Weninger, Csilla

This paper introduces a Peircean semiotic approach to analysing the cultural content of EFL textbook materials. It argues that while traditional content analyses may provide valuable insights, they fail to provide a comprehensive picture of the cultural meaning potential of textbooks since they ignore a key element: how language learners interact with texts and visuals imbedded in the framework of a pedagogic task. We demonstrate how cultural meanings can emerge through processes of unguided semiosis, supported by sharing and reflection in a complex, non-linear and essentially dynamic learning environment. For this to happen, however, teachers may need to reconsider their current approaches to teaching culture, embrace complexity, and allow order to emerge from chaos in their classrooms. The paper suggests that collaboratively negotiated and shared (re)presentations of cultural meaning contribute to the development of the learners’ global cultural awareness and prepares them for intercultural citizenship in our globalized world.

The link between globalization and the spread of English is well established in the literature, resulting in the emergence and burgeoning of studies on the pluralization and localization of English. However, Englishes are also valued unequally and, thus, impact the lives and identities of their speakers differently as well. This paper aims to discuss the politics of Unequal Englishes by mapping out the specific ways inequalities of Englishes are realized in classrooms in Singapore. This requires mapping out accurately both the dynamics of locally produced but globally shaped teaching of English, as well as concrete instantiations of culturally responsive pedagogies which aim to make learning and teaching more nondiscriminatory and equitable.

Digital literacy is high on the educational agenda in many countries as it is seen as an essential attribute of a discerning citizenry and a competitive workforce. A host of frameworks and conceptualizations have been proposed—both from scholars and from transnational organizations—for the curricular implementation of digital literacy in educational institutions. While there seems to be consensus on what digital literacy is, what has received much less attention in scholarly discussions of digital literacy is the ways in which it is also, fundamentally, an ideological practice. This paper considers what it means to say that digital literacy is an ideological practice and what such a recognition means for teaching or developing it in schools, particularly in the ELT classroom. I critique the prevalent focus on skills and outline how we may develop digital literacy as social practice.

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the connections between and across Goffman’s sociological theories of social life and sociolinguistic theories of language use as communicative action. That there should be numerous points of convergence is quite obvious; Goffman’s scholarly attention was focused on the social organization of everyday life, which he conducted largely through detailed explorations of mundane interactional encounters. Sociolinguistics, particularly in the tradition of interactional sociolinguistics and the ethnography of communication, is also centrally concerned with how language use is tied to elements of social organization. In this chapter, we elucidate links between how Goffman and sociolinguistic scholars have approached the study of everyday social behaviour with reference to two aspects of social life that seem central both to (micro)sociology as well as sociolinguistics: selves/identities and situations/contexts. First, we review Goffman’s dramaturgical approach to the study of the social self and link it to how the concept of identity has developed within sociolinguistics as a relational orientation expressed through speakers’ linguistic-semiotic acts. Second, we draw connections between the microsociological concern with situations, Goffman’s development of frame analysis and sociolinguists’ long-standing interest in the significance of context. Our discussion will touch on the scholarly trajectory of these concepts in microsociology and sociolinguistics and draw out similarities and differences among them. Overall, the chapter will argue that although Goffman maintained a ‘principled refusal’ (Becker 2003:660) to discuss issues of method to guard against inevitable misinterpretations of any proposed approach, sociolinguists in the last four decades have drawn enough inspiration from his theories to develop analytic constructs as well as methodological tools for the empirical study of communicative action.

This chapter aims to provide an overview of neoliberalism’s impact on literacy education—how it intersects with ethnonationalism to produce new configurations of inequality and discrimination along old lines of ethno-linguistic and racial difference. We first define key concepts, review the extant literature on the role of neoliberalism in education, and discuss current concerns for literacies under neoliberalism and how they intertwine with transnationalism. We share examples from research and practice to describe digital technology’s central role in enabling (and challenging) ethnonationalism and shaping transnationalism. We share excerpts from our research that demonstrate how digital and internet-based technologies are involved in promoting neoliberalism in education and offer spaces for critical literacies to challenge and complicate discourses around ethnonationalism and transnationalism. In closing, we outline possible next steps as actionable implications for critical literacies scholars and educators to counter the potential effects of neoliberalism on literacies education and, more broadly, global citizenship.

Multiliteracies has been incorporated in the curriculum of many education systems around the world. Beyond the broadening of focus in literacy to include multimodal meaning‐making, multiliteracies pedagogies are also associated with certain pedagogical shifts, such as a focus on bridging the students' out‐of‐school literacy practices with what and how they are learning in school. This often involves appropriating social media as well as introducing popular culture topics in the classroom. This article discusses the students' perspectives of these ideas to inform the teacher's design of multiliteracies learning. Drawing on data collected through surveys and focus group discussions from a multi‐phased research project on multiliteracies in Singapore, we reflect on the students' expressions of their experiences and expectations on multiliteracies learning. In particular, we surface an instrumental view of learning where concerns over examinations and future career prospects cloud the students' learning. We also identify a desire among the students to keep their worlds of home and schools separate. While the discussion of the students' perspectives is anchored in the context of Singapore, the implications contribute to the global discourse among curriculum planners, educational researchers and teacher practitioners who are interested in improving the design of multiliteracies learning in their contexts.

Contemporary digital media is characterized by a cultural logic of participation that encourages sharing, confession, phatic communication, and an emphasis on the visual. In this techno-cultural milieu, self-presentation has become a key mode of communication, and has enabled ordinary individuals to attain a measure of celebrity status. A key component of being a microcelebrity entails developing a consistent persona that is recognizable and unique. How such persona can be studied from the sociolinguistic perspective of stance and style is the focus of this article. We combined corpus linguistic and qualitative discourse analytic methods to examine a small corpus of videos produced by Chinese online celebrity, Papi Jiang. The article presents key lexico-grammatical, discourse-level, and non-linguistic resources that are analyzed as stance markers that together contribute to Papi's intense, critical-satirical performative style. The significance of the findings is discussed in relation to performance, performativity, and critique in digital media. (Persona, microcelebrity, style, performance, stance)

While there is a sizable body of scholarship on China’s social media and digital culture, including discourse-analytic studies, research into more contentious forms of discourse or how the internet and new technologies facilitate digital activism on the Chinese internet has remained sparse. This is especially true for newer types of platforms such as those built around short-form videos. This study takes the recent #Pro-Cantonese movement (PCM) on Douyin as a case study to investigate how users employ various technological and semiotic affordances to position themselves in response to the platform’s surveillance of Cantonese content. Using a critical multimodal approach, we analyzed 264 short videos under the hashtag #PCM posted between 1 September 2022 to 31 March 2023. Five distinct positions were identified within the PCM: radical activists, playful activists, positive energy patriots, rational experts, and cultural ambassadors. These results contribute to our understanding of the multi-faceted forms of everyday activism in China’s digital spheres and shed light on the sociocultural, technological, economic-political logics of platform culture in contemporary China.