic strategies.I analyze how dialogue is constructed multimodally in political commercials using a variety of semiotic resources. I examine commercials aired during the 2018 election for Kentucky’s Sixth Congressional District, first providing a brief quantitative analysis of the politicians’ advertising campaigns, then analyzing in-depth one ad aired by each candidate. Drawing on Tannen’s (2007) concept of constructed dialogue, Kristeva's (1980) concept intertextuality, and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (1996, 2001) framework of social semiotics, I demonstrate how the advertisements create meaning and construct dialogue multimodally. I illustrate how each campaign voices its opponent to (re)frame their words and construct identities, vilifying the opponent and praising the self. I show that on-screen text, imported video and audio recordings, body movements, discursive constructions, and repetition of these semiotic resources construct dialogue multimodally.

Optimism and alienation – colour schemes and soundscapes as means for the social construction of risk in climate education videos

ABSTRACT While the field of climate change communication has become increasingly interested in visual representations, there has been a lack of research that attempts to capture the breadth and variety of semiotic resources being drawn upon in the contemporary media landscape. In this paper, social semiotic theory is drawn upon for investigating how colour and sound may contribute to the social construction of risk in a sample of four professionally produced Norwegian educational videos, all of which are aimed at explaining the reality and danger of anthropogenic climate change. The results indicate that the colour schemes and soundscapes of the videos contribute meaning potentials with affective resonances apt for the social construction of risk, and that the videos construe the risk differently. The authors suggest that in two of the sampled videos, the uses of colour and sound are apt for attenuating the risk perceived by the viewer, while in two other videos they are used in a manner apt for amplifying the perceived risk. Implications of these results are discussed in light of previous research on multimodal climate communication.

Narrative of politics in the era of social media: a multimodal analysis of president Joko Widodo’s video blog

This research aims to investigate the use of social media in constructing political narrative by examining the video blogs (vlogs) of Indonesian President, Jokowi, on Youtube as a case study. How does President Jokowi use his vlogs to construct political narratives about his personal life and presidency? What kind of semiotic resources deployed in his vlogs? This research uses the method of Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis and concludes that President Jokowi has used his vlogs to build his political narrative with the underlying themes of progress and reformation, stating that his presidency will lead Indonesia to a better situation. The political narrative championed in his vlogs strengthens his political legitimacy as a leader who is humble, modest, and close to the people. In building his political narrative, President Jokowi has used a variety of semiotic resources, including participants, process or kinesics action, locative circumstance, visual collocation, speech, and text. This research confirms the change of political communication in content dimension and shows the importance of applying multimodal analysis in understanding contemporary political communication. This research recommends politicians to use vlogs as a platform to build their political narratives in this new political environment.

Research on multimodality in the context of highly qualified national scientific journals: a cartographic study

Contemporary social practices are increasingly permeated by a variety of semiotic resources or, in other words, by the combination of verbal and non-verbal languages - multimodality. However, it was not until recent times that multimodality received the status of a field (BEZERRA; NASCIMENTO, 2013). The present study then aims at mapping the studies on multimodality published in five A1 national scientific journals that were developed in Brazil in the period from 2009 to 2013 in terms of 1) theoretical and methodological trends; 2) genres investigated; 3) generic aspects approached; and 4) the geographical distribution of the studies in Brazil. To do so, the abstracts and the articles of the experimental studies were considered in the analysis. The results indicate that there was a small amount of publication related to the field. However, it was possible to note a growth in the number of studies in the period investigated. The majority of these studies are comprised in the social semiotic basis (BEZEMER; JEWITT, 2010) investigating mainly genres (MOTTA-ROTH, 2008) on the media sphere, especially magazine cover and advertisement. The publications are mostly affiliated to institutions on the Southeast region. It may be possible to argue that UFMG is the university in the Southeast region that is closest to holding a niche of investigation on multimodality, since there is a pattern in terms of theory use. The present study intends to contribute to the consolidation of the field in the national context as well as, pedagogically, help researchers and people interested in multimodality.

A publicidade contemporânea e a Cultura do Neorromantismo Materialista

Contemporary advertising is plural. It covers a variety of semiotic resources. This article is the result of a survey conducted in 20 advertising, print and electronic parts. They revealed some evidence, such as the dialogues between Emotional Appeals and Persuasive and also the statement of the culture of Materialist Neo-romanticism. Keywords: Advertising, Culture, Materialist Neoromanticism.

Book Review---Giuseppe Balirano, Maria Cristina Nisco (eds.) 2015 Language, Theory and Society: Essays in English Linguistics and Culture, Liguori, Napoli.

Book Review---Giuseppe Balirano, Maria Cristina Nisco (eds.) 2015 Language, Theory and Society: Essays in English Linguistics and Culture, Liguori, Napoli.

Poetic Language, Interdiscursivity and Intertextuality in Fifth Graders’ Poetry

In spite of views that children’s writing development is in large part a linguistic complex process involved in their engagement within and across social activities in and out of school, the literature is scant on the wide range of semiotic resources that children may draw on to animate their poetry writing and performances. Drawing from a case study of poetry writing and performance in one U.S. fifth-grade classroom, this article uses interpretive methods and textual analysis to ask the following questions: (a) What, if any, poetic language do children draw on and identify in their written poems? (b) What interdiscursive and intertextual writing practices do children draw on to write poetry? and (c) How, if at all, might the act of reading an original poem influence children’s writing practices and literacy learning? Highlighted by three focal students, data suggest that children’s poems most often used features, including stanza break, varied types of rhyme, alliteration, and metaphor. Furthermore, some children’s poems could even be classified into distinct poetic structures. The data also suggest that children appropriated and recontextualized content for a single poem from a variety of semiotic resources in and out of school. Finally, children’s performances were caught up with satisfying multiple audiences, including themselves. This study suggests that elementary children can control the process of poetry writing and performance through active integration of formal poetic language taught with interdiscursive and intertextual practices.

Co-construction of ``doctorable'' conditions in multilingual medical encounters: Cases from urban Japan

Abstract This paper, as part of a growing body of studies that investigate translingual communicative practices, introduces a microanalysis of doctor-patient interactions that took place in urban Japan, a country that has been identified as belong to the expanding circle of world Englishes (Kachru 1986). Through the examination of two cases of primary care visits, one conducted in lingua franca English and another in a hybrid of Japanese and English, the study demonstrates how a Japanese doctor and two migrant patients from Ghana skillfully deploy a variety of semiotic resources to achieve the problem presentation stage of their encounters. More specifically, it investigates how concerns expressed by the patients become constructed into ``doctorable'' (Heritage and Robinson 2006) medical conditions through their subsequent interaction. The turn-by-turn examination of interactions reveals how the doctor's biomedical knowledge, embodied in his interactional practices, together with his cooperative disposition (Canagarajah 2013) to the interactional uncertainty inherent in multilingual and multicultural encounters, serve as a critical vehicle for making both the doctor's and the patients' seemingly ``truncated multilingual repertoires'' (Blommaert 2010) work in this particular institutional context.

Blogging for Doing English Digital: Student evaluations

The emergence of social software tools in recent years, such as blogs and Wikis, has provided new opportunities in supporting an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) digital literacy pedagogy. This study explored the student evaluation of blogging for Doing English Digital, a project-based course at Peking University that aims to develop students’ English digital literacy skills. Findings from the focus group interview suggest that from the student perspective, blogging has the potential to help construct individual identities with a variety of semiotic resources and to provide the social, affective, and metacognitive support essential to the development of digital literacy skills. However, the value of blogging for knowledge co-construction is limited. To maximize the value of blogging for the development of EFL digital literacy skills in the Web 2.0 era, EFL instructors need to integrate blogs with other social networking technologies and design meaningful activities that not only encourage peer interaction within the class community, but also support learners in developing social networking skills to connect to a valuable public beyond the class.