This study explores the integration of multiple sign systems within the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reading curriculum for undergraduates in Taiwan, addressing varied learning styles that are often overlooked by conventional curricular methods. The purpose is to investigate how incorporating semiotics can enhance learning engagement and…

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 study reports bilingual international students' communicative strategies to preempt and resolve English as a lingua franca (ELF) miscommunication in an English-medium virtual learning program offered by an international university in times of the global pandemic. Drawing upon 18 hours of Zoom recordings and supplementary ethnographic data,…

Language teachers in China often use picturebooks as complimentary teaching materials to standard textbooks for language instruction. However, research shows that current applications of picturebooks in Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms mainly focus on helping students develop linguistic competence, with little attention on…

In Research Group Meetings (RGM) and other professional activities, sometimes positions are fluid, but stances illustrate international scholars' bilingual competence in an RGM in Microbiology. In stances, people index sociocultural values by evaluating discursive figures in talk, proffering epistemic/affective assessments, and positioning each…

There is a significant amount of research literature on the importance of identifying and building on students' experiences and ideas for making sense of the natural world, especially when engaging in science practices. Simultaneously, approaches to creating justice-oriented science education promote the need to focus on the diverse sense-making…

The social semiotic analysis in this study aims to: (1) reveal what multicultural values are found in ELT textbooks for ninth-grade learners; (2) explain how the texts and the images in the analyzed textbooks present multicultural values; and (3) uncover how social semiotics dimensions can decode multicultural values. This study finds that among…

Internet memes--usually taking the form of an image, GIF, or video with text--have become an important type of semiotic tool for meaning making. Due to the fact that memes can help learners leverage semiotic modes in social contexts, they hold great potential for language education. Integrating ecological social semiotic frameworks, this…

While much existing literature has shed light on the linguistic experience of Asian international students (ISs) in Anglophone contexts where English is the primary language for academic learning as well as for their social life outside the classroom, little research has explored Asian ISs' English use in a non-Anglophone context where both…

There has been an increased interest in multimodality in the field of both language pedagogy and translation studies. To our knowledge, however, only a few empirical studies have investigated students' perceptions and learning through translation classrooms focusing on multimodality. This paper reports on multimodal translation tasks implemented…

A region's identity is closely related to its semiotic landscape as well as history, economy and culture. This article explores the linguistic landscape of Jianghan Road, a historical business centre in Wuhan, P. R. China, by photographing and analysing 1308 official and unofficial signs in order to provide a snapshot of language choice and…

As literacy curricula around the world expand to include multimodal meaning-making, the challenge that remains is how teachers can design engaging and effective learning experiences in this context and the nature of their guidance to students in developing their multimodal literacy. Our paper focuses on the topic of multimodal composing, where…

This study proposes "grounding" as a theoretical approach to studying linguistic landscape (LL). Grounding is the positioning or sequencing of languages in a multilingual 'text' to reveal the languages' relevance or a community's association with the languages. The study explores language grounding in church names which constitute part…

Indonesia is one of the most multilingual nations in the world, with approximately 700 spoken local languages. This multilingualism is at risk from the imposition of the national language and the dominance of English as an international language. Adopting a social semiotic approach to linguistic landscape study, this paper explores how languages…

This paper outlines the general influence of Halliday's (1994, 2014) systemic functional linguistics on TESOL curriculum. Halliday's explanation of language as a social semiotic and language learning as learning to mean has been applied internationally in genre and textbased teaching. The concept of register in systemic functional linguistics…