Multimodal composing, which has sometimes been referred to synonymously as multimodal composition or multimodal writing, is the use of different semiotic resources (e.g., audio, visual, gestural, and/or spatial resources) in addition to linguistic text for making meaning. Notably, multimodal composing is neither a new type of writing nor a new…

In this brief forum article, I draw from the disciplinary orientation of linguistic anthropology to discuss how a collection of linguistic and semiotic resources gets "enregistered" as the "language" for specific communicative activities. Enregisterment is an ongoing social and ideological process whereby a semiotic corpus gets…

This paper explores two prominent strands of inquiry within new materialism -- Deleuze and Guattari's assemblage thinking and Karen Barad's agential realism -- and situates them in relation to language studies. While a singular definition of new materialist scholarship is not feasible, we argue that the selected approaches have potential to come…

The growing popularity of multimodal resources in technology-mediated learning and teaching practices has brought to the fore the issue of learners' competencies in interpreting, employing and interacting with various semiotic resources, of which language is just one (Kress, van Leeuwen, Multimodal discourse: the modes and media of contemporary…

Taking a multi-level perspective on language-in-public-space policy, this study investigates the way Tunisia's dominant languages are dealt with in three independent but interrelated activities of language policy: official texts, public talk, and the actual practices of business actors in five commercial districts in metropolitan Tunis. Detailed…

Translanguaging and codeswitching are frequently employed in second/foreign language classrooms. Though the differences between these two practices have been examined from a conceptual perspective, the potential of translanguaging as a pedagogical resource has not been empirically addressed. This article opens with a concise comparison of…

Looking at human communication from the perspective of semiotics extends our view beyond verbal language to consider other sign systems and meaning-making resources. Those include gestures, body language, images, and sounds. From this perspective, the communicative process expands from individual mental processes of verbalizing to include features…

In applied linguistics, creativity has traditionally been conceptualized as an anthropocentric activity where semiotic resources are used as mediating tools to generate new meaning. This article challenges that view by exploring the non-representational forces that vitalize creativity to keep language moving in a theatre game played with…

The field of linguistic landscape has rarely engaged with the growing number of metrolingual practices brought about by online digital spaces. This paper examines the online linguistic landscape of social media platforms, which presents a spatial repertoire of innovative semiotic affordances. Adopting an online ethnographic approach consisting of…

In this paper, we use the lens of embodied language cognition and intersemiosis to argue for the importance of developing creative approaches to language work in classroom settings and we cite as an example some activities from a workshop that was developed for modern foreign languages (MFL) trainee teachers in London…

Increasingly, studies are taking account of multimodality when analyzing language textbooks. Due to the diversity of multimodal frameworks used in analyses, and the interdisciplinary nature of language textbook studies, conceptual differences arise that are important to discuss -- which is the purpose of this paper. Specifically, I argue that…

This article engages with the theme of the proposed special issue in a perhaps unexpected way: for me, the 'translinguistic movement' is a pertinent reminder to move beyond the boundaries of language and other visible/audible modalities that are involved in semiosis. It also encourages us to move beyond the naïve empiricism that has shaped…

Cosmopolitanism theory was mostly developed separately from the study of multilingualism: while language is central to cosmopolitanism as a practice, only a few scholars focusing on cosmopolitanism have taken a language-centred approach. We further theorise the relationship between cosmopolitanism and translingual practice with our focus on…

Integrating concepts and techniques from ethnomethodology and sociomaterialism, this article investigates the observable material processes involving human action and place-based contexts of language use enabled by locative media. The focal pedagogical intervention utilized mobile augmented reality (AR) activities, the development of which was…

A key insight of a transdisciplinary perspective on second language acquisition (SLA) as articulated by the Douglas Fir Group (2016) is its usage-based understanding of language. Evidence on the fundamental role that usage plays in shaping individual language knowledge is no doubt compelling. However, while the force of social interaction in…