Embodied, Multiscalar, and Mediated Translanguaging Across Spaces, Identities, and Technologies

Session Type: Paper Session

Abstract

This session threads five qualitative studies that reconceive language learning as skilled action distributed across bodies, tools, and social ecologies. In VR teamwork, multilingual learners coordinate full semiotic repertoires (HCMA). In EMI nursing, an embodied CLIL design aligns speech, gesture, and environment to advance disciplinary readiness. In teacher PD, a semiotic approach leverages spatial/cultural knowledge to craft belonging-centered curricula. In a graduate TESOL class, a “quiet student” identity is co-constructed, resisted, and mobilized as a translanguaging resource. In L2 writing, human-GenAI feedback is reframed through ecological competencies, foregrounding the human assistant’s role. Together, the papers offer design principles: orchestrate embodied interaction, legitimate identities, harness spatial/cultural repertoires, and keep humans centrally “in the loop” when technologies mediate learning.

Sub Unit

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

Chair

• Amir Michalovich, University of Manitoba

Papers

• ChatGPT said: Becoming Multilingual Experts: Skilled Action in a Virtual Reality Language Learning Environment - Dongping Zheng, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa; Jin Dong, Princeton University

• Embodied CLIL in English-medium nursing education: An organicist-procedural translanguaging approach to thematic patterns co-construction - Yiqi Liu, The Education University of Hong Kong

• Learning Through Language and Culture Using Semiotics - Tala M. Karkar Esperat, Eastern New Mexico University

• Making and Using "Quiet Student" Identities in an English‐Medium Classroom: A Translanguaging and Flow Perspective - Gengqi Xiao, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Reconceptualizing the L2 Writing Process: Human-GenAI-Mediated Feedback through Ecological Language Competencies - Lu Xi, University of Georgia; Qinghua Chen, The Education University of Hong Kong

Session Organizer

• Katarina N. Silvestri, SUNY - College at Cortland