Abstract Summary
We examine the contribution of instructional context on reading and writing self-concepts of monolingual and multilingual children. Results yielded no differences in self-concepts nor reading measures, but in spelling with monolinguals outperforming multilinguals, and positive correlations between self-concepts and academic achievement. We contextualize these findings within the bilingual advantage debate.
Abstract :
Semiotic creativity can be defined as making meaning through innovative uses of resources (van Leeuwen 2012). Both common parlance and academic circles attribute an increasingly positive value to it (Jones 2012). There is also widespread belief that online environments are particularly fertile sites of semiotic creativity. That is, being creative is good, and particularly so online. But is this always the case? What if semiotic creativity is used to express harmful contents? And are all semiotic innovations praised online?
In other terms, what is the relation between semiotic creativity, (1) its social effects, and (2) socio-cultural normativity, either emerging in online spaces or brought about from offline?
Driven by the above two-fold question, this presentation will examine innovative semiotic practices at the online/offline interface, and conceptualise them in relation to
- The intertwining between forms, contents and effects,
- Their underlying ethics and aesthetics,
- Their entextualised vernacular, institutional and/or elitist discourses (Thurlow 2019),
- Their varied acceptability against notions of literacy and existing/emerging semiotic regimes (i.e., patterned uses of resources associated to given social values).
Analysis will focus on innovative semiotic practices in online political discourse in the US, UK and Italy (by supporters and critics of Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, and Matteo Salvini respectively). These show how, against a generally positive value attributed to semiotic creativity as a concept/discourse, its practices are in fact highly contested, while their contestation can have varied, at times paradoxical, effects onto power dynamics.
References:
Jones, R. (2012). Introduction: Discourse and creativity. In R. Jones (Ed.), Discourse and Creativity. Harlow: Pearson, 1-13
Thurlow, C. (2019) Semiotic creativities in and with space: binaries and boundaries, beware! International Journal of Multilingualism, 16/1, 94-104
Van Leeuwen, T. (2012) Design, production and creativity. In R. Jones (Ed.), Discourse and Creativity. Harlow: Pearson, 133-142
