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Defense industry is one of the sectors that boosts technological advancement and act as a trigger. In this industry, where personnel training plays a vital role, supporting military training with technology provides a great advantage on the battlefield. When we look at the problems that need to be solved, it is seen that the soldier's devotion to duty, his sense of absolute obedience and the soldier's need to be free from emotional depression. Recently, the masses have undergone intense migration movements due to the climate crisis, epidemics, hunger and wars. In this context, it seems that local people in the migrated region have a feeling of fear and hatred towards the newcomers. Mass media are the primary factors that cause this perception, called xenophobia. In this study, how perception management can be done through mass media and what the consequences may be will be discussed from a dystopian perspective and using the semiotic analysis method. As an example, through the images and dialogues in the "Men Against Fire" episode of the Black Mirror series, it will be examined how the soldier's motivation to become conditioned to the task during the training process is provided with technological support, and how effective the media can be in the context of perception management. As a result of the research, the outrage that xenophobic thought will cause in society, the dangers that arise in case of loss of control, and the role of the media in this process will be revealed and solution suggestions will be offered.

The scientific advancement and globalization have influenced the way fields like anthropolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, and ethnolinguistics should be studied to research intercultural communication. This study examined the national dishes that make up the Kazakh gluttonous discourse, its components, customs, and rituals, and how serving a dish to a guest can cause both positive and negative cultural consciousness in cultures. The data collected in the form of lexical and semiotic units, forming a gluttonous discourse at individual and institutional levels, was subjected to a conceptual analysis. It was felt that gluttonyms as lexical units played an important role in preventing negative cultural consciousness and forming empathy for national dishes. National dishes such as 'bas tartu', 'tabak tartu' in the Kazakh gluttonous discourse and cognitive conceptual basis of some customs in the preparation process and serving a dish to the guest were studied. It was found that the Kazakh gluttonous discourse was one of the sources of the national conceptual image of the world. This allowed us to determine that some of the institutional functions of the Kazakh gluttonous discourse were based on the national conceptual image of the world.

The intricate and tricky case of semantic analysis, especially of the enigmatic realm of nouns, the red thread of linguistics and literary exploration. This academic research explores the rich sphere of Russian literature in-depth to determine connections between function and the embodiment of theme through proper names. This research is aiming at studying the role of proper nouns in the literary masterpieces by focusing on the ideas of character development, thematic cohesiveness, and the narrative flow. This papers deals with profound significance of proper nouns as linguistics pointers that take you beyond their literal meaning to different levels of connotative value. It takes most of its ideas from the late linguistics and literary critique. This research gets down to serious business by cherry-picking and analysing a set of Russian masterpieces. An intensive method of semantic analysis was used by the study to properly identify and categorize all the structural features of proper nouns. Also, it conducts an examination of the usage of language by these instrumentalities so as to discover their common features and themes which lead to the invention of the main narrative. The results of this study add to our comprehension of proper noun semantics in Russian literature and provide us with a stepping-stone to broader discussions on the linguistic theory and literary studies. This cognitive effort exceeds the linguistic borders, as it takes into consideration the cultural and historical value of the proper nouns being presented. The report shows why it is necessary to reconsider the theoretical design to account for the distinctive linguistic and particular cultural features of the Russian literary heritage. This research is a step toward unravelling noun semantics' mystery and adds to the already existing linguistic aesthetics and cultural semiotics debates.

This research is part of the "Ancient Xuzhou Houses in China: Cultural Memory, Symbol and Process Reconstruction in the Context of Rural Revitalization" project. Traditional houses contain a large amount of cultural value, literacy role, and historical memory. In order to sort out the transfer process more clearly between memory and people, this study set three research objectives. First, spatial memory transmission and literacy role needs to be studied and analyzed. Then, on this basis, we will further study the method of spatial memory transmission and literacy role. Finally, the appropriate medium for spatial memory transmission is analyzed. This study used descriptive analysis to summarize and discuss the results. The results show that spatial memory transmission and literacy is a process of maintaining and transmitting social and cultural values through the use and evolution of architecture and spatial design over time. Symbols in the memory space of residential buildings are containers for storing memories, just like a mobile hard drive that records relevant memory information. Residential buildings and people are like two devices that convey information and communicate through symbols. After comparison, in the dimension of cultural memory, symbols are more social and cultural and are more suitable as a medium for transmitting spatial memory and literacy role under cultural identity. This article explains the relationship between symbols and spatial memory, through spatial memory transmission to describe how common memories are shared and reproduced among collective members through cultural memory, literacy role and symbolic translation. It can transmit cultural and historical memories between different generations and acquires the importance of spatial positioning and environmental interaction in transmitting cultural memory.

In learning mathematics in the 21st century and after the COVID-19 pandemic, a multimodal role in the process of drawing conclusions involving mathematical symbols or signs is very much needed. This process is called multimodal semiotic reasoning. This research aims to study the literature on multimodal semiotic reasoning research articles. Until April 2023, there were 32 articles on the keyword multimodal semiotic reasoning with the subject of mathematics in the Scopus, Science Direct, and ERIC databases. Furthermore, it is identified based on a) suitability of criteria; b) the similarity of the articles in the three databases. Finally obtained 24 articles that meet the requirements for further research. A literature review on multimodal semiotic reasoning is explored based on a) kinds of mathematical reasoning involving symbols and signs using multimodal, b) multimodal used in research, c) the most researched mathematical concepts and the mathematization process that occurs, d) the role of multimodal semiotic reasoning in mathematics education. The results showed that a) the most dominant type of mathematical reasoning involving objects, symbols, and signs using multimodal was Algorithmic Reasoning (AR), b) the most multimodal source was verbal answers, c) the concept of geometry through a process of vertical-horizontal mathematization was the most researched, and 4) the biggest role of multimodal semiotic reasoning for the benefit of knowledge of mathematics education. In conclusion, multimodal semiotic reasoning has had a major impact on mathematics education and research on this multimodal semiotic reasoning will continue to thrive in the future. [Note: The publication year (2023) shown in the citation on the PDF is incorrect. The correct publication year is 2024.]

As highlighted in the literature, one of the main difficulties in mathematics is the management of different semiotic representations. This difficulty occurs in verticals throughout schooling and is often an obstacle to the proper learning process of mathematics. The present study aims to investigate the different facets of these difficulties with regard to mathematical tasks in secondary school. In particular, questions from Italian large-scale mathematics assessments are analyzed and interpreted through the theoretical lens of Duval's (1993) theory. Statistical analyses on a robust national sample allow a framing of the main difficulties and provide valuable information in this field.

In this paper, we present an activity to introduce the idea of public-key cryptography and to make pre-service STEM teachers explore fundamental informatics and mathematical concepts and methods. We follow the Theory of Didactical Situations within the Didactical Engineering methodology (both widely used in mathematics education research) to design and analyse a didactical situation about asymmetric cryptography using graphs. Following the phases of Didactical Engineering, after the preliminary analysis of the content, the constraints and conditions of the teaching context, we conceived and analysed the situation a priori, with a particular focus on the milieu (the set of elements students can interact with) and on the choices for the didactical variables. We discuss their impact on the problem-solving strategies the participants need to elaborate to decrypt an encrypted message. We implemented our situation and collected qualitative data. We then analysed a posteriori the different strategies that participants used. The comparison of the a posteriori analysis with the a priori analysis showed the learning potential of the activity. To elaborate on different problem-solving strategies, the participants need to explore and understand several concepts and methods from mathematics, informatics, and the frontier of the two disciplines, also moving between different semiotic registers.

Contrary to prevailing research on willingness to communicate (WTC) which treats spoken second language (L2) as the predominant indicator of WTC, this study examines a young English as a second language (ESL) learner's WTC expressed through multimodal means and her utilization of multimodal and multilingual resources for mediating WTC in translingual environments. Data were collected from videotaped ESL lessons and an interview. Adopting a multimodal conversation analysis (CA) approach, this cross-disciplinary study analyzes the ESL novice's WTC expressions in two communicative settings: small-group interactions in ESL class and a multilingual triad conversation in an interview. Findings reveal that (1) gestural WTC display can signify more than one's intention to enter discourse, (2) contrary to previous WTC studies, first language (L1) use can indicate L2 WTC, and (3) the learner used diverse semiotic resources to mediate WTC and sustain discursive engagement. Implications are discussed with respect to the findings. This study extends the understanding of WTC beyond spoken L2 expressions, emphasizing embodied display and L1 use in the learner's communicative repertoire. Additionally, it sheds light on the learner's strategic use of multimodal resources to sustain engagement in translingual environments, contributing to the broader field of language education and multimodal analysis.

This paper reports on the design of a multimodal metalanguage developed by teacher education researchers to support pre-service teachers' understandings of critical literacy and critical health literacies in a changing communication landscape. The design of metalanguage constitutes the first stage of an ongoing transdisciplinary project, Multiliteracies Across Teaching Areas (MATA), which aims to design and implement cohesive disciplinary multiliteracies pedagogies across teaching areas of an initial teacher education (ITE) programme. The focus on metalanguage design is motivated by concerns shared by critical literacy scholars and scholars in health literacy to balance deconstruction of texts with actionable response through the 'deep moral grammar of narrative' Kindenberg and Freebody ("Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 44"(2), 90-99, 2021). Such concerns also align with recent World Health Organisation calls for the use of solution-oriented literacies to empower communities. These sociocultural understandings of critical literacy and Kindenberg and Freebody's ("Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 44"(2), 90-99, 2021) call to balance 'the analytical' and the narrative' in critical literacy practice provide the starting point for designing metalanguage for transdisciplinary research in Health and Physical Education (HPE) and English. We firstly review relevant models of the critical informing both subject areas to establish synergous understandings and then analyse expectations of critical practice in descriptions and elaborations of the HPE and English curricula. We provide an overview of the semiotic resources available for transdisciplinary conversations within the English curriculum with clarifying 'bridging' terminology informed by social semiotic descriptions. Through close analysis of four representative texts selected for critical literacy practice by English and HPE teacher educators in the MATA project, we demonstrate how such metalanguage was shared to build understandings of both critical analysis and actionable response. Along with analytical features to build and analyse issues according to disciplinary criteria, we show how stories are used to build rapport with their diverse audiences and to motivate their peers to take positive health action.

Research has shown that arts-based approaches facilitate literacy learning in children; however, few studies have focused on the integration of art and early writing in community-based Chinese heritage language classes, which have been marginalized from the formal educational discourse in the United States. By drawing on the theoretical perspectives on social semiotics, this paper explored how young Chinese heritage learners engage in "writing" Chinese characters using fallen leaves. The data sources included field notes of observations, video recordings of the class, and the artifacts made by the children. Multimodal analysis revealed that the teacher invited the students to write together and created a social context for children to compose writing artwork. Children engaged with their composition through a variety of modes. This study has implications for research, practice, and policy.

This paper describes a Lesson Study in which in-service mathematics secondary-school teachers, collaborating with researchers, involve grade 10 students in tessellation problems. The data are collected by an experiment carried out in the context of the "Liceo Matematico" project, with three volunteer teachers. The experiment goal was to craft a collaborative design of the research lesson between teachers and researchers. The research aim of the paper is to examine the use of Lesson Study in the institutional and cultural context of Italian secondary school with the use of Cultural Transposition as a theoretical framework. The research is qualitative with idiographic aims, based on video research. The educational aim of the research is to provide a solid basis for a revamped in-service teacher education first in the context of the project, then in curricular context. Semiotic mediation is used to provide, within Lesson Study, the conceptual framework for teachers and researchers collaborative design of the research lesson. The results show that Lesson Study, as a foreign practice, is an opportunity for teachers to confront their teaching practices, to enrich their professional development, resulting in more awareness on their didactical action in and outside the classroom.

Despite the widespread use of mobile digital devices such as iPads in teaching and learning, there is little research on the ways in which content teachers make use of the technological affordances of the iPad to achieve pedagogical goals in bilingual/multilingual classrooms. This article adopts translanguaging as an analytical perspective to explore how the use of the iPad extends the semiotic and spatial repertoires for enabling the English Medium Instruction (EMI) teacher to create a translanguaging space for supporting multilingual students' learning of new academic knowledge. The data for this article is based on a linguistic ethnographic project in an EMI mathematics classroom in a secondary school in Hong Kong. Multimodal Conversation Analysis is used to analyse the classroom interactional data, triangulated with the video-stimulated-recall-interviews that are analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. The article argues that the iPad provides opportunities for the EMI teacher to fully exploit the semiotic and spatial resources for creating a technology-mediated space in the classroom. Such a space in turn allows the teacher to accomplish content teaching and build a more engaging environment for learning.

A team of literacy, science, and theatre educators have been working to engage children in an urban public school system in the United States through embodied performances, where students embody and dramatise science ideas. This study focuses on one fourth-grade classroom when instruction was done remotely due to Covid-19. Children in the class were asked to compose videos of themselves acting out and/or exploring science phenomena and concepts, and we analysed the affordances of these multimodal compositions. We situate the need for this study in claims from the Next Generation Science Standards that literacy skills are necessary to build and communicate science knowledge. In doing so, we center social semiotics perspectives that conceive of composition broadly as production-oriented processes drawing from various semiotic resources. The multimodal compositions in Mr. M's science class included both primarily embodied compositions and primarily digital compositions, and we elaborate on one focal example of each in the findings. Intertwined affordances of the focal children and their classmates' multimodal science compositions include opportunities to creatively engage with and negotiate science ideas, to draw from personal and social knowledge during meaning-making, and to intentionally make rhetorical choices.

Science educators now broadly recognize the multimodal nature of learning in science, where learners make meanings within modes (linguistic, mathematical, visual, and actional) by using the conventions of different sign systems or grammars in these modes. However, how teachers guide students to link and infer new meanings across modes, called "transduction" (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. Routledge, p. 39), is less clear. This mapping of meanings across modes through realizing, generating, aligning, and coordinating meanings in representations is crucial to learning and communicating scientific concepts, inquiry processes, and reasoning. In this paper we propose a pragmatist account of how young students can be guided to achieve cohesion in this process. Drawing mainly on Peirce's (1998, The essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings. Indiana University Press) theory of sign functions and affordances, we describe how, in practice, transduction entails a sequence of meaning-making steps across and within sign systems. For Peirce, sign systems in science enable inferential meaning-making within modes, but signs within these grammars can also prompt, support, and confirm meanings across modes. We analyze student learning in an elementary school astronomy class to identify how transduction is enacted and supported. We draw on micro-ethnographic analysis of the teacher's interactions with students and their artifacts to identify key transduction enablers. We found that young students can engage successfully in trans-modal reasoning if multiple conditions are met, with implications for science inquiry design in general and the teacher's key role in transduction guidance.

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 area of research, with studies dating back to the early 2000s. In the domain of second language (L2) research, Tardy's (2005*) study on multimodal composition in academia was one of the earliest to bring attention to the nonlinguistic features of L2 written output. Even after this pioneering study, in the few years that followed, only a handful of studies further explored aspects of L2 learners' multimodal compositions. However, over the past decade, the fields of applied linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA) have witnessed an explosion of interest in both its study and classroom applications, with teachers' adoption of multiple modes becoming an indispensable part of their pedagogical toolkits (e.g., Kessler, 2022; Li, 2021; Zhang et al., 2021).

Modern astronomy as a field of inquiry may be shaped by what we consider the "scientific" ways of knowing. However, the history of astronomy as a human endeavour dates back millennia before the "modern" notions of "science". This long history means that astronomy is, at its core, built on a rich cultural diversity and history. This offers a rich potential that, while having been examined in various studies, has yet to be explored from a contextual pedagogical perspective. This paper offers an initial exploratory theoretical perspective on how social semiotics can be used to inform a conceptual framework. This approach not only brings notions of culture into the teaching and learning of astronomy but uses culture as the starting point in a way that does justice to the cultural diversity of the discipline and the world. In doing so, this paper develops two frameworks: (i) the Conceptual Framework for Culture in Astronomy Education and (ii) the Pedagogical Framework for Culture in Astronomy Education, both of these offer a novel approach to astronomy education.

Studies that address preservice teachers' knowledge of area measurement emphasize their lack of knowledge and their tendency towards the use of formulas, without offering a body of knowledge that helps to address such difficulties. This study offers an approximation of the mathematical knowledge necessary for preservice teachers to solve area tasks. For this, the Mathematics Teacher's Specialized Knowledge model is used with emphasis on the subdomain of Knowledge of Topics and Knowledge of the Structure of Mathematics. Preservice teachers' resolutions and written justifications are analyzed using qualitative and quantitative tools. The results indicate that those resolutions that manage to mobilize mathematical knowledge are associated with the joint mobilization of different procedures, properties, and geometric principles. Results also indicate that the strategic coordination between different registers of representation allows Preservice Teachers to mobilize categories of specialized knowledge and establishing connections with other mathematical contents.

This article presents critical intercultural dialogue as a necessary curricular, pedagogical, and decolonial practice to engage and value Indigenous students' cultural semiotic resources in higher education. Drawing from social semiotics, critical interculturality, and decolonial theory, the article analyzes Indigenous students' structural barriers to accessing and completing their undergraduate programs. Using examples from pedagogy courses taught in English and reflections and learnings from a research project with Indigenous students, the article underscores and extends lessons to mobilize Indigenous students' learning paths, sociocultural practices, and languages, showcasing intercultural dialogue within a public university. Reflections on the tensions, constraints, and possibilities to facilitate university stakeholders' engagement at multiple levels are discussed.

University students are often asked to learn abstract concepts. Abstract concepts are hard to learn. Giving specific examples can help learning abstract concepts. These examples might limit understanding to the similarities between the abstract domain and particular examples. The primary purpose of this study was to test whether exposure to multiple examples would lead to better learning than exposure to a single example. Secondarily, we were interested in whether there was any particularly effective example. Introductory psychology students were invited to learn about the abstract concept of semiotics, through either 1) three of five distinct examples or 2) a single example presented three times. We assessed learning through definitions, transfer to a novel example, and self-report. The results showed no support for the hypothesis that exposure to multiple examples led to better learning. There was, however, one particular example that was more memorable and resulted in better learning. These results have implications about how best to teach abstract concepts.

While learning activities and text production in language subjects typically include multiple forms of multimodal expression, assessment in the subjects continues to a great extent to depend on students' written texts. As a contribution to an increasing call for alignment of curricular activities and assessment, this article explores an approach to assessment of upper secondary students' production of multimodal persuasive texts in the subject of English as an additional language (EAL). The article reports from a design-based study comprising two classroom interventions where assessment of students' multimodal texts was conducted separately by peer groups and the teacher and researcher in collaboration, applying assessment criteria informed by multimodal social semiotic theory and operationalisations of communicative competence. Comparing the results of peer and teacher assessment of students' multimodal persuasive texts, agreement was found relating to representational, interactional, and compositional aspects of the texts, whereas differences in views mostly concerned nuances in interpersonal aspects. Unpacking these nuances, the article concludes that peers' and teachers' assessments of multimodal texts complement each other in ways that can prompt fruitful discussions on meaning making in the light of context and social factors and thus contribute to heightened semiotic awareness and a broader recognition of the students' communicative competence in the subject.

This paper attempts to describe the signifier choice of student artists in thematic representations of digital visual arts and determine its implications for digital pedagogy. Utilising a qualitative approach to research and covering a corpus of six digital artworks of student artists, the semiotic analysis utilising Peirce's (1991) sign modes showed the student artists' preference for mostly indexical and symbolic signifiers in thematic representations of Filipinos' resiliency to the pandemic. This signifier choice of student artists was influenced by their experience, family, self, other artists, and their initiatives for finding information and drawing inspiration from online sources, as revealed in the conducted Focus Group Discussion (FGD) with the participants. Moreover, the individual interviews with the participants demonstrated that the student artists' choice of signifiers served as a vehicle for expression, representation, and impression of ideas, themes, and abstractions dominating their artworks. This study calls for the integration of digital artmaking tools into pedagogy to provide opportunities for artistic expression and support diverse representation. Teachers can introduce various digital tools and platforms, create assignments that encourage creative experimentation, and foster a safe and inclusive classroom environment. Future research could explore the practical applications of digital pedagogy in visual arts education.

In an increasingly globalised society, the internationalisation of higher education has become a prime goal for many universities, which seek to promote the development of intercultural competencies and insert their actors in dynamics of academic cooperation, knowledge construction and negotiation of meanings in an environment of respect. What is sometimes overlooked, however, is the fact that university campuses are already intercultural spaces by nature, even in the absence of internationalisation initiatives; in other words, university campuses are places where diversity abounds, making it possible to experience intercultural encounters, leading to the development of intercultural competencies. This article presents the narratives of four students and their home-making experiences at a Colombian university. Through their stories, these students give us a glimpse of the intercultural challenges they face when they try to create a sense of belonging while developing, constraining or reaffirming their identities on campus. The article analyses the student narratives through the lenses of new materialism, social semiotics, intersectionality and intercultural communication to understand the complexity of building a home with others amid diversity and, sometimes, adversity.

Background: Globally, teaching practice has been at the heart of teacher education programmes. For quality teaching and learning, literacy student teachers are expected to develop metacognitive attributes and critical thinking to integrate theory and practice. Because of the dominance of autonomous models in literacy teaching and learning nationally and internationally, literature continues to report poor literacy attainment, especially for indigenous language learners. Contrasting this deficit view, this article employed languaging as a lens to describe student teachers' reflections on their interactions with Grade 3 learners using multimodal and linguistic repertoires, which they both bring from socio-cultural contexts as well as utilisation of embodied representational modes. Aim: To explore how Foundation Phase (FP) student teachers used languaging and semiotic modes to enhance literacy teaching and learning in Grade 3 classrooms. Setting: An Eastern Cape Institution of Higher Education. Methods: In this qualitative study, four purposely selected FP isiXhosa Home Language student teachers used reflective journals to articulate their individual and peer classroom literacy practices. Data were thematically analysed. Results: Findings revealed the importance of acknowledging authentic and diverse linguistic resources that learners bring from their socio-cultural backgrounds as well as the use of multimodal literacies in the classroom context. Conclusion: This study concludes that languaging allowed learners and student teachers to exploit multimodalities and linguistic repertoires that they bring from their socio-cultural backgrounds. Contribution: This study demonstrates the pedagogical literacy strategies that created live dialogical engagements between student teachers and learners. These can be useful to teacher educators as well as teachers in the Foundation Phase contexts and thus improve literacy teaching and learning, especially in indigenous languages.

In this study, the aim is to explore what genres can be found in applications used in preschool as a way to facilitate preschool teachers' informed choices and raise awareness concerning the importance of choosing digital content carefully. In particular, applications that facilitate communication beyond a verbal majority language are in focus in this study. The research questions concern what the affordances are of applications used in preschool in relation to children's agency and multilingual competencies and which kinds of genres that emerge from the applications' affordances. Analyses of the applications were based on a social semiotic approach, in combination with the notion of translanguaging, taking into account many modes of communication, as well as different languages. The results illustrate how affordances include possibilities to listen to several spoken languages, opportunities to create documentation and produce stories in many different modes, including the verbal language of choice, but also restraints such as lack of opportunities for children's agency in some applications with more closed composition. 10 genres are proposed which consist of three monolingual app-genres: talking picture books, storytelling and games, and seven app-genres that allow for several languages: talking picture books in more languages, multilingual storytelling, storytelling with recording possibilities, boardgames with recording possibilities, communication apps, draw-and-record apps and documentation apps. Conclusions highlight the importance of careful selection when choosing digital content in educational settings for younger children and that some of the app-genres proposed could be seen as facilitating digital pedagogical translanguaging.

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 four multicultural values discovered in the textbooks, responsibility to the world community has the most frequent appearance while respect for human dignity and universal human rights has the least frequent appearance. Those values are presented denotatively and connotatively through texts, images, and texts-images. Based on the findings, textbook authors are recommended to include more content and add learning activities that facilitate discussions and reflections on multiculturalism. In addition, this research suggests that English teachers who use these textbooks add learning activities that enable students to discuss multicultural values since, in this study, multicultural values are mainly presented connotatively.

Character is a fundamental literary element and it is defined as the act of describing characters in literature, particularly their physical attributes as well as personal traits. In multimodal texts, the visual and textual sign systems are interlaced together to exemplify meaningful characters. In this study, two picture books were examined to determine how semiotic meaning-making systems work together to develop the literary element 'character' based on an adaptation of Painter et al.'s (2013) multimodal discourse analysis framework. The findings showed a lack of detailed characterisation elements in the textual meaning-making systems for character attribution and affiliation between characters, but the visual depiction of characters in both the picture books addressed this shortcoming effectively. The textual mode helped to confirm the identity of characters especially when the visual manifestation is metonymic or incomplete. In short, knowledge of visual meaning making systems is necessary as it will enable young readers to attain a deeper understanding of the literary element 'character' and fully comprehend multimodal texts.

In Greece, Educational Radiotelevision, a department of the Ministry of Education, combines digital archiving and digital documentary making within the framework of a national competition for Greek secondary and high schools about local history. This article analyses the factors lying behind the creativity of 27 16-year-old students who created a digital archive and a digital documentary for this competition. Data were collected in the form of the teacher/researcher's observation journal, student-participants' completed pre- and post-project questionnaires, and the drafts and final products of their digital creations. The exploratory case study conducted offers qualitative data, analysed with the use of inductive thematic analysis, and draws upon social semiotics to interpret these themes through the application of textual and multimodal analysis. Data show that student-participants' creativity is incited by their motivation to have their work recognised, and it is boosted by their chance to express their cultural memory, to contribute to its formation for future generations, and also to express their student, teenage and local identities.

Background: Several isiXhosa home language (HL) learners are excluded from meaningful mathematics learning because they are taught in English. Not only do teachers lack epistemological and pedagogical confidence in using multiple languages when teaching mathematics, but there are no mathematical registers for African languages that allow for adequate mathematical teaching and learning. There is a scarcity of research on what constitutes effective mathematics instruction for isiXhosa HL learners in South African language of learning and teaching (LoLT) Grade 1 classrooms. Aim: The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of Grade 1 teachers using visual representations to enhance isiXhosa HL learners' understanding of mathematics in the English- LoLT in Grade 1 classrooms. Setting: This study was conducted at four primary schools in the Western Cape's Metro East Education District. Methods: This study employs a qualitative research approach in conjunction with an adapted interactive qualitative analysis (IQA) systems method to collect in-depth data about current mathematics practices in English LoLT in Grade 1 classrooms. The data were analysed using John Stuart Mill's analytical comparison technique. Results: This study found that semiotics such as visual (and concrete) representations assist isiXhosa HL learners to grasp and understand mathematical concepts easily. Conclusion: This study emphasises the significance of using sufficient visual representation strategies to enhance isiXhosa HL learners' mathematical understanding in the English LoLT in Grade 1 classrooms. Contribution: The outcomes of this study can make a positive contribution to current mathematics practice in terms of supporting isiXhosa HL learners in English LoLT in Grade 1 classrooms.

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 what these incidents reveal about the challenges faced by pre-service teachers in operationalizing an interpretive stance towards intercultural language teaching and learning in practice. Based on the epistemology of reflective practice, this self-study seeks to produce knowledge-of-practice by framing the author's practical knowledge as language teacher in relation to theories of intercultural language teaching. Classroom discourse analysis of teaching and learning sequencies provides an emic lens on the enactment of an interpretive perspective on intercultural language teaching at the micro level in terms of two basic aspects of pedagogical practice: 1) Embedding interpretation in learning design and 2) Mediating learners' interpretations in classroom interaction. The findings reveal that this author's attempts to personalise intercultural language learning and elicit meaningful reflections from students were constrained by the limited semiotic richness of the material presented and the difficulty of going beyond a superficial interactional format to provide effective scaffolding and successfully realize a dialogic stance towards knowledge building. The paper considers the implications of these challenges for pre-service teacher education and offers suggestions for supporting teachers hoping to teach interculturally.

The development of student teachers' beliefs about good teaching needs to be integral to their education programmes. This study attempts to scrutinise the contribution of a theatre education course to the conceptualisation of a group of eight student primary teachers' notion of good teaching and a teacher's ethos. The findings reveal that, within the coursework, student teachers' learning experiences are interwoven with the ethics of the beautiful, the ethics of the dialogue and the ethics of the will. This nexus of learning experiences enabled them to identify three internal goods of good teaching: the awakening of learners' positive emotions; the activation of their learning energy through play; and the strengthening of their embodied understanding by using theatre semiotics. Concerning a teacher's pedagogical dispositions in good teaching, they consider trust, respect, empathy, open-mindedness, vigilance and playfulness as pivotal for the ethos of a teacher connected to both teaching and their pupils.

An onto-semiotic analysis of the mathematical connections established by one in-service mathematics teachers and university students when solving a problem about launching a projectile using the derivative was carried out. Theoretically, this research was based on the articulation between the Extended Theory of Mathematical Connections and the Onto-semiotic Approach. The methodology was qualitative-descriptive where data was collected through interviews based on a task. Subsequently, following the joint analysis method of both theories, the mathematical activity of the participants when they solved the task was analyzed. The results show that, teacher and students established a system of connections of feature type, different representations, meanings, part-whole, procedural and implications in terms of practices, processes, objects, and semiotic functions that relate them. However, some students presented difficulties caused by some incorrect mathematical connection such as stating that the maximum height of the projectile is the time obtained with the critical number, errors in performing arithmetic calculations when evaluating the function, graphically representing the quadratic function as a straight line and use the general formula in an inappropriate way that prevents the procedural connection from being made.

This paper investigates the concepts of hope, despair and the radical imagination, driven by the following questions: Can we exist beyond the binaries of hope and despair, two key concepts that drive educational practices? What is the radical imagination and what are the conditions for it to be put to work in educational spaces? First, education is explored as a hyper object that is owned, imagined and practiced collectively. The semiotic square is introduced as a heuristic tool to illustrate the limitations of the binary opposition between hope and despair, and allows for an exploration of what is possible when these binaries are being set aside. The radical imagination then, is described as a collective practice that is radical in the sense that alternative social forms can always be imagined once we acknowledge that every social form is the result of the collective imagination. Finally, the paper explores conceptual as well as practical ideas that underpin Education for Uprising which is understood as the emergence of micro-political, autonomous spaces of direct action where community, solidarity and self-organization are key principles. Education for Uprising allows us to radically reimagine how we view education and to actively engage in alternative world-making.

Knowledge of symbols, which can be influenced by school ethos, informs identity construction in primary school children. This study aimed to explore Gaelscoil (Irish-medium) and English-medium primary school children's familiarity with Irish and European symbols. Thirty 9-12-year-old children in Ireland participated in this study; 15 from two Irish-medium and 15 from an English-medium primary school. A draw-and-tell data collection design was used and qualitative data was analysed using the constant comparative method. Results indicate children from both school types shared a number of Irish symbols, namely Irish emblems, Irish mythology, sports and material aspects of culture. Irish-medium primary school children had two further Irish symbol categories, the past as a symbol and physical characteristics of Ireland. European symbols shared across children from both school types included signifiers of the European Union (EU), monetary symbols and European countries. The Irish-medium primary school children had two further categories, Europe through an Irish lens and European cuisine, while the English-medium children had one further category, sport. The results suggest that by middle childhood, children in both school types have knowledge about a number of symbols associated with both national and European identities. Implications for future research are discussed.

This article examines linguaculturally diverse university students' affective translingual practices of using emojis and languages in computer-mediated communication. Research studies have investigated the sociopragmatic uses of emojis from the perspectives of social semiotics, language socialisation, and translingual practices. This study expands on these perspectives and further adopts enregisterment as a conceptual framework to explore the emergence of emoji variations and other affective expressions in online discussions about news and social media content. The primary data were collected from written discourses on Facebook across 8 weeks and through follow-up data-focused interviews. The results present the multilingual participants' metapragmatic commentaries on particular uses of face emojis in relation to emotive discourses, enregistered voices, and embodied contextualisation. The results exemplify the multimodal enregisterment of affective translingual practices through which emoji users' playful performances can be recognised and enacted in online socialisation.

This study focuses on the role of visual resources in constructing the brand identity of Chinese universities. By drawing on the theoretical concept of corporate visual identity (CVI), this study analyzed universities' logos and typography of names from the social semiotic approach. Nine elite Chinese universities were selected as the corpus to qualitatively investigate how the institutions' logos and typography of their names are designed and utilized for corporate branding. The analysis shows that both the logos and names are graphically and typographically designed as effective visual elements and semiotic resources with meaning potentials to signify the Chinese universities' brand identity.

In this article I describe the transition of a group of university students in Australia into an online learning environment during COVID-19 pandemic disruptions. I reflect upon my intersubjective experiences as the lecturer in an unexpected situation of urgency and physical distancing. Research has acknowledged synchronous virtual learning contexts as less psychologically distancing than previously thought. I argue that these contexts can foster profound intimacy between participants through linguistic and multimodal means. I use an auto-ethnographic narrative inquiry approach to share observations gained retrospectively through multimodal, critically reflexive, social semiotic discourse analysis of audio-visual recordings of synchronous workshops conducted in 2020. I attempt to fill the gap in research on intimacy in online educational settings by suggesting that intimacy can be created by "linguaplay, personal testimonies," and "contrived chaotic material ecologies." I advocate moving away from an obsession with standardising and generating student knowledge in formal online learning to a stance that values intimacy, connection, and spontaneity.

In response to becoming a more multicultural society, the South Korean Ministry of Education has implemented a multicultural education policy since 2006 by promoting English as key for young learners' communicative competence in a global world. Despite numerous previous studies on government-led curriculum and textbooks for English as a foreign language (EFL) across many countries, little attention has been given to the cultural and linguistic aspects of primary-level EFL textbooks. Within the framework of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), this study investigated multicultural understandings, social values, and beliefs embedded in the reading passages of five Korean Grade 6 EFL textbooks. By employing multimodal content analysis, it also scrutinized what messages and meanings are constructed with semiotic devices and the extent of the textbooks to foster EFL students' ICC. Findings revealed that the textbooks (re)produce national pride and otherness and promote the idea of English for a White global world. The lack of interactive communication events in diverse settings was also found problematic in developing students' new identities as global citizens. The study argues for critical approaches to multicultural education and intercultural development in EFL education by reconceptualizing English as a mediator for developing intercultural contact with diverse others.

This article drew on the recent dynamic, distributed view of "translanguaging and flows" and the New Materiality view of meaning making to explore content and language integrated learning (CLIL) activities in an English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) secondary Science classroom. Fine-grained analysis of the multilingual and multimodal classroom interactions between a Cantonese-speaking Science teacher and her Urdu-speaking students exemplified how students and teacher engaged in dynamic translanguaging, trans-semiotizing and trans-registering. The analysis supports the dynamic, heteroglossic, trans/languaging view of language learning and sheds light on some of the current queries about translanguaging.

Purpose: This study draws on the author's experiences building rapport through online chat for data collection for the author's doctoral dissertation. The author contacted ten Korean women via online chat to recruit and faced the most challenging situation; building rapport. As the Millennial generation is known as being tech-savvy or digital natives, the author actively used emoticons (pictorial representations of facial expressions using characters) with potential interviewees and completed ten interviews. Therefore, this paper offers a new qualitative interviewing method in feminist research. Design/methodology/approach: The paper briefly reviews the works of literature on interviewing women on sensitive topics and building rapport before the interview. Then, the author introduced using emoticons to create rapport during the data collection process and how a non-traditional approach positively impacts the interviewer and interviewee before, during and even after the interview. Findings: Women participants' responses and behaviors differed after building a rapport through an online chat. They were willing to share their personal stories and memories with the interviewer even though the interviewer did not ask. Research limitations/implications: This study provides a stepping stone for developing an account of the new qualitative methodological approach, specifically feminist qualitative research. Originality/value: Few studies have described how qualitative researchers create a rapport in virtual space, specifically using emoticons. Also, this study suggests a new methodological approach since nonverbal communication in online chat is inevitable when interviewing people in qualitative research.

In this article Renata Love Jones and Patrick Proctor introduce the notion of pursuing language to engage in critical dialogue about the nature and focus of language and literacy education in multilingual and multicultural contexts. A persistent threat in language and literacy education is standardization that constrains how language and literacy are operationalized, which further limits how children can bring their unique communicative practices into schools and classrooms. In response, the authors describe pursuing language as a state of being responsive in our language and literacy instruction, with the goal of developing literacy skills through culturally affirming and anti-oppressive practices. They operationalize this pursuit of language in classroom contexts by delineating a framework of critical metalinguistic engagement. The article begins with a theory of languaging and goes on to unpack critical metalinguistic engagement by each of its component parts--critical, metalinguistic, and engagement--and concludes with an argument for being intentional about pursing language through relationships and dispositions that affirm language diversity in educational practice and research.

This study examines and compares L2 grammatical accuracy in digital multimodal writing (DMW) and monomodal text-based writing (TBW). Utilizing a mixed-methods design, the research incorporates a dataset comprising 180 written texts, a questionnaire, and text-based interviews. Sixty EFL learners were assigned to two groups (TBW and DMW) and completed three writing tasks on identical topics. The findings reveal that there are no significant differences in grammatical accuracy between TBW and DMW. Moreover, learners' perceptions indicate that the integration of multi-semiotic recourses has no detrimental effect on grammatical accuracy. Additionally, learners adopted a preferred recursive strategy, involving text writing followed by integrating nonlinguistic components to complete and revise their DMW compositions. Consequently, two factors emerge as crucial in elucidating the comparable level of grammatical accuracy in DMW and TBW: (1) active engagement in each linguistic and nonlinguistic component, and (2) an awareness of the essentiality of the text component, necessitating the prioritization of the linguistic resource or the deliberate separation of text writing from other components within the DMW process. This study concludes with pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research.

This paper examines recent lexical expansion in New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) in the context of change in the status of the language and ongoing contact with other (spoken and signed) languages. We categorised 917 new signs documented in the past five years according to their source, semantic field, and sign formation mechanism(s), both language-internal and language-external (contact induced). Lexical expansion in NZSL uses known sign formation mechanisms with a high proportion of (iconic) depicting constructions but also a large number of contact-induced signs including loans, calques and bimodal loan-shifts. Differences were found between planned (curriculum-related) terminology and community generated neologisms both in semantic field and prevalence of sign formation mechanisms. Variation in neologisms and non-lexical paraphrases were common, suggesting that while the semiotic repertoires of signers are diversifying, acceptance and standardisation of neologisms are uncertain. Our findings indicate that lexical expansion reflects new contexts of NZSL use (including pressure to disseminate information through interpreting and translation, and use in education) and interaction with the culture of wider society.

This article reports on the design and implementation of a didactic sequence in the frame of a design-based research study. The research aim is to test the hypothesis that affordances of dynamic geometry may support students' awareness of logical relationships between geometrical properties of constructed figures. We elaborate on the task design principles used in the study and present analysis of four Danish grade 8 students (age 13-14) working in pairs on the very first task of the sequence. The Theory of Semiotic Mediation frames the design of the study and the analysis of data, which was collected in the form of screencast, video and written products. The results show that grasping logical relationships is not immediate, on the contrary, the results indicate that students expect dependencies to be non-hierarchical in DGE and that low achieving students describing the behaviour of constructions during dragging refer to their global appearance, rather than to geometrical properties. Such results suggest that specific prompts in the task design can shift students' attention on specific elements of constructions and that explicitly asking the students to explain any unexpected observation seems to be necessary for active reflection.

Student engagement in the process of transduction concomitantly affords them with opportunities to develop and express their critical and creative thinking competences. Reconfiguring or remaking knowledge or meaning in modes other than those of the original sources of information requires affective, imaginative and cognitive activity by sign-makers. In this article, I present examples of elementary students' transduction work and discuss their semiotic meaning-making with reference to the concepts of critical and creative thinking. During the study featured in this article, Grade 4 students engaged in the process of transduction when participating in activities about elements of visual art and design and conventions of the medium comics, when exploring picturebooks and graphic novels and when composing and explaining their own multimodal texts. The students' transmodal meaning-making showed how, in the context of the research classrooms, the purposefully designed pedagogy and activities both required and nurtured students' critical and creative thinking, which simultaneously provided the students with opportunities to extend their knowledge and deepen their understandings of the concepts and curriculum content under study.

Extant chatbots such as ChatGPT and Bard are currently able to converse with humans in natural language, demonstrating impressive linguistic responses. Or so it seems. I critically examine artificial intelligence systems such as these chatbots through examples of dialogue. When taking a systems view of AI, there is a vast and unique human culture in the environmental surroundings of the AI "system" (its "negasystem") that is not accessible to extant AI "systems." These generative AI "systems," based on large language models, are trained with trillions of signs created by humans in the form of digital text and images as part of their machine learning from which they construct their unique neural networks. However, AI "systems" do not understand well, if at all, the meanings of those signs that we associate with our human experience of the world and our culture (i.e., in the AI negasystem). Similarly, we humans do not understand well the inner workings of an AI "system" (its neural network). Teachers and students in education must be very careful and cautious when using such AI "systems." Are we dupes? Or not? Without thinking critically and checking facts independently, we can be fooled by responses of those AI "systems."

Informed by a postmodern perspective on language, culture and visual art education this article examines what a creative, visual art focus can bring to the experience of language-and-culture learning for secondary-age students of Arabic as a heritage language (HL). It builds on our previous research focussing on student interactions with works by renowned artist, Ali Omar Ermes, which sets text in the form of Arabic letter shapes and short poetic inscriptions against a painted background. Here we seek to gain a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the process involved through an in-depth study of the thoughts, feelings and emotions experienced by three intermediate-level students as they engage with works by Ermes and then creatively transform them into 'textart' pieces of their own. Methodologically we adopt an ethnographic case study design focussing strongly on process but also incorporating principles of arts-based research. Our findings demonstrate how the approach can extend possibilities for meaning-making and affirmation of identity by connecting with personal experience, by leveraging multiple semiotic resources rhizomically and intertextually, and by making space for affective, spiritual, aesthetic and multisensory dimensions. For heritage language learners this brings a deeper engagement with learning and a strong sense of empowerment as multicompetent speakers.

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 critical discourse analysis of these policy activities indicated considerable tension between official texts' legislations on, and public élites' debate about public signage and "on the ground" sociolinguistic practices. While official texts and public debates base the dominant languages on monolingual, postcolonial and highly compartmentalized language ideologies, the sociolinguistic practices within these localities are marked by the emergence of an English-leaning trend in public signage. Nevertheless, this trend is heavily qualified by the concurrent use of identifiable language clusters, creative wordplay, multiscriptal practices, the commodification of heritage, national and supranational symbols, and an overall resistance to big commercial names as well as subversion of the official legislations and public debates. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the approach to multilingualism adopted in this study for illuminating the connections between Tunisia's dominant languages, language policy and linguistic landscapes.

Studies examining culture representation in language textbooks have rarely adopted the semiotic approach, despite its potential for presenting and (re)creating cultural meanings at their various levels (i.e. cultural, intercultural, multicultural, and transcultural) in the co-instantiations of texts, tasks, and images. To address this issue, a qualitative analysis, embarking on the Peircean semiotic theory, was applied on the text-image-task semiotic relationship. It explored its potential for constructing and reconstructing cultural meanings relative to the Iranian national English as a foreign language (EFL) textbook, Vision 1, from the perspectives of Iranian EFL students, teachers, and teacher educators. Content and thematic analyses of the interview records revealed three themes: first, the co-instantiation of the image and text was indexical, cultural awareness and connotations were almost untouched; second, the textual and visual components driving intercultural meanings and interpretations were not in accordance with the tasks; and, third, some alternative more culturally engaging images were provided by the interviewees. On the whole, the findings confirmed the previous findings that the discourse of this brand-new Iranian localized EFL textbook leaves little space to raise cultural awareness for its users. Based on the findings, a dynamic model for evaluating cultural representations in textbooks is suggested, hoping to show how EFL textbooks can be developed, implemented, and received more effectively in instructional settings.