Sociotechnical structures, materialist semiotics, and online language learning

Abstract

Based on a study of the digital literacy practices of immigrant Filipino students in Vancouver, this paper focuses on how learners with unequal access to resources engage with different tools to locate information and find opportunities for language learning online. Data was collected through interviews and observations of participants as they used YouTube, Google Search, and Google Translate to decode unfamiliar words and find resources for learning. Framed through a materialist semiotic lens, this study examined how the students negotiated their resources on these platforms to achieve different intentions. Findings show that the way learners navigate these spaces can vary based on the devices they use (laptop vs. mobile phone), the user interface (browser vs. app), and the orientation they choose (landscape vs. portrait). The material dimensions of the screen determine the arrangement of semiotic forms, and varying configurations of devices, interfaces, and orientations shape the information made available to the learner and the digital literacy practices of scrolling, clicking, and shifting tabs. Recognizing how the online environment of a platform can shift across these layers of mediation, this paper conceptualizes the linguistic and semiotic forms that constitute design as sociotechnical structures which provide various learning affordances and constraints.