Sociocognitive theory views learning, including second language acquisition, as the progressive "alignment" of individuals vis-à-vis their ecosocial environments. In this article we first update sociocognitive theory in light of recent evolutionary/ecological research on learning/teaching: (a) Humans are evolutionarily "adapted to…

This study aims at analyzing how Pythagoras' theorem is handled in three versions of Taiwanese textbooks using a conceptual framework of a constructive-empirical perspective on abstraction, which comprises three key attributes: the generality of the object, the connectivity of the subject and the functionality of diagrams as the focused semiotic…

Drawing on a study of children's musical games in urban South Africa, this article employs two theoretical frames: that of multimodality and the multiliteracies pedagogy. These are applied to a contextual analysis of the forms of musicality that musical games embody and to ways of incorporating children's play into pedagogy. Based on ethnographic…

This article presents an analysis of a digital video created by a student (age 13) in a classroom setting. Since sign functioning is a key focus in theories of meaning making as it occurs through language and through other modes, my analysis focuses on the relations between signifiers as they are inscribed in her video. This analysis explores new…

As has been widely discussed, the National Research Council's (NRC) current policy in United States education advocates supporting students toward acquiring skills to engage in scientific practices. NRC policy also suggests that supporting students in the practices of science may require different approaches than what is required for supporting…

This article addresses the notion of "making it" as an early-career academic in physical education and sport pedagogy. In it, we draw on the tradition of material semiotics to reflect on our shared journeys from doctoral student to beginning scholar and beyond. By attuning ourselves to the relationality, materiality and precariousness of…

This study, conducted in a 300-level college French class with 15 students, builds on previous research on symbolic competence (Kramsch, 2009, 2011). Using a film scene and a "Semiotic Gap Activity," we examine how students construct meaning. What do students prioritize? What do they bring from their past symbolic representations? Are…

Handwritten texts carry significant information, extending beyond the meaning of their words. Modern neurology, for example, benefits from the interpretation of the graphic features of writing and drawing for the diagnosis and monitoring of diseases and disorders. This article examines how handwriting analysis can be used, and has been used…

Among the literary genres, poetry is the one that resists translation the most. Creating a new and innovative language that breaks the usual rules of the standard language with brand-new uses and meanings is probably one of the most important goals of the poet. Poetry challenges the translator to capture not only original images, exceptional…

This article discusses a relatively under-explored phenomenon that we call Tranßcripting -- writing, designing and digitally generating new scripts with elements from different scriptal and semiotic systems. The data are drawn from examples of such scripts created by multilingual Chinese users in everyday online social interaction. We analyse the…

Background: In South Africa, developing criticality among learners is essential for their careers in school and outside school. However, knowledge and understanding of critical literacy within the schooling context is unclear, with only patchy guidance available for teachers. Objectives: An intervention project was set up to discover how community…

This paper links Systemic Functional-based multimodal discourse analysis and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher education through the workshop "Multimodal Literacy in the EFL classroom" (MLEFL). Drawing upon 'multimodal analysis for critical thinking' (MACT) pedagogy (O'Halloran et al., 2017) and the Systemic Approach to…

This study develops a framework that integrates multimodality and translanguaging to analyze meaning-making in an online English teaching video. We consider pedagogy as more than teaching approaches and methods, but as a process of design that is realized by the orchestration of multimodal semiotic resources. In terms of multimodal analysis, we…

This qualitative study analyzes the use of translanguaging in co-learning activities involving four junior-one students in an English remedial class. The school advocates a policy of English immersion in the regular English class, although students may have difficulty understanding the teachers and interacting with them during the classes. In the…

Roland Barthes as a fervent proponent of semiology believes that semiology is a branch of a comprehensive linguistics: it is the study of how language articulates the world. Semiotic codes, the paths of this articulation, accordingly underlie his attention. Barthes in a structural analysis of Balzac's "Sarrasine" in S/Z expounds five…