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

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

Moving away from prescriptive logo-centric emphasis on communication, social semiotics explore how semiotic resources are used to represent and communicate meanings. However, contemporary virtual and real spaces call for new conceptualizations to investigate and examine the affordances and constraints of existing as well as newly emerging semiotic resources. The papers in this session explore new perspectives in social semiotics, including process-oriented ontologies, translanguaging and trans-semiotizing, which understand meaning-making as a dynamic process that occurs across different spatio-temporal scales. The papers are based on research syntheses of academic literacies in higher education, retheorization of multiliteracies, frame effect on WeChat, and implementation of the Multimodalities-Entextualization Cycle in Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics (STEM) classroom. Together, they contribute to much-needed theoretical and methodological discussions in social semiotics.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Semiotics in Education: Signs, Meanings and Multimodality

Chairs

• Bong-gi Sohn, Simon Fraser University

• Pedro L dos Santos, Simon Fraser University

Papers

• A Research Synthesis on Social Semiotics Studies for International Students' Academic Literacies in Higher Education - Pedro L dos Santos, Simon Fraser University; Bong-gi Sohn, Simon Fraser University

• Layering the Trans-Multi-Pluri Pedagogies in Postsecondary Classrooms - Arlene Spracklin, Simon Fraser University

• Reconceptualizing Frame Effect of News Articles on WeChat for Building Critical Awareness - Qinghua Chen, Simon Fraser University

• Using the Multimodalities-Entextualization Cycle to Develop Students' STEM Literacy - Kwok Ying Tsang, Simon Fraser University

Discussants

• Yanming (Amy) Wu, University of Hong Kong

• Jay L. Lemke, University of California - San Diego

• Angel Mei Yi Lin, Simon Fraser University