Multimodal representation in virtual exchange: A social semiotic approach to critical digital literacy

dc.contributor.authorSatar, Müge
dc.contributor.authorHauck, Mirjam
dc.contributor.authorBilki, Zeynep
dc.date.accessioned2023-02-10T23:23:19Z
dc.date.available2023-02-10T23:23:19Z
dc.date.issued2023-02-13
dc.description.abstractFor agentive and influential involvement in online communities, language learners and teachers need to develop critical digital literacy (CDL), conceptualized by Darvin (2017) as an awareness of “how meanings are represented in ways that maintain and reproduce relations of power” (p. 5) and thus privilege some and marginalize others online. Virtual exchange (VE) provides an ideal socio-cultural and socio-semiotic context for fostering CDL (Hauck, 2019) as it is an educational intervention that is—by default—digitally mediated. In this contribution, we examine the employment of semiotic practices for multimodal representation and how they “shape power relations with others” (Bezemer & Jewitt, 2009, p. 1), thereby drawing on a social semiotic approach (Bezemer & Kress, 2016) to CDL (Bilki et al., 2023). Our insights stem from a six-week VE between two higher education institutions in Turkey and the UK, which brought together 48 future English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers. The task-based exchanges yielded a rich dataset which allows us to illustrate how CDL is materially achieved through transformative processes observed in multicultural, multilingual, and multimodal interactions. Our findings speak to Kern’s (2014, 2015) appeal for a relational pedagogy and highlight the need to promote CDL in EFL teaching and teacher education to foster critical reflection on meaning-making conventions while exercising agency to establish powerful online relations with others.
dc.identifier.citationSatar, M., Hauck, M., & Bilki, Z. (2023). Multimodal representation in virtual exchange: A social semiotic approach to critical digital literacy. Language Learning & Technology, 27(2), 72–96. https://hdl.handle.net/10125/73504
dc.identifier.issn1094-3501
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/73504
dc.publisherUniversity of Hawaii National Foreign Language Resource Center
dc.publisherCenter for Language & Technology
dc.rightsCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectMultimodal Representation
dc.subjectVirtual Exchange
dc.subjectSocial Semiotic Approach
dc.subjectCritical Digital Literacy
dc.titleMultimodal representation in virtual exchange: A social semiotic approach to critical digital literacy
dc.typeArticle
dc.type.dcmiText
prism.endingpage96
prism.number2
prism.publicationnameLanguage Learning & Technology
prism.startingpage72
prism.volume27

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