A Research Synthesis on Social Semiotics Studies for International Students' Academic Literacies in Higher Education

• In Event: New Perspectives and Directions in Social Semiotics in Education: Investigating Meaning-Making Potentials

Abstract

The growing diversity of the student body in contemporary postsecondary institutions calls for a resignification of knowledge construction from the emergent semiotic resources used in individuals’ meaning-making processes. Yet, postsecondary institutions continue to privilege product-oriented, text-based monolingual practices (Lillis & Tuck, 2016). To advance our understanding regarding the diverse practices of students and institutions, we explore the use of multiple semiotic resources in pedagogies as investigated in scholarly publications. With our interest in the academic literacies of undergraduate international students who are speakers of English as an additional language (EAL), we conducted a research synthesis to understand how the research understands international students’ multiple meaning-making resources.
Our theoretical framework draws on the study of academic literacies (Lea & Street, 1998, 2006; Lillis & Tuck, 2016), which examines literacy development in a complex, dynamic and situated way, involving power relations between people and institutions and social identities of those who participate in this process. With the emergence of new ways of communicating, there is a need to challenge the position that literacy is a static and monolingual practice (Lillis & Tuck, 2016). This call resonates with recent discussions in social semiotics (Van Leeuwen, 2005; Andersen, Boeriis, Maagerø & Tonnessen, 2015) about what people do with semiotic resources in the interplay between virtual and real spaces, multiple institutions, genres, and media, and across extensional and temporal scales (Lemke, 2005; Lin, Wu & Lemke, 2020).
We searched online scholarly databases for peer-reviewed publications, using a combination of keywords (i.e., academic literacies, social semiotics, semiotic resources, meaning making, higher education, and international students) to understand how studies on academic literacies address international students’ academic literacies in higher education. We selected empirical studies that report on the findings of literacy practices of EAL undergraduate international students in universities where English is the medium of instruction. The selected 129 articles were thematically coded to identify overarching themes regarding semiotic affordances and constraints that EAL students encounter in their university classrooms.
Common themes were “multimodality”, “multimodal composition”, and “multiple linguistic resources” that constituted part of classroom instruction and these were important elements of international students’ identity constructions. Studies reported positive outcomes from embracing multiple semiotic and linguistic resources that were familiar to students. On the other hand, abundant linguistic as well as semiotic diversities are ironically reported as a challenge as they are new to students and teachers.
Our findings demonstrate that universities are moving away from traditional text-based pedagogies and are responding to the changing nature of classrooms. Yet, not many studies explore dynamic meaning-making processes, despite their growing recognition. With this note, we highlight the importance of exploring process-oriented ontologies (Whitehead, 1985) to advance scholarship in academic literacies in higher education.

Authors

• Pedro L dos Santos, Simon Fraser University

• Bong-gi Sohn, Simon Fraser University