Search

In an increasingly globalised and multilingual world, the use of different scripts in the same semiotic landscape is an increasingly frequent and widespread phenomenon. For this reason, it is vital to conduct research focusing on multiscriptality in order to better understand the linguistic and semiotic functions of the use of multiple scripts that have become more or less officialised by the political-administrative power. This study examines the use of Latin characters in Greece and Bulgaria, the only two European Union member societies that formally adopt different scripts. Using both a qualitative and a quantitative approach, we analyse the coexistence of the national and Latin alphabets in the graphic texts of commercial signs in two urban areas: the Ladadika district in Thessaloniki, Greece and the Kapana district in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The results show that the advancement of the Latin alphabet is not homogeneous; sometimes unconventionally represents the national language; is not completely preferred to the recessive national script, but creates with it new orthographic-communicative forms; and can take place regardless of the overwhelming prestige of Global English. This paper demonstrates the importance of studying multiscriptality and the Romanisation process in the context of contemporary multilingualism.

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 describes linguistic variation of texts for the expression of different meanings. SFL studies document teachers' explicit instruction in the lexicogrammatical construction of text types linked to function and social context. The explicitness informs students' decision-making for formulation of meanings in different text types. Reference is made to SFL applied in teacher education. There is mention of the relevance of SFL to Australia's concern with literacy standards in education.

Conceptualization of foreign language teaching as a cross-cultural interaction means engaging learners in various cultural mediations. Language use becomes a form of interpretative architecture of a target language. Understanding language use from a discursive perspective develops meta-pragmatic awareness and interpretative capacities of learners. The study answers the question of how to design the architecture of context analysis. This research aims to determine the effective ways of interpretative engagement of learners with aspects of pragmatics in the Ukrainian university setting. The study investigates how the process of interaction shapes the engagement of learners in practices of noticing, reflection, and comparison of cross-cultural situations. The data came from a case study on cross-cultural language learning within the second semester, 2021. The study analyzes the audio-recording of the classes, researcher notes, and post-course interviews of 24 participants. This research used a method of the content analysis. The study of the results, based on six categories (narrative analysis, discourse analysis, semiotic analysis, interpretative analyses, conversation analysis, and critical analysis), showed that the learners started to consider the nature of their cross-cultural mediation. The research proved that through such an interpretative engagement, students become engaged into working with languages and cultures. The study presents some recommendations for language teachers to create a meaning-making process from multiple perspectives.

This study explores the ways in which master thesis writers position their research in the field of English language teaching in a context where academic literacies are still a developing field. From a social semiotic perspective, this paper aims to identify the resources writers use to represent their object of study and provide a context and justification for research. The analysis focuses on the ideational and textual metafunctions to account for patterns of meanings in seven introductory chapters of master theses in English teacher education. The results reveal a set of interconnected genres--descriptions of the object of study, definitions, and personal exemplum--that build a shared experience with the reader as well as the persuasive purpose of the text.

The study examines the intermodality in children's picture books, with a special focus on the visual-verbal meaning instantiation in young learners' visual literacy readings. Picture books serve as one of the main platforms and channels that prepare children for early literacy education. Coronavirus as a key theme children have encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic period has been widely discussed in picture books for different educational purposes. This study employs systemic functional linguistics (SFL)-based multimodal discourse analysis and draws upon Painter, Martin, and Unsworth's (2013) visual narrative analytic framework to explore the intermodal relationships between the visual and verbal meaning systems and how each semiotic system is represented and instantiated in the picture books as bimodal texts. "Coronavirus: A book for children" (2020) and "My hero is you: How kids can fight COVID-19" (2020), the two most widely disseminated picture books on Coronavirus, were chosen for case study and comparative analysis. Through these, the intermodal meaning making process that features in children's literature is examined and synthesised from the three visual analytical perspectives of the representations, relationships, and organisations in the social semiotic construction to facilitate children's ability to read and comprehend the COVID-related visual information in integration with the verbal semiotics. The findings reveal the visual images function as visual recontextualization for the verbal realisations and provide imagistic contextualisation for the textualized storytelling.

This study attempted to scrutinize the disciplinary and cross-disciplinary generic variations of textbook introductions in humanities and basic sciences with reference to the onion model. The data included a sample of 60 introductions (i.e. ten each from applied linguistics, sociology, and psychology within humanities, and ten each from biology, agriculture, and geology within basic sciences). Humphrey and Economou's (2015) onion model of discourse analysis was adopted, and MAXQDA 10 software of qualitative analysis was used for coding. The findings revealed similarities and differences not only within but also between the two disciplines, which can be attributed to the nature of disciplines as well as the generically accepted conventions in each discipline. Moreover, the results of the study highlighted the predominance of descriptive and analytical phases in textbook introductions not only in isolation but also in establishing more complicated genres like persuasion and critique. The study highlights the importance of teaching which is concerned with learners' rhetorical consciousness-raising of the disciplines as well as the discipline-specific lexico-grammatical features in expert texts.

The notion of the border is an interesting advancement in research on the processes of meaning making within the cultural psychology. The development of this notion in semiotic key allows to handle with adequate complexity construction, transformation, stability and the breakup of the relationship between person/world/otherness. These semiotic implications have already been widely discussed and exposed by authors such Valsiner (2007, 2014), Neuman (2003, 2008), Simão (Culture & Psychology, 9, 449-459, 2003, Theory & Psychology, 15, 549-574, 2005, 2015), with respect to issues of identity/relatedness, inside/outside, stability/change in the irreversible flow of the time. In this work, after showing some of the basics of such semiotic notion of border, we discuss the processes of construction and transformation of borders through the modal articulation, defined as the contextual positioning that the person assumes with respect to the establishment of a boundary in terms of necessity, obligation, willingness, possibility, permission, ability. This modal subjective positioning acquires considerable interest from the clinical point of view since its degree of plasticity vs that of rigidity is the basis of processes of development or stiffening of relations between person/world/otherness.

Teaching and learning in science disciplines are dependent on multimodal communication. Earlier research implies that students may be challenged when trying to interpret and use different semiotic resources. There have been calls for extensive frameworks that enable analysis of multimodal texts in science education. In this study, we combine analytical tools deriving from social semiotics, including systemic functional linguistics (SFL), where the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions are central. In regard to other modes than writing--and to analyse how textual resources are combined--we build on aspects highlighted in research on multimodality. The aim of this study is to uncover how such a framework can provide researchers and teachers with insights into the ways in which various aspects of the content in multimodal texts are communicated through different semiotic resources. Furthermore, we aim to explore how different text resources interact and, finally, how the students, or authors of teaching resources, position themselves in relation to the subject. Data consist of one student text and one teaching resource text, both comprising drawn and written elements in combination with symbols. Our analyses of the student text suggest that the proposed framework can provide insights into students' content knowledge and, hence, how construction of multimodal texts may be a useful tool for formative assessment. When it comes to teaching resources, the framework may be a useful tool for teachers when choosing resources, particularly in relation to students' possibilities of meaning making when engaging with such texts, but also, as a basis for classroom discussions.

Television, like other media, can work as a platform for promoting learning. This article illustrates the value of multimodal discourse analysis for evaluating the potential of a children's television show as a vehicle for fostering knowledge and skills in a specific subject area. Drawing on social semiotic principles and systemic functional genre theory, we examine the use of language and other modes in "Teacup Travels" -- a show designed to introduce young viewers to historical artefacts. The analysis demonstrates that both story structure and particular semiotic resources contribute to how these objects are represented, and thus shape the TV programme's potential to engage children in learning about the past. Our findings suggest that multimodal storytelling strategies used in "Teacup Travels" encourage some aspects of children's historical consciousness and thinking, while backgrounding others.

The trend in the Reading class in KSA has been what is called "Standards Based Proficiency" as opposed to the more desirable "Real World Reading Requirements". This is also where the greatest gap occurs. Whereas white collar jobs may require more reading, blue collar jobs may invariably involve reading of technical manuals and scripts where a single error can lead to disastrous results. Reading is a skill that is very much related to the real life language use by FL learners. Can this gap be closed in our educational institutions? The answer is yes as concluded by the current study that evaluates the role of Linguistics in empowering the teachers of EFL to successfully tackle the reading failure of the KSA EFL learners. Our results show that with basic training in the field teachers can bring about much change in the reading proficiency of the learners.

This study tries to identify high school students' knowledge about the concept of proof, based on classroom discussion. The processes of discourses, both natural and prompted, are studied as they occur between students and teachers. The study employs discourse analysis as the qualitative research framework. Participants are 13 Science High School students from Izmir (Turkey) in 11th grade and two mathematics and geometry teachers. Data gathered consist of 53 filmed mathematics and geometry classes, recorded over three months, plus researchers' field notes. The focus of the study is on verbal discourse in the classroom between teachers and students. 18 recorded discourses were analyzed after transcription. The theoretical framework of the study is dependent on the social semiotics, with Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics model (SFL) used in the analysis. In the SFL model there are three main components; field of discourse, tenor of discourse, and mode of discourse. This study presents findings and analysis results based on the field of discourse. Emergent findings showed important effects of teacher-student in-class discourses (in terms of the structure, diversity, and pattern characteristics) on the students? learning about proof and knowledge constructions.

This study investigates meaning-making processes in language and literacy assessments. Using a social semiotic perspective, it examines how adult second language learners with emerging literacy self-articulate their understanding of multimodal elements and components utilized in low-stakes assessments, and the strategies they use to make meaning in such tests. The study examines how the intended meaning of assessment prompts aligns with the perceived meaning on the part of participants. To do so, we used an existing assessment tool developed for refugee-background adults in the United States as well as two experimental assessment texts created as part of the research. Data was collected via semi-structured interviews with 14 participants. Interviews were analyzed using a critical multimodal social semiotic approach, informed by systemic functional linguistics. Data was coded according to metafunction and theme, with results organized by test genre element and multimodal component. Results exposed tensions between participants' responses to textual and visual prompts and the expectations of test designers. Findings reveal that textual composition and assessment practices may be inadvertently biased against individuals with diverging literacy profiles. Results have implications for assessment of this population such that language, literacy, and test socialization should be considered during test design and evaluation framework development.

To acknowledge the lasting and increasing influence of Halliday's theory of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) on teacher education, this article outlines Critical SFL Praxis (CSFLP) in teacher education as an activist effort in research and practice. Informed by systemic functional linguistics, the critical approach seeks to push back against minoritization of multilingual youth in schools and communities. Profiling the socio-historical background of SFL-based pedagogy in teacher education in Australia, the authors of this article conducted interviews with four SFL scholars and teacher educators from Australia who were greatly influenced by Michael Halliday and his theory of social semiotics. After a brief definition of CSFLP, we present the findings of our qualitative analysis of the interview with the four Australian SFL scholars. These findings illustrate the historical tensions, challenges, and opportunities in enacting CSFLP and point toward key affordances of the theory for teachers and teacher education.

This literature review analyzes the influences of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) in U.S. teacher education from 2000 to 2019. First, we describe how SFL has been contextualized in United States in response to changing demographics, new technologies, policies, and the impacts of globalization. Second, we outline our methodology, which yielded 136 publications from the fields of literacy research, teacher education, and applied linguistics. Third, we present four findings: (1) the main vehicles for introducing U.S. teachers to SFL theory and practice are grant-funded university-school partnerships, courses in colleges of education, and self-contained professional development workshops; (2) most interventions focused on introducing teachers to functional metalanguage and text analysis, with fewer focusing on multimodality; (3) SFL interventions positively influenced teachers' level of semiotic awareness and ability to design focused disciplinary literacy instruction. Teachers' critical awareness and confidence for literacy instruction were influenced to a lesser extent; and (4) more sustained investments in teacher professional development led to greater gains in teacher learning as well as a critical awareness of the relationship between disciplinary literacy practices and ideologies at work in K-12 schools. Based on these findings, we conclude with three recommendations for the future of critical SFL praxis in teacher education.

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 multimodal analyses of language textbooks can be divided into two groups based on how they conceptualise meaning. One examines how textbooks' textual-visual content encodes and communicates "ideas about the world," treating meaning as "representation." A second set of research studies is focused on how multimodal elements in textbooks foster interpersonal relations between text producers and readers, thus viewing the meaning textbooks communicate as "interaction." While each approach is valid, I argue that neither places sufficient emphasis on the fact that textbooks are a didactic genre where learners' engagement with any meaning is heavily guided. As such, critical textbook analysis should attempt to demonstrate the ideological nature of meaning-making by examining the interplay of multimodal representations, the interactive meaning of textbooks' multimodal material as well as the pedagogic-didactic frame within which learners encounter them. The article utilises an example from a popular English as a foreign language textbook to illustrate these points.

Being a linguistic phenomenon, poetry is marked by the defamilarization of language in a poetic discourse there is an "aesthetic distortion" of the normal codes, in which the aesthetic value is the most prominent function of the poetic texture . This study is a new adventure in correlating linguistics to aesthetics by and through the so-called approach "Aesthetic stylistics" (As). Aesthetic stylistics is the application of the theory of beauty to the "intentionally violated" components in literary text. It proceeds with the hypothesis that John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and Kabbani's "Maritime Poem" are "disinterested" poetic experiences which create ecstatic responses to the reader's awareness, therefore, the judgment of the reader's taste is aesthetic. The study aims at highlighting the stylistic-aesthetic factors which generate the judgment of taste. While drawing heavily on the "aestheticism" of the Prague Linguistic Circle and Halliday's "Functional Linguistics" (FL), or what has come to be called the "Traditional European" Functionalism, the study will analyze Keats' Ode and Kabbani's poem in terms of Kant's "Kritik der Urteilstraft, KdU." The two circles of the linguistic description and aesthetic interpretation will be internally interlinked to create the coherence of the stylistic process. The study consists of an introduction, two parts, one in theory and the other in analysis; it is eventually rounded up with concluding remarks elicited from the semiotic quest.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the meaning of symbols, the symbolic world in linguistics. Using the methods of observation, analysis, synthesis and interpretation, the author determines the category of symbols in linguistic-cognitive research. The study delineates connection between linguistic image of the universe and symbolic categories of empirical cognition and also describes the language symbols as an indicator of the ethno-cultural association potential of a single language in different countries. The study shows that symbolization in a language affects the role of the national-cultural-cognitive association in the formation of a unified concept and image of the world language. Thus, the practical value of the research is that the process of symbolization sheds light on the most characteristic features of a language symbol, namely the newness, communicativeness and cognitive activity.

The implications of any linguistic and non-linguistic research can be always of paramount importance when carefully and cleverly integrated within the scope of any interdisciplinary field of translation study. The major goal of this paper, therefore, is to highlight and stress how a semiotic approach to the theory of meaning, in general, and to translation theory, in particular, can critically subsume the mere linguistic concerns of any prevalent semantic approach to translation. On the one hand, the former sets justifiable priorities that can more thoroughly cater for the dynamism of all textual, co-textual, extratextual, contextual and paratextual layers of the text as a fully-fledged sign within an overall sophisticated yet systematic macro order of signification; on the other hand, the latter usually may fumble and stumble whenever a text bears over-laden content of basic signifying elements that soar beyond the narrow limitations of lexical and sentential compositional structure. Thus, this paper advocates a strict semiotic approach to translation theory through which an array of semiotic annotations of the SLT must be aligned with and incorporated into basic morphosyntactic notations, semantic denotations and sociocultural connotations.

The world we live in is increasingly multimodal, necessitating multiliteracy for learners to engage meaningfully with knowledge and skills. While verbal language is the primary medium for constructing, communicating and learning scientific knowledge and concepts, visuals can help learners to gain knowledge that they may not develop from verbal explanations alone. Verbal and visual semiotic modes have the potential to function in a complementary way, working together to strengthen meaning. This paper explores the dynamics of verbal-visual intersemiotic complementarity in the classroom practice of three junior secondary physical science teachers in the Oshana region of Namibia. It reports on a qualitative case study employing Systemic Functional Linguistics in the analysis of multimodal discourse. The results revealed how the content selections in the verbal and visual modes of the science teachers' practice are related in terms of the meanings and their relationships through all five intersemiotic sense relations. The results also showed that some teachers consistently employed fewer visuals. The results further highlighted low frequency of the use of intersemiotic antonymy (opposites) and hyponymy (hierarchy) by each teacher compared with intersemiotic repetition, synonymy (synonyms) and meronymy (whole-part relationships). It is recommended that Namibian science teacher training programmes incorporate intersemiotic complementarity in order to help teachers harness the full potential of this approach.

This paper reports on research which has explored essential requirements for pedagogies of hope, including the expansion of teachers' semiotic knowledge. The study, a professional learning intervention with teachers of young multilingual learners engaged in science inquiry, was informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) descriptions of verbal language and image in scientific representations. SFL's metalanguage provided resources for teachers to support their learners' academic and reflexive literacies in a number of ways. With academic mentors, the teachers used SFL's analytical tools to reveal learners' existing literacy repertoires in relation to the demands of curriculum tasks and to design lesson sequences to infuse support for multiliteracies within science content learning. Analysis of the multimodal texts composed by students provides evidence of the positive impact of culturally sustaining SFL on bi/multilingual learners' writing, including learners who had previously been challenged to demonstrate their science learning in writing and those who had achieved curriculum expectations. Significantly, teachers' developing semiotic knowledge allowed them to engage all students in substantive and reflexive conversations of scientific communication.

This paper is concerned with multimodal literacy involving the different kinds of knowledge required to fully access texts with multiple semiotic resources used in reading comprehension test tasks. Such literacy requirements have not drawn researchers' attention to date, mainly because the foreign language teaching and testing project has primarily focussed on the verbal features of reading comprehension texts. Drawing on data from the Greek National Foreign Language Exams (known with the acronym KPG) -- one of the few high-stakes examination systems which use multimodal reading comprehension texts -- the paper approaches reading comprehension as a meaning-making process highly dependent on both image and language used in test tasks and the relations between them (i.e. "intersemiosis"). Working mainly within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), this study has attempted a systematic description of the visual and intersemiotic literacy indicators of 86 multimodal media texts used in KPG reading comprehension test tasks. For the SFL-oriented multimodal discourse analysis, Tan et al.'s categories of system choices suggested for the analysis of different types of multimodal media texts, and the Multimodal Analysis Image (MMA) interactive software program were used.

Standardized writing assessments based in linear progressions position teachers for deficit views of young children's emergent writing development. Consequently, the researcher video recorded a writing assessment of his son, Daniel, at age 5 years, 4 months, as he composed a story across pages of a blank book, using an assortment of writing tools. Data sources included the transcription of the writing session and Daniel's final product. The researcher first used open coding then coding based in systemic functional linguistics. Based in ecological and social semiotic perspectives, the researcher shows how Daniel's writing development was expressed interpersonally, with the emerging text functioning as mediational tool. Findings show Daniel's emergent sense of self as a writer, the role of the adult facilitator, and the dynamics of interaction and dialectic of Daniel's internalization process. As formative assessment, next steps in instruction are suggested. The author discusses the necessities of closely observing and supporting young children's composing process and the imperative of a developmental assets perspective when assessing young children's writing, with implications for policy, teacher education, teaching, and research.

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 shaping language knowledge is acknowledged, missing are specifications of the jointly constructed actions and courses of action comprising social contexts of use. Also missing is a reconsideration of key SLA concepts engendered by a usage-based understanding of language. The intent of this paper is to redress these limitations. First, I summarize the research programs of conversation analysis and interactional linguistics, which take as their central task the specifications of the jointly constructed actions and courses of action comprising social contexts and thus significantly enhance a usage-based understanding of language. Then, arguing that more suitable conceptual tools are needed to better capture current understandings of language knowledge and objects of L2 learning, I offer repertoire, semiotic resources, and register as alternative terms to competence and grammar. I conclude with a proposal for a Conversation Analysis/Interactional Linguistics-based research program for further advancing understandings of SLA and transforming understandings of L2 pedagogy.

Almost forty years after Stalnaker's (1974) initial call for "the development and application of a pragmatic theory in which detailed explanations of phenomena relating to linguistic contexts can be given" (p. 214), a unifying construct definition and theory still does not exist to explain fully pragmatic knowledge and ability (Roever, 2011, 2013). Given that test validity and reliability are crucial concerns in the field of second language (L2) assessment, it is important that we try to develop a more comprehensive theoretical construct, so that tests of pragmatic ability will have more construct validity, better represent the target language use (TLU) domain of the test construct, and thus have results that are hopefully more generalizable and useful to stakeholders. This paper presents a brief review of the extensive pragmatics literature and examines how the construct of "pragmatic knowledge and ability" has been operationalized from the perspective of theoretical and applied linguists. The paper presents (1) an introduction to the theoretical foundations of pragmatics, (2) a brief survey of applied empirical studies in L2 pragmatics, and (3) an overview of how the L2 assessment field has conceptualized pragmatic knowledge and ability, looking also at the various theoretical frameworks that have been proposed and utilized. Validation studies for the assessment models, although scarce, are discussed where appropriate. Lastly, some general ideas and suggestions are offered to help lead us towards a unifying construct definition of "pragmatic knowledge and ability."

The issue of meaning is undoubtedly significant in translation theory. Based on Catford's and Nida's view on meaning in translation, this paper aims at explore linguistic school's contribution to the theoretical description of meaning. With Nida's semantic studies as a focus, it argues that Nida's semantic studies represent an important stage and carry the linguistic school's theoretical studies of meaning in translation a step forward. (Contains 4 footnotes, 2 figures and 1 table.)

The increasingly integrative use of images with language in many different types of texts in electronic and paper media has created an urgent need to go beyond logocentric accounts of literacy and literacy pedagogy. Correspondingly there is a need to augment the genre, grammar and discourse descriptions of verbal text as resources for literacy pedagogy to include descriptions of the meaning-making resources of images. Some augmentation along these lines has involved the articulation of Hallidayan systemic functional descriptions of language, mainly focussed on verbal grammar, with the social semiotic descriptions of the meaning-making resources of images described in a grammar of visual design proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen. However, current research indicates that articulating discrete visual and verbal grammars is not sufficient to account for meanings made at the intersection of language and image. This paper adopts a systemic functional semiotic perspective in outlining a range of different types of such meanings in different kinds of texts, suggesting the significance of such meanings in comprehending and composing contemporary multimodal texts, and the importance of developing an appropriate metalanguage to enable explicit discussion of these meaning-making resources by teachers and students. (Contains 5 figures and 1 table.)

Research studies using discourse analysis approaches make claims about phenomena or issues based on interpretation of written or spoken text, which includes images and gestures. How are findings/interpretations from discourse analysis validated? This paper proposes transdisciplinary convergence as a way to validate discourse analysis approaches to research. The argument is made that discourse analysis explicitly grounded in semiotics, systemic functional linguistics, and critical theory, offers a credible research methodology. The underlying assumptions, constructs, and techniques of analysis of these three theoretical disciplines can be drawn on to show convergence of data at multiple levels, validating interpretations from text analysis.

In this paper I shall present and develop my organisational language, "social activity method" (SAM), and illustrate some of its applications. I shall introduce a new scheme for "modes of recontextualisation" that enables the analysis of the ways in which one activity--which might be school mathematics or social research or any empirically observed regularity of practice--recontextualises the practice of another and I shall also present, deploy, and develop an existing scheme--"domains of action"--in an analysis of school mathematics examination papers and in the structuring of what I refer to as the "esoteric domain." This domain is here conceived as a hybrid domain of, first, linguistic and extralinguistic resources that are unambiguously mathematical in terms of both expression and content and, second, pedagogic theory--often tacit--that enables the mathematical gaze onto other practices and so recontextualises them. A second and more general theme that runs through the paper is the claim that there is nothing that is beyond semiosis, that there is nothing to which we have direct access, unmediated by interpretation. This state of affairs has implications for mathematics education. Specifically, insofar as an individual's mathematical semiotic system is under continuous development--the curriculum never being graspable all at once--understanding--as a stable semiotic moment--of any aspect or object of mathematics is always localised to the individual and is at best transient, and the sequencing of such moments may well also be more individualised than consistent in some correspondence with the sequencing of the curriculum. This being the case, a concentration on understanding as a goal may well serve to inhibit the pragmatic acquisition and deployment of mathematical technologies, which should be the principal aim of mathematics teaching and learning. The paper is primarily concerned with mathematics education. SAM, however, is a language that is available for recruiting and deploying in potentially any context as I have attempted to illustrate with some of the secondary illustrations in the text.

Against the backdrop of proliferating research on multimodality in the fields of literacy and writing studies, this article considers the contributions of two prominent theoretical perspectives--Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Situated Literacies--and the methodological tensions they raise for the study of multimodality. To delineate these two perspectives' methodological tensions, I present an analysis of selected recent literature from both approaches and then analyze these tensions further as they emerge in two empirical studies published in this journal illustrating each approach. Despite the fact that SFL and Situated Literacies share some underlying theoretical assumptions and are sometimes drawn upon in concert by scholars, I illustrate how they differ in their treatment of multimodal texts and practices--as well as their methodologies--research design, data collected, analytic methods, and possible implications. This article thus seeks to outline the respective contributions of SFL and Situated Literacies to ongoing research on multimodality in literacy and writing studies and to encourage a conversation across theoretical and methodological borders. (Contains 3 tables and 2 notes.)

As the scope of rhetorical inquiry broadens to cover intersemiotic and intertextual phenomena, scholars are increasingly in need of new, defensible analytic procedures. Several scholars have suggested that methods of discourse analysis could enhance rhetorical criticism. Here, I introduce a discourse-based method that is empirical, delicate, and adaptive to the complexities of intertextual and multimodal rhetoric. Specifically, I argue that rhetorical scholars can productively integrate systemic-functional linguistics, multimodal text analysis, and micro-intertextual comparison. I illustrate how this micro-rhetorical toolkit can be employed to investigate the recontextualization of written political discourse in video journalism. (Contains 11 tables, 1 figure, and 17 notes.)

Children's classroom talk and the connections between talk and text are current concerns for teachers. A deeper understanding of what child communication entails can ensure greater pedagogic support for the processes involved in text production. This article reports on a research project using multimodal discourse analysis to investigate child-to-child interaction in class. This research sought to uncover what multimodal analysis can reveal about the collaborative and creative meaning making, which children employ in spontaneous classroom discourse. Creativity here is understood in terms of everyday creativity in language. Instantiations of video-recorded classroom communication between children have been closely analysed using a framework based on a functional view of interaction, specifically the work of the textual meta-function. Attention to cohesive devices of intertextual referencing, idiom and metaphor as well as repetition and reference through a multimodal lens has revealed the ways in which all modes work in an integrated ensemble to make meaning. Examples in this article of the ways in which children "mess about" with multimodal semiotic resources, employing them intertextually in metaphorical meaning making, have been taken from a Year 5 mixed primary geography lesson on the water cycle. (Contains 6 tables, 3 figures and 1 note.)

In this paper social semiotics, and systemic functional linguistics in particular, are used in order to identify registers of digital literacy in the use of virtual learning environments. The framework of social semiotics provides means to systemize and discuss digital literacy as a linguistic and semiotic issue. The following research question was investigated in the paper: What different registers of digital literacy could be identified when students and teachers communicate and interact in a VLE? The research question was answered by, initially, an application of social semiotics to virtual learning environments, and its relation to the knowledge domains of everyday, specialized and reflexive digital literacy. This application was then further developed, using an analysis of a course specific use of a virtual learning environment in a case study. The study identified discrepancies between the digital literacies of teachers, designers and students. These discrepancies mean that a shared semiotic register was sometimes difficult to maintain. The conclusion is that the designers and teachers as co-designers of virtual learning environments need a better understanding of everyday digital literacy in order to design more sufficient learning environments. The paper shows that digital literacy must be considered as a situated practice, and that it concerns functional and communicative competencies rather than acquiring a set of technical skills. (Contains 4 tables and 1 figure.)

Multiplayer online games form complex semiotic ecologies that include game-generated texts, player-to-player communication and collaboration, and associated websites that support in-game play. This article describes an exploratory study of the massively multiplayer online game (MMO) "World of Warcraft" ("WoW"), with specific attention to its qualities as a setting for second language (L2) use and development. This empirical study seeks to answer the following question: What is the nature of the linguistic ecology that "WoW" players are exposed to? Many studies have described the developmental opportunities presented by commercially available gaming environments (e.g., Gee, 2003, 2007), their value as sites of literacy development (e.g., Squire, 2008a; Steinkuehler, 2008), and their potential as venues for second language (L2) use and learning (e.g., Peterson, 2010; Thorne, Black, & Sykes, 2009; Thorne & Fischer, 2012; Zheng, Young, Wagner & Brewer, 2009). There are, however, numerous outstanding questions regarding the quality and complexity of the linguistic environments associated with online commercially available games. This primarily descriptive research addresses this issue and aims to finely characterize the linguistic complexity of game-presented texts (or "quest texts") as well as player generated game-external informational and strategy websites that form the expansive semiotic ecology of "WoW" game play. Questionnaires and interviews with Dutch and American gamers helped to identify a variety of widely used game-external websites. This information then informed the selection of texts that were analyzed for their linguistic complexity. By analysing the linguistic complexity of the texts that players regularly engage with, this study aims to empirically assess the resources and limitations of a representative and widely played MMO as an environment for L2 development. (Contains 7 figures, 11 tables, and 3 footnotes.)

This brief article reflects on some pitfalls inherent in the learning and teaching of segmental phonetic transcription. We suggest that a gestural interpretation to disordered speech data, in conjunction with segmental phonetic transcription, can add valuable insight into patterns of disordered speech, and that a gestural orientation should form part of the understanding and interpretation of the process of transcribing and the use of transcripts. We illustrate our discussion with data from a case of moderately to severely unintelligible speech produced by a boy aged 5;9.

This article explores how language and the multisemiotic nature of mathematics can present potential challenges for English language learners (ELLs). Based on two qualitative studies of the discourse of mathematics, we discuss some of the linguistic challenges of mathematics for ELLs in order to highlight the potential difficulties they may have when reading and doing mathematics. Examples, based on a systemic-functional linguistic analysis of texts, are used to show how different mathematical meanings are constructed. (Contains 2 tables.)

Vocabulary development is a critical goal for early childhood education. However, it is difficult for researchers and teachers to determine whether this goal is being met, given the limitations of current assessment tools. These tools tend to view word knowledge dichotomously--as right or wrong. A clear sense of children's depth of semantic knowledge is necessary in order to plan and evaluate the effectiveness of instruction. This article proposes a continuum of young children's semantic knowledge that stems from a conceptual analysis of literature across the fields of education, linguistics, and educational psychology. Nineteen categories of children's word knowledge were identified and grouped into five hierarchically related levels: no understanding, schematically related understanding, contextual understanding, decontextual understanding, and paired understanding. This semantic continuum can be used to develop an assessment instrument to measure the incremental changes in young children's semantic knowledge. Also, it can be used to guide assessment-based vocabulary instruction in early childhood. (Contains 4 tables and 1 figure.)

Professional collaboration in schools features prominently in contemporary approaches to educational change. Advocates highlight the importance of situated knowledge to continuous teacher learning, sustained school reform and improved student learning. Critics portray collaboration as an invisible and coercive means of official control. The framework presented in this paper aims to treat these perspectives not as ideological positions but as starting points for empirical investigation into the dynamics of power in professional collaboration. The framework draws on social semiotic theories of language and functional linguistics to portray the ways in which the development of ideas and the development of social relations--ideational and interpersonal meaning--move in concert. Excerpts from an in-depth study of interaction among science teachers and teacher-leaders in a secondary school undergoing broad reform illustrate the application of this framework. Attention to the dynamics of support and challenge in the most generative of these interactions reveals distinctive patterns of the negotiation of interpersonal and ideational meaning. These patterns of control provide a means of connecting the microprocesses of building knowledge with the broader dynamics of power at play in educational change. (Contains 3 tables, 2 excerpts, 1 figure and 7 notes.)

We investigated linguistic and visuospatial processing during pictorial reasoning in high-functioning autism (HFA), Asperger's syndrome (ASP), and age and IQ-matched typically developing participants (CTRL), using three conditions designed to differentially engage linguistic mediation or visuospatial processing (visuospatial, V; semantic, S; visuospatial + semantic, V + S). The three groups did not differ in accuracy, but showed different response time profiles. ASP and CTRL participants were fastest on V + S, amenable to both linguistic and nonlinguistic mediation, whereas HFA participants were equally fast on V and V + S, where visuospatial strategies were available, and slowest on S. HFA participants appeared to favor visuospatial over linguistic mediation. The results support the use of linguistic versus visuospatial tasks for characterizing subtypes on the autism spectrum.

This article seeks to recover a history of ideas about the role of signs in the development of mind that connects Vygotsky to major traditions in Enlightenment language studies. It offers historical perspectives on ideas about thinking and speaking that shed light on the scope and trajectory of Vygotsky's conception of signs as psychological tools. The Soviet thinker was schooled in German humanities, philology and philosophy. He was also indebted to thinkers of the European Enlightenment, especially Bacon, Locke and Condillac, for ideas about the role of signs in the formation of mind. I explain how ideas about the relationship between words and ideas set down by Locke were taken up and extended by Condillac in a seminal theory of knowledge. According to Condillac, signs play a key role in the development of mind. Later, Herder and von Humboldt built on Condillac's ideas. Herder suggested that individual psychologies are shaped in concrete, historical circumstances, and pictured an organizing, creative force driving linguistic activity. I give a brief account of the way that the concept of "genesis" migrated from biology into German philosophy of language, history and cultural theory. According to von Humboldt, language is an activity through which worlds are disclosed. His work on thinking and speaking, the "inner sense" of language and the constitutive role of signs in development is discussed. In some ways, however, it stands against the instrumental-communicative picture of words handed down from Locke. By bringing Locke and Condillac into conjunction with Herder and von Humboldt I aim to offer a picture of the Soviet psychologist's indebtedness to Enlightenment linguistic thought.