I examine the ways in which words such as "evidence" are used inappropriately to support policy that may be formulated for convenience, cost or political dogma. I interrogate the processes by which this happens, as words and terms are bestowed with symbolic power to support and promote favoured policy. I examine the ways in which such…

Until recently, the role of material culture in language has been little studied or seen as the context where language use is situated (Aronin et al., 2018). This article looks at the materiality of language in a new light by arguing that everyday objects such as kitchen utensils and wardrobes can be seen as deliberate and conscious collections…

This paper offers a critical discourse analysis of documents relating to the introduction of predictive learning analytics at a small, UK university. Semiotic and interdiscursive analysis was carried out on texts from three different sources: the institution, the commercial analytics software provider, and one academic subject area. Authority…

We present a study examining broadcast British Sign Language (BSL) interpreted weather forecasts. These are filmed against a green screen with a superimposed composite image broadcast including maps and satellite information, etc. that can be indexed. We examine the semiotic resources used when interacting with the available visible on-screen…

This essay explores an English lesson I taught to a Year 9 class in which students drew upon and narrativised personal experiences. I describe and examine the literary sociability of the lesson, by which I mean the social and cultural exchanges that give shape to students' reading and writing. In doing so, I demonstrate the need for policymakers…

In March 2020, populations were forced into home quarantine to curb the spread of the coronavirus. Universities moved the majority of their operations to homeworking, with profound implications for students, academics, and professional services staff. This paper analyses interview and visual data collected as part of a study on the impact of…

For agentive and influential involvement in online communities, language learners and teachers need to develop critical digital literacy (CDL), conceptualized by Darvin (2017) as an awareness of "how meanings are represented in ways that maintain and reproduce relations of power" (p. 5) and thus privilege some and marginalize others…

In this paper, we take a semiotic/dialogic approach to investigate how a group of UK 12-13-year-old students work with hierarchical defining and classifying quadrilaterals. Through qualitatively analysing students' decision-making processes, we found that the students' decision-making processes are interpreted as transforming their…

This article originated from personal reflection on the nature of projects and the use of project-based learning in media practice education. Accepting that problems are the motor for projects, it asks questions about how students conceptualize problems and seeks to understand the strategies they employ to manage problem encounters. Problem…

The theorization of how multimodal learning intersects with online teaching environments has emerged as a key research area in relationship to the creation of opportunities for L2 online interaction. However, there are few studies which have examined how cross-cultural dyads harness and orchestrate semiotic resources across mobile technologies…

Lectures prevail as a ubiquitous teaching and learning method across universities worldwide. Whereas lectures have been conceptualized from language-centred perspectives, lectures' materiality as linked to their socio-cultural and historical meanings have been scarcely explored. To address this gap, we tackle the materiality of communication in…

This article aims to explore how the interactive whiteboard is situated in the social and material conditions of an early years free-flow learning environment. It examines how the affordances of the interactive whiteboard and the expectations of the surrounding classroom impact how activity involving the interactive whiteboard unfolds. It achieves…

This paper investigates the author's classroom practice of implementing an interpretive perspective on intercultural language teaching and learning in two online intercultural workshops on the topic of face masks designed and delivered during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reflexively examines two critical incidents in classroom practice in terms of…

This paper explores linguistic and cultural complexity within immigration legal advice communication. Drawing from a linguistic ethnographic study, ethnographic and interactional data from two linked advice meetings about UK refugee family reunion processes are subject to deductive analysis using Risager's model of the language-culture nexus,…

This paper describes exploratory research into the development of innovative visual pedagogies for investigating how pre-service student-teachers articulate their views about the effects of poverty on educational attainment. Social class emerges as the strongest factor in poverty and educational disadvantage in the UK. The resulting issues are…