PLENARISTAS
Los siguientes plenaristas han confirmado su participación: |
PLENARY SPEAKERS
We are pleased to announce that the following plenary speakers have accepted to participate in the congress: |
Ann Montemayor-Borsinger: (Instituto Balseiro - Universidad Nacional de Cuyo - Departamento de Humanidades y Estudios Sociales de la Universidad Nacional de Río Negro - Argentina)
Caroline Coffin: (The Open University - United Kingdom)
Cecilia Colombi: (University of California, Davis - California – Estados Unidos)
Susan Hood: (Faculty of Art and Social Sciences University of Technology – Sydney - Australia)
James Martin: (University of Sydney, Australia)
Mary Macken-Horarik (University of New England - NSW - Australia)
Karl Maton: (Department of Sociology and Social Policy - University of Sydney – Australia)
Teresa Oteíza: (Facultad de Letras - Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile - Chile)
Len Unsworth: (Australian Catholic University - Sydney - Australia)
Caroline Coffin: (The Open University - United Kingdom)
Cecilia Colombi: (University of California, Davis - California – Estados Unidos)
Susan Hood: (Faculty of Art and Social Sciences University of Technology – Sydney - Australia)
James Martin: (University of Sydney, Australia)
Mary Macken-Horarik (University of New England - NSW - Australia)
Karl Maton: (Department of Sociology and Social Policy - University of Sydney – Australia)
Teresa Oteíza: (Facultad de Letras - Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile - Chile)
Len Unsworth: (Australian Catholic University - Sydney - Australia)
Lamentamos mucho que el Prof. Christian Matthiessen ha tenido que cancelar su viaje a Mendoza. La Prof. Mary Macken-Horarik estará a cargo de la plenaria de clausura. Estamos muy agradecidos a la Prof. Macken-Horarik por aceptar generosamente nuestra invitación. |
We are very sorry that Prof. Christian Matthiessen has had to cancel his trip to Mendoza. Prof. Mary Macken-Horarik will deliver the closing plenary lecture. We are very grateful to Prof. Macken-Horarik for generously accepting our invitation. |
RESUMEN DE PLENARIAS / PLENARY ABSTRACTS
Ann Montemayor-Borsinger
Contributions of a metafunctional perspective to language education and to language in education
The modular and analytical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics is especially powerful for a delicate consideration of language and its interrelations with education. This presentation examines possible language options taking each of the metafunctions in turn, always in the knowledge that for analytical reasons we are separating strands of meanings that come together. In particular, for interpersonal meanings, I examine in what ways Mood choices change the Tenor of classroom and literary discourse, and, for experiential meanings, how the misrepresentation of concepts in translations of SFL textbooks seriously affects the transmission of the theory. The capacity of SFL to focus on certain strands of meaning according to the genres encountered promotes a deeper understanding of the relations between the lexico-grammatical and discourse-semantic levels. This in turn draws our attention towards the challenges posed by the successful reconstrual of meanings in educational contexts, where producing language that effectively complies with specific social and cultural functions is of great relevance.
Caroline Coffin
A Language as Social Semiotic approach to teaching and learning in higher education
From childhood to adulthood, as students move through different educational contexts they are constantly learning new things through language and are constantly learning to use language in new ways. In other words, they are learning language, learning through language, and learning about language (Halliday, 2004/1980).This paper advances the argument that, within Higher Education (HE), disciplinary and language specialists (and the institutions within which they work) have yet to exploit the full potential of this major insight into the relationship between language and learning.
This paper makes the case that the next 10 years is an opportune time to more fully and more systematically take forward a language and learning agenda at HE level. It is timely because of the accelerating impact of two related forces: globalisation and the digitalization of communication. These two forces are giving rise to complex linguistic interactions in contexts characterised by growth in English medium education, expansion in local multilingual communities, and the multiplication of modes and media of communication. Widening participation agendas and the academicization of areas such as nursing and the caring professions are additional factors in creating a highly differentiated student body with diverse linguistic backgrounds and linguistic repertoires on which to draw in navigating the increasing demands of a complex curriculum. How teachers exploit and develop their own linguistic resources in response to the demands of this context is a particular concern of this paper. The approach put forward - a Language as Social Semiotic (LASS) approach to teaching and learning in higher education – is one that we have been developing at the Open University UK in response to the changing environment. Our aim is to bring together, build on and take forward different (though related) lines of research within SFL. These can be summarised as i) the analysis of disciplinary meaning making, ii) research into students’ dispositions towards meaning making - their ‘semantic orientations’ (Hasan 2011) and iii) research into the way in which language mediates meanings to the mind in teaching and learning interactions. In this process, referred to as ‘semiotic mediation’ (Hasan, 2011, Vygotsky,1978), we are particularly interested in the value of what can be referred to as ‘metasemiotic mediation’.
The different dimensions of a LASS approach depend on successful implementation from the ground up and the top down (see Donohue and Coffin, this conference). Such an approach and enterprise, I argue, is one that needs the collective contribution of the wider SFL community in order to transform understanding of the nature and role of language across the HE curriculum and have a sustainable impact on the teaching and learning that takes place in that environment.
References
Halliday, M.A.K. (2004/1980). Three aspects of children's language development: Learning language, learning through language, learning about language. In J.J. Webster (Ed.), The language of early childhood (pp. 308-326). New York: Continuum.
Hasan, R. (2011). Language and education: Learning and teaching in society. London: Equinox.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cecilia Colombi
El desarrollo de la competencia académica oral en español en los Estados Unidos desde un enfoque funcional
El lenguaje oral es un aspecto fundamental de la comunicación humana y de máxima importancia en el lenguaje académico y profesional. Existe un gran número de investigaciones sobre el desarrollo avanzado de una segunda lengua desde una perspectiva funcional (Achugar y Colombi, 2008; Colombi y Harrington, 2012; Maxim y otros, 2010; etc.) pero hay muy pocos que hayan estudiado el desarrollo de una bi-literacidad oral en la L2 (Achugar, 2009). Este estudio busca identificar las características lingüísticas de la competencia oral en estudiantes avanzados de español como L2 en una universidad del norte de California. Los datos fueron recogidos en una clase de sociolingüística hispánica durante los años 2012 y 2013. Uno de los objetivos de esa clase es el desarrollo de la literacidad oral del español como segunda lengua. Es decir, se pretende mejorar la competencia oral en español a través de presentaciones formales junto con una enseñanza explícita y funcional de las características linguísticas del español académico oral.
El curso donde se recolectó este corpus trata sobre la sociolingüística hispánica en los Estados Unidos y requiere el uso de registros formales avanzados en español para las presentaciones y actividades de micro-enseñanza. Estas actividades fueron cuidadosamente planeadas con materiales diseñados para este fin. Después de cada actividad oral, se les pidió a los estudiantes que evaluaran a sus compañeros a través del wiki y del foro de la clase. Para esta presentación se compararán 8 presentaciones realizadas en clase que fueron filmadas (podcasts) y 8 presentaciones pre-grabadas antes de clase en PowerPoint junto con las evaluaciones escritas de los estudiantes. Se intenta evaluar y comparar el impacto del podcasting (grabación previa a la clase) y de las presentaciones en vivo en el desarrollo de las características léxico-gramaticales del español oral académico. Las características léxico-gramaticales que se utilizan para el análisis y descripción del lenguaje académico oral se clasificaron en tres niveles: a nivel textual: el uso de conectores, pausas, muletillas, “fillers”; a nivel ideacional el uso del lenguaje técnico y académico, junto con el uso de nominalizaciones y metáforas gramáticales ideacionales y a nivel interpersonal: el uso de voces medias, pasivas, las distintas personas gramaticales (yo, tú, él/ella, ellos) junto con el uso de citas. Por otra parte es interesante notar si existen correcciones (backtracking) en las presentaciones o si hay cambio de código o uso de préstamos del inglés.
Finalmente interesa ver el efecto de la enseñanza explícita de las características lingüísticas del español oral avanzado a través de las evaluaciones de los estudiantes. Dentro de los estudios sobre alfabetización avanzada realizados desde una perspectiva funcional y sobre todo en lengua escrita existe un número cada vez mayor de investigaciones que apoyan los métodos de enseñanza explícitos a favor de un desarrollo del lenguaje más eficaz y rápido (Byrnes, 2008; Colombi, 2009; etc.). Por otra parte, hay pocos estudios sobre el uso de pedagogías que ayuden a promover una mayor concientización del lenguaje oral académico en contextos académicos, donde los estudiantes tienen pocas oportunidades de utilizar la segunda lengua en contextos públicos o profesionales (Achugar, 2003)
Bibliografía seleccionada
Achugar, M. (2003). Academic Registers in Spanish in the U.S.: a study of oral texts produced by bilingual speakers in a university graduate program. In A. Roca y M. C. Colombi (Eds.), Mi lengua: Spanish as a heritage language in the United States, research and practice. Georgetown University Press: Washington, D.C. pp. 213-234.
Achugar, M. (2009) Constructing a bilingual professional identity in a graduate classroom. Journal of Language, Identity and Education 8(2&3), 65-87.
Achugar, M. y Colombi, M.C. (2008) Systemic Functional Linguistic explorations into the longitudinal study of advanced capacities: The case of Spanish heritage language learners." In L. Ortega y H. Byrnes, (Eds.), The Longitudinal Study of Advanced L2 Capacities. Routdledge: New York, pp. 36-57.
Byrnes, H. (2008) Articulating a foreign language sequence through content: A look at the culture standards. Language Teaching, 41:1, 103-118.
Colombi, M.C. (2009) A systemic functional approach to teaching Spanish for heritage speakers in the United States. Linguistics and Education, 20:1, 39-49.
Colombi, M.C. y Harrington, J. (2012) Advanced Biliteracy Development in Spanish as a Heritage Language. In S. Beaudrie y M. Fairclough, (Eds.) Spanish as a Heritage Language in the US. Georgetown University Press: Washington, D.C. pp. 241-258.
Maxim, H., Byrnes, H and Norris, J. (2010) Realizing Advanced L2 Writing Development in Collegiate Education: Curricular Design, Pedagogy, Assessment. Monograph Series of the Modern Language Journal.
Susan Hood
The lecturing body and learning to mean in the uncommon-sense ways of different disciplines
The opportunity for students to participate in live lectures is beginning to decline in many institutions of higher education at a time when those institutions are aiming to reduce costs while increasing the numbers of fee-paying international students. Lecture theatres are being designed-out of new and renovated buildings, core content delivered online as MOOCs, or staff encouraged to post their own lecture videos for students to access online prior to participation in tutorials, in a model referred to as ‘flipped learning’. Staff and students are inundated with constellating discourses dichotomising the old as bad with the new as good, most frequently opposing teaching as lecture with learning as collaboration. While this discourse of collaborative learning implies some concern for pedagogy, this appears more often to be based on common-sense assumptions rather than academic engagement in theory and research. Notably missing are discussions of how choices in different modes and modalities, experienced in shared physical spaces or mediated by a screen, offer different potentials for meaning-making, for learning to mean in uncommon-sense ways, and for learning to mean in the particular kinds of uncommon-sense ways that distinguish different kinds of intellectual fields. There is much research yet to be done in this regard.
In this study I draw predominantly on two bodies of theory, the social semiotics of body language and in particular unpublished work by Cleirigh, and Maton’s theorisation of knowledge practices as Legitimation Code Theory (Maton 2014), to focus on live (face-to-face) large group lectures in contrasting intellectual fields. I pay particular attention to variations in the body language of the lecturers as they co-instantiate meanings across verbal, visual and embodied semiotic systems as they interact with the knowledge of their disciplines and with their students co-present in the physical space. Questions concern the kinds of differences that emerge, how they are significant in relation to disciplinary differences, and what implications might concern us for proposed uniform movements towards videoed or filmed lectures.
References:
Cleirigh, C. Unpublished Paper. Gestural And Postural Semiosis: A Systemic-Functional Linguistic Approach To ‘Body Language’.
Maton, K. 2014. Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education. London: Routledge.
James Martin
Revisiting field: ‘semantic density’ in Ancient History and Biology discourse
This presentation forms the second part of a two-part discussion arising from a transdisciplinary research project exploring knowledge building in Australian junior secondary school history and biology – informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). At the 2013 ALSFAL conference in Santiago last October I presented the first part of the discussion, arising from dialogue around the LCT concept ‘semantic gravity’. This involved a reconsideration of SFL treatments of mode and ‘contextual dependency’ from the perspective of different metafunctions. The following proportions arose:
explicitness / textual ::
negotiability / interpersonal ::
iconicity / ideational
//
‘presence’
This second part of the discussion arises from dialogue around the LCT concept of ‘semantic density’ and involves a reconsideration of SFL treatments of field and ‘technicality’, once again from the perspective of different metafunctions. The following proportions will be explored:
symbolization / ideation ::
iconisation / interpersonal ::
aggregation / textual
//
‘mass’
Mary Macken-Horarik
Developing a grammatics ‘good enough’ for school English: Four proposals and some data
In 1991, Michael Halliday outlined his model of language in context arguing that all successful language learning involved engagement with culture, situation, language and text. The large topological space defined by these four parameters and the principles of realization and instantiation by which they are inter-related has given us a linguistically principled means of exploring language in context. In a world where English teachers studied systemic functional linguistics as part of pre-service education, we could use Halliday’s model for tracking language teaching and learning. But in Australia, as in many Anglophone countries, teachers are not required to demonstrate expertise in linguistics before they begin the process of teaching students English. For most English teachers, apart from depending heavily on the knowledge (and the folk linguistics) that comes with being a speaker of a language, linguistics is learned on the job, in the interstices of everyday teaching. In this often crowded and harried professional context, English teachers have to take on and apply quite complex linguistic knowledge ‘on the run’ and ‘in situ’. And this places heavy demands not only on their building of new understandings (about language as system, for example) but on their capacity to turn these into accessible portals to knowledge for their students. Perhaps it is possible that we make teachers’ journeys into culture, situation, language and text more manageable and relevant to their own professional preoccupations and situations.
In this paper, I explore Halliday’s model of language in context from the point of view of school English and a project that aimed to develop a grammatics good enough for school English. Halliday’s grammatics – his theory of grammar – makes available a large and elastic space for exploring language, beginning (as he claimed we needed to begin) with the study of wordings. Apart from promising research in Australia by colleagues like Geoff Williams and Ruth French and David Rose on a larger canvas, to my knowledge mainstream English has been without access to a grammatics founded on systemic functional theory. The problem is that given the conditions of ‘learning on the run’ it is difficult to offer a principled introduction to systemic functional notions like system, structure, rank, metafunctions, stratification and instantiation. What might a grammatics of the middle – the territory in which teachers operate – look like? Could we develop a grammatics that offered secure purchase on language, albeit with a limited set of systems? Could we explore in a metafunctionally limited way, the relationship between metafunctions and cultural domains like literary theory? Could we draw on the rhetorical power of a meaning-based grammatics to improve writing – at the level of wordings? What aspects of grammatics are most portable for English - enabling transfer to new texts and new modes?
The paper adopts the metaphor of different kinds of journey to investigate the affordances of a grammatics attuned to the intermediate territories inside Halliday’s model of the linguistic ‘world’. The proposal is that a grammatics adequate to English needs to encourage ‘desire’ in students (akin to what Williams calls ‘serious play’), to help learners make the long climb into the ‘discipline’ of literate discourse, to explore the complex ‘design’ of language and to foster ‘development’ of their literacy repertoires. Drawing on material from teacher and student interviews collected during a large project on grammatics in English involving Kristina Love, Carmel Sandiford and Len Unsworth, I reflect on the conditions of a 'good enough' grammatics – one that is relevant to tasks of English, supports secure if partial understanding of language (semiotic resources more generally), generative for composition and portable across different texts and contexts. Like 'good enough' parents, who have to ferry their children through to adulthood more or less equipped for life, teachers need enough knowledge about the semiotic environment and its navigation to enable learners to negotiate it effectively. This is both more and less than any official curriculum can anticipate, no matter how good. English teaching, like parenting, is a progressive achievement - partial, interested, sometimes fitful and always local. The data from a project on grammatics in English (2011-2013) provides insights into the value of conversation with teachers and their students about how they manage knowledge building in local contexts in Years 4, 6, 8 and 10. The paper concludes with reflections on kinds of linguistic knowledge that ordinary devoted teachers in full-time work need if they are to support language learning in their students.
Karl Maton
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND: Using Legitimation Code Theory and systemic functional linguistics together to explore education
There is a long history of intellectual exchange between systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and code theory, the sociological approach originated by Basil Bernstein. In recent years, this exchange has entered a new phase of interdisciplinary collaboration. In addition to the dialogue and mutual inspiration that have been enjoyed since the 1960s, scholars from these traditions are now working closely together on shared data from empirical research into education. This new phase involves Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), an approach that extends and integrates the framework inherited from Bernstein, and which has been rapidly adopted as a basis for research across the disciplinary map. Such close collaboration is leading to exciting theoretical innovations in both fields, as well as to the emergence of a generation of younger scholars equally at home in both theories. In this paper I discuss the nature of this collaboration, illustrate the value of the ideas that are being developed, and show how the challenges it poses are being met.
I begin by briefly sketching out the background to our current phase of collaboration. I then discuss recent work using both LCT and SFL together to analyse education. Specifically, I focus on the ‘Semantics’ dimension of LCT, which explores knowledge practices in terms of semantic gravity and semantic density (or context-dependence and condensation of meaning). Drawing on a wide range of research, I discuss how studies of student assessment, classroom practices, and research writing are showing the significance of semantic waves (recurrent shifts in context-dependence and condensation) for achievement and knowledge-building. In terms of classroom practice, I focus on two major interdisciplinary research projects that explore how secondary schooling enables and constrains the building of knowledge through time. I discuss theoretical developments this collaborative work has introduced, and questions it raises. In particular, I focus on challenges posed to LCT by analysing data at the fine-grained level common to SFL. I illustrate how these challenges are being met by detailing a sophisticated typology for enacting ‘semantic density’ to explore words, word groups, clauses and sequences. Finally, I suggest that the ability of LCT and SFL to fruitfully collaborate rests on three key shared features: realism, relationalism, and risk. I conclude by considering why using LCT and SFL together is offering greater explanatory power for understanding educational practices, and how it may develop further in future.
Teresa Oteíza
Des/legitimación de las memorias históricas: valoración en discursos intermodales
La construcción de las memorias históricas constituye un espacio dinámico y subjetivo que no sólo varía junto con los cambios políticos y culturales de una sociedad, sino que también transforma y determina la interpretación del pasado, del presente y del futuro de una nación (Achugar 2008; Ricoeur 2010; Wodak 2011). Las memorias son consideradas como formas de acción mediadas por herramientas culturales (Wertsch 2002), lo que ha implicado, en el caso chileno, la legitimación y deslegitimación de los discursos del pasado reciente que circulan en la sociedad como memorias emblemáticas y contra memorias (Stern 2006; 2014). Este trabajo se centra en la negociación de las memorias de la violación a los derechos humanos y de represión política n y memoria ((ento de la verdad, justicia, reparaci el Estado por la reconciacicisterio de Educacilidad, la dimensi un enfoque dpresentados en textos escolares de historia oficiales (2005-2013) para primaria y secundaria en Chile. Estos textos están alineados con las iniciativas y políticas del Estado por el establecimiento de la verdad, justicia, reparación y memoria, las cuales se han caracterizado por un énfasis en la reconciliación nacional, la despolitización de la memoria y la evitación del conflicto. ¿Cómo se construye intermodalmente la evidencia histórica en discursos pedagógicos oficiales del pasado reciente de la violación a los DDHH en Chile? ¿Cuál es el rol de los modos visuales, en particular de las fotografías consideradas como fuentes primarias, en la constucción de la evidencia histórica? ¿De qué manera son relevantes para el discurso pedagógico de la historia los hitos de memoria, justicia y verdad propiciados desde el Estado y de otras fuentes subalternas de memorias cotidianas? El estudio de las des/legitimaciones de las memorias históricas se realiza desde los estudios multimodales y críticos del discurso (Kress y Van Leuween 2006; van Leeuwen 2008; Djonov y Zhao 2014) y la incorporación de categorías del modelo de valoración (Martin y White 2005) para explicar cómo se construye la orientación de los puntos de vista en ambos modos semióticos e intersemióticamente (Painter, Martin & Unsworth 2013; Economou 2009). De este modo, se explora el sistema de ACTITUD, con la inclusión de una reelaboración del sistema de APRECIACIÓN (Oteíza y Pinuer 2012; 2013) para dar cuenta de procesos y eventos en discursos históricos desde un análisis intermodal. Asimismo, y de manera particular, se analizan las posibilidades de construcción intermodal del sistema de COMPROMISO en relación con la dimensión de la evidencialidad histórica. Algunos resultados preliminares nos indican que la evidencialidad descansa en ambos modos y con un rol especial del sistema de GRADACIÓN como Fuerza. Los espacios semióticos verbales/visuales interactúan generando una distancia social y una representación más orientada hacia el conocimiento, con baja presencia de actores humanos. Las fotografías conceptuales de memoriales, edificios de gobierno y museos de la memoria funcionan como fuentes primarias que co-construyen un discurso objetivado y ritualizado. Se elimina el conflicto y la violencia y se privilegian los ritos de denuncia y de reparación social, lo que resulta concordante con las políticas de despolitización de la memoria del país.
Bibliografía
Achugar, M. (2008). What we remember. The construction of memory in military discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Djonov, E. y S. Zhao (Eds.) (2014). Critical Multimodal Studies of Popular Culture. New York: Routledge.
Economou, D. (2009). Photos in the news: appraisal of visual semiosis and visual verbal intersemiosis (PhD Doctoral), University of Sydney.
Kress, G. y T. Van Leeuwen. (2006). Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design. London/New York: Routledge.
Martin, J.R. y P. White. (2005). The Language of Evaluation. Appraisal in English. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Oteíza, T. y C. Pinuer (2012). Prosodia valorativa: construcción de eventos y procesos en el discurso de la historia”. Discurso y Sociedad, 6(2): 418-446.
Oteíza, T. y C. Pinuer (2013). Valorative Prosody and the symbolic construction of time in historical recent national discourses, Discourse Studies 15(1): 43-64.
Painter, C., J.R. Martin y L. Unsworth (2013). Reading Visual Narratives. Image Analysis of Children’s Picture Books. Lancaster/Bristol: Equinox.
Ricoeur, P. (2010). Memoria, historia y olvido. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Stern, S. (2006). Remembering Pinochet’s Chile. On the Eve of London 1998. Durkam/ London: Duke University Press.
Stern, S. (2013). Luchando por mentes y corazones. Las batallas de la memoria en el Chile de Pinochet. Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales.
Wertsch, J. (2002). Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Van Leeuwen, T. (2008). Discourse and Practice. New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wodak, R. (2011). La historia en construcción/La construcción de la historia. La “Wehrmacht alemana” en los recuerdos colectivos e individuales de Austria. Discurso & Sociedad 5(1): 160-195.
Len Unsworth
Elevating empathy in animated movie adaptations of picture books: Exploring media-specific orientations to focalization, social distance and attitude
Different styles of character drawing in picture books have been described as minimalist, generic and naturalistic and recognized as key signifiers of a system of reader alignment or PATHOS. The non-realistic, minimalist style in picture books is associated with an ‘appreciative’, detached observer view of characters, the generic (realistic but not naturalistic) style encourages empathy where the reader ‘stands in the character’s shoes’, while the naturalistic style supports more personalized reader engagement with characters as individuals (Painter, Martin, & Unsworth, 2013).With the minimalist character depiction style in picture books, there is often the concomitant use of relatively long shots and frequent oblique angles, together with observe rather than contact choices from focalization options – creating the ‘appreciative’ reader stance of relative distance from which story events and characters are observed and lessons learned.
But in movie versions of minimalist style picture books there is a shift in PATHOS to a more empathetic interpretive stance constructed through different choices in focalization, social distance and attitude, as well as in the communication of affect, notwithstanding essentially maintaining in the movie the minimalist character depiction style of the picture books. The nature and interpretive significance of this interpersonal shifts examined in animated movie adaptations of picture books including Where the Wild Things Are (Deitch, 1973; Sendak, 1962), traditional Chinese stories such as The Little Stone Lion (Xiong, 2007) and Pangsao Visits Her Mother (He & Bing, 2010), the recent Oscar-winning animation of The Lost Thing (Ruhemann & Tan, 2010; Tan, 2000), and the movie and graphic novel version of the popular children’s novel, Coraline (Gaiman & Russell, 2008; Selick, 2009).
Implications for refining existing systems of focalization choices and their realizations in static and moving images are discussed in relation to issues such as the interaction of social distance, horizontal and vertical angle with rear view portrayal of a character such that the audience point of view is positioned ‘along with’ that of the character, and the subtlety of depicting just the part of the body that could be seen by the focalising character(usually the hands or feet out in front of the unseen body) as a means of inscribing the audience viewpoint as that of the focalizing character. The paper will conclude by briefly emphasizing the significance of further explicating systematic accounts of such meaning-making resources of still and moving images to support the development of explicit multimodal literacy pedagogies.
References:
Deitch, G (Director. (1973). Where the Wild Things Are. In M. Schindel (Producer). US: Weston Woods.
Gaiman, N., & Russell, P. C. (2008). Coraline: The Graphic Novel. London: Bloomsbury.
Deitch, G. (Director). (1973). Where the Wild Things Are. In M. Schindel (Producer). Us: Weston Woods.
Gaiman, N., & Russell, P. C. (2008). Coraline: The Graphic Novel. London: Bloomsbury.
He, Y., & Bing, C. (2010). Pangsao returned to see her mother. Yianjin City: New Buds Publishing House.
Painter, C., Martin, J. R., & Unsworth, L. (2013). Reading Visual Narratives: Image Analysis of Children’s Picture Books. London: Equinox.
Ruhemann, A., & Tan, S. (Writers). (2010). The Lost Thing [DVD/PAL]. Australia: Madman Entertainment.
Selick, H (Director). (2009). Coraline. C. Jennings, Linden, H., Mechanic, B.
Sandell, M. Selick, H (Producers). Universal City, USA: Focus Pictures.
Sendak, M. (1962) Where the Wild Things Are. London: The Bodley Head.
Tan, S. (2000). The Lost Thing. Sydney: Hachette.
Xiong, L. (2007). The Little Stone Lion. Jinan City, Shandong Province, China: Tomorrow Publishing House.
Contributions of a metafunctional perspective to language education and to language in education
The modular and analytical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics is especially powerful for a delicate consideration of language and its interrelations with education. This presentation examines possible language options taking each of the metafunctions in turn, always in the knowledge that for analytical reasons we are separating strands of meanings that come together. In particular, for interpersonal meanings, I examine in what ways Mood choices change the Tenor of classroom and literary discourse, and, for experiential meanings, how the misrepresentation of concepts in translations of SFL textbooks seriously affects the transmission of the theory. The capacity of SFL to focus on certain strands of meaning according to the genres encountered promotes a deeper understanding of the relations between the lexico-grammatical and discourse-semantic levels. This in turn draws our attention towards the challenges posed by the successful reconstrual of meanings in educational contexts, where producing language that effectively complies with specific social and cultural functions is of great relevance.
Caroline Coffin
A Language as Social Semiotic approach to teaching and learning in higher education
From childhood to adulthood, as students move through different educational contexts they are constantly learning new things through language and are constantly learning to use language in new ways. In other words, they are learning language, learning through language, and learning about language (Halliday, 2004/1980).This paper advances the argument that, within Higher Education (HE), disciplinary and language specialists (and the institutions within which they work) have yet to exploit the full potential of this major insight into the relationship between language and learning.
This paper makes the case that the next 10 years is an opportune time to more fully and more systematically take forward a language and learning agenda at HE level. It is timely because of the accelerating impact of two related forces: globalisation and the digitalization of communication. These two forces are giving rise to complex linguistic interactions in contexts characterised by growth in English medium education, expansion in local multilingual communities, and the multiplication of modes and media of communication. Widening participation agendas and the academicization of areas such as nursing and the caring professions are additional factors in creating a highly differentiated student body with diverse linguistic backgrounds and linguistic repertoires on which to draw in navigating the increasing demands of a complex curriculum. How teachers exploit and develop their own linguistic resources in response to the demands of this context is a particular concern of this paper. The approach put forward - a Language as Social Semiotic (LASS) approach to teaching and learning in higher education – is one that we have been developing at the Open University UK in response to the changing environment. Our aim is to bring together, build on and take forward different (though related) lines of research within SFL. These can be summarised as i) the analysis of disciplinary meaning making, ii) research into students’ dispositions towards meaning making - their ‘semantic orientations’ (Hasan 2011) and iii) research into the way in which language mediates meanings to the mind in teaching and learning interactions. In this process, referred to as ‘semiotic mediation’ (Hasan, 2011, Vygotsky,1978), we are particularly interested in the value of what can be referred to as ‘metasemiotic mediation’.
The different dimensions of a LASS approach depend on successful implementation from the ground up and the top down (see Donohue and Coffin, this conference). Such an approach and enterprise, I argue, is one that needs the collective contribution of the wider SFL community in order to transform understanding of the nature and role of language across the HE curriculum and have a sustainable impact on the teaching and learning that takes place in that environment.
References
Halliday, M.A.K. (2004/1980). Three aspects of children's language development: Learning language, learning through language, learning about language. In J.J. Webster (Ed.), The language of early childhood (pp. 308-326). New York: Continuum.
Hasan, R. (2011). Language and education: Learning and teaching in society. London: Equinox.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cecilia Colombi
El desarrollo de la competencia académica oral en español en los Estados Unidos desde un enfoque funcional
El lenguaje oral es un aspecto fundamental de la comunicación humana y de máxima importancia en el lenguaje académico y profesional. Existe un gran número de investigaciones sobre el desarrollo avanzado de una segunda lengua desde una perspectiva funcional (Achugar y Colombi, 2008; Colombi y Harrington, 2012; Maxim y otros, 2010; etc.) pero hay muy pocos que hayan estudiado el desarrollo de una bi-literacidad oral en la L2 (Achugar, 2009). Este estudio busca identificar las características lingüísticas de la competencia oral en estudiantes avanzados de español como L2 en una universidad del norte de California. Los datos fueron recogidos en una clase de sociolingüística hispánica durante los años 2012 y 2013. Uno de los objetivos de esa clase es el desarrollo de la literacidad oral del español como segunda lengua. Es decir, se pretende mejorar la competencia oral en español a través de presentaciones formales junto con una enseñanza explícita y funcional de las características linguísticas del español académico oral.
El curso donde se recolectó este corpus trata sobre la sociolingüística hispánica en los Estados Unidos y requiere el uso de registros formales avanzados en español para las presentaciones y actividades de micro-enseñanza. Estas actividades fueron cuidadosamente planeadas con materiales diseñados para este fin. Después de cada actividad oral, se les pidió a los estudiantes que evaluaran a sus compañeros a través del wiki y del foro de la clase. Para esta presentación se compararán 8 presentaciones realizadas en clase que fueron filmadas (podcasts) y 8 presentaciones pre-grabadas antes de clase en PowerPoint junto con las evaluaciones escritas de los estudiantes. Se intenta evaluar y comparar el impacto del podcasting (grabación previa a la clase) y de las presentaciones en vivo en el desarrollo de las características léxico-gramaticales del español oral académico. Las características léxico-gramaticales que se utilizan para el análisis y descripción del lenguaje académico oral se clasificaron en tres niveles: a nivel textual: el uso de conectores, pausas, muletillas, “fillers”; a nivel ideacional el uso del lenguaje técnico y académico, junto con el uso de nominalizaciones y metáforas gramáticales ideacionales y a nivel interpersonal: el uso de voces medias, pasivas, las distintas personas gramaticales (yo, tú, él/ella, ellos) junto con el uso de citas. Por otra parte es interesante notar si existen correcciones (backtracking) en las presentaciones o si hay cambio de código o uso de préstamos del inglés.
Finalmente interesa ver el efecto de la enseñanza explícita de las características lingüísticas del español oral avanzado a través de las evaluaciones de los estudiantes. Dentro de los estudios sobre alfabetización avanzada realizados desde una perspectiva funcional y sobre todo en lengua escrita existe un número cada vez mayor de investigaciones que apoyan los métodos de enseñanza explícitos a favor de un desarrollo del lenguaje más eficaz y rápido (Byrnes, 2008; Colombi, 2009; etc.). Por otra parte, hay pocos estudios sobre el uso de pedagogías que ayuden a promover una mayor concientización del lenguaje oral académico en contextos académicos, donde los estudiantes tienen pocas oportunidades de utilizar la segunda lengua en contextos públicos o profesionales (Achugar, 2003)
Bibliografía seleccionada
Achugar, M. (2003). Academic Registers in Spanish in the U.S.: a study of oral texts produced by bilingual speakers in a university graduate program. In A. Roca y M. C. Colombi (Eds.), Mi lengua: Spanish as a heritage language in the United States, research and practice. Georgetown University Press: Washington, D.C. pp. 213-234.
Achugar, M. (2009) Constructing a bilingual professional identity in a graduate classroom. Journal of Language, Identity and Education 8(2&3), 65-87.
Achugar, M. y Colombi, M.C. (2008) Systemic Functional Linguistic explorations into the longitudinal study of advanced capacities: The case of Spanish heritage language learners." In L. Ortega y H. Byrnes, (Eds.), The Longitudinal Study of Advanced L2 Capacities. Routdledge: New York, pp. 36-57.
Byrnes, H. (2008) Articulating a foreign language sequence through content: A look at the culture standards. Language Teaching, 41:1, 103-118.
Colombi, M.C. (2009) A systemic functional approach to teaching Spanish for heritage speakers in the United States. Linguistics and Education, 20:1, 39-49.
Colombi, M.C. y Harrington, J. (2012) Advanced Biliteracy Development in Spanish as a Heritage Language. In S. Beaudrie y M. Fairclough, (Eds.) Spanish as a Heritage Language in the US. Georgetown University Press: Washington, D.C. pp. 241-258.
Maxim, H., Byrnes, H and Norris, J. (2010) Realizing Advanced L2 Writing Development in Collegiate Education: Curricular Design, Pedagogy, Assessment. Monograph Series of the Modern Language Journal.
Susan Hood
The lecturing body and learning to mean in the uncommon-sense ways of different disciplines
The opportunity for students to participate in live lectures is beginning to decline in many institutions of higher education at a time when those institutions are aiming to reduce costs while increasing the numbers of fee-paying international students. Lecture theatres are being designed-out of new and renovated buildings, core content delivered online as MOOCs, or staff encouraged to post their own lecture videos for students to access online prior to participation in tutorials, in a model referred to as ‘flipped learning’. Staff and students are inundated with constellating discourses dichotomising the old as bad with the new as good, most frequently opposing teaching as lecture with learning as collaboration. While this discourse of collaborative learning implies some concern for pedagogy, this appears more often to be based on common-sense assumptions rather than academic engagement in theory and research. Notably missing are discussions of how choices in different modes and modalities, experienced in shared physical spaces or mediated by a screen, offer different potentials for meaning-making, for learning to mean in uncommon-sense ways, and for learning to mean in the particular kinds of uncommon-sense ways that distinguish different kinds of intellectual fields. There is much research yet to be done in this regard.
In this study I draw predominantly on two bodies of theory, the social semiotics of body language and in particular unpublished work by Cleirigh, and Maton’s theorisation of knowledge practices as Legitimation Code Theory (Maton 2014), to focus on live (face-to-face) large group lectures in contrasting intellectual fields. I pay particular attention to variations in the body language of the lecturers as they co-instantiate meanings across verbal, visual and embodied semiotic systems as they interact with the knowledge of their disciplines and with their students co-present in the physical space. Questions concern the kinds of differences that emerge, how they are significant in relation to disciplinary differences, and what implications might concern us for proposed uniform movements towards videoed or filmed lectures.
References:
Cleirigh, C. Unpublished Paper. Gestural And Postural Semiosis: A Systemic-Functional Linguistic Approach To ‘Body Language’.
Maton, K. 2014. Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education. London: Routledge.
James Martin
Revisiting field: ‘semantic density’ in Ancient History and Biology discourse
This presentation forms the second part of a two-part discussion arising from a transdisciplinary research project exploring knowledge building in Australian junior secondary school history and biology – informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). At the 2013 ALSFAL conference in Santiago last October I presented the first part of the discussion, arising from dialogue around the LCT concept ‘semantic gravity’. This involved a reconsideration of SFL treatments of mode and ‘contextual dependency’ from the perspective of different metafunctions. The following proportions arose:
explicitness / textual ::
negotiability / interpersonal ::
iconicity / ideational
//
‘presence’
This second part of the discussion arises from dialogue around the LCT concept of ‘semantic density’ and involves a reconsideration of SFL treatments of field and ‘technicality’, once again from the perspective of different metafunctions. The following proportions will be explored:
symbolization / ideation ::
iconisation / interpersonal ::
aggregation / textual
//
‘mass’
Mary Macken-Horarik
Developing a grammatics ‘good enough’ for school English: Four proposals and some data
In 1991, Michael Halliday outlined his model of language in context arguing that all successful language learning involved engagement with culture, situation, language and text. The large topological space defined by these four parameters and the principles of realization and instantiation by which they are inter-related has given us a linguistically principled means of exploring language in context. In a world where English teachers studied systemic functional linguistics as part of pre-service education, we could use Halliday’s model for tracking language teaching and learning. But in Australia, as in many Anglophone countries, teachers are not required to demonstrate expertise in linguistics before they begin the process of teaching students English. For most English teachers, apart from depending heavily on the knowledge (and the folk linguistics) that comes with being a speaker of a language, linguistics is learned on the job, in the interstices of everyday teaching. In this often crowded and harried professional context, English teachers have to take on and apply quite complex linguistic knowledge ‘on the run’ and ‘in situ’. And this places heavy demands not only on their building of new understandings (about language as system, for example) but on their capacity to turn these into accessible portals to knowledge for their students. Perhaps it is possible that we make teachers’ journeys into culture, situation, language and text more manageable and relevant to their own professional preoccupations and situations.
In this paper, I explore Halliday’s model of language in context from the point of view of school English and a project that aimed to develop a grammatics good enough for school English. Halliday’s grammatics – his theory of grammar – makes available a large and elastic space for exploring language, beginning (as he claimed we needed to begin) with the study of wordings. Apart from promising research in Australia by colleagues like Geoff Williams and Ruth French and David Rose on a larger canvas, to my knowledge mainstream English has been without access to a grammatics founded on systemic functional theory. The problem is that given the conditions of ‘learning on the run’ it is difficult to offer a principled introduction to systemic functional notions like system, structure, rank, metafunctions, stratification and instantiation. What might a grammatics of the middle – the territory in which teachers operate – look like? Could we develop a grammatics that offered secure purchase on language, albeit with a limited set of systems? Could we explore in a metafunctionally limited way, the relationship between metafunctions and cultural domains like literary theory? Could we draw on the rhetorical power of a meaning-based grammatics to improve writing – at the level of wordings? What aspects of grammatics are most portable for English - enabling transfer to new texts and new modes?
The paper adopts the metaphor of different kinds of journey to investigate the affordances of a grammatics attuned to the intermediate territories inside Halliday’s model of the linguistic ‘world’. The proposal is that a grammatics adequate to English needs to encourage ‘desire’ in students (akin to what Williams calls ‘serious play’), to help learners make the long climb into the ‘discipline’ of literate discourse, to explore the complex ‘design’ of language and to foster ‘development’ of their literacy repertoires. Drawing on material from teacher and student interviews collected during a large project on grammatics in English involving Kristina Love, Carmel Sandiford and Len Unsworth, I reflect on the conditions of a 'good enough' grammatics – one that is relevant to tasks of English, supports secure if partial understanding of language (semiotic resources more generally), generative for composition and portable across different texts and contexts. Like 'good enough' parents, who have to ferry their children through to adulthood more or less equipped for life, teachers need enough knowledge about the semiotic environment and its navigation to enable learners to negotiate it effectively. This is both more and less than any official curriculum can anticipate, no matter how good. English teaching, like parenting, is a progressive achievement - partial, interested, sometimes fitful and always local. The data from a project on grammatics in English (2011-2013) provides insights into the value of conversation with teachers and their students about how they manage knowledge building in local contexts in Years 4, 6, 8 and 10. The paper concludes with reflections on kinds of linguistic knowledge that ordinary devoted teachers in full-time work need if they are to support language learning in their students.
Karl Maton
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND: Using Legitimation Code Theory and systemic functional linguistics together to explore education
There is a long history of intellectual exchange between systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and code theory, the sociological approach originated by Basil Bernstein. In recent years, this exchange has entered a new phase of interdisciplinary collaboration. In addition to the dialogue and mutual inspiration that have been enjoyed since the 1960s, scholars from these traditions are now working closely together on shared data from empirical research into education. This new phase involves Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), an approach that extends and integrates the framework inherited from Bernstein, and which has been rapidly adopted as a basis for research across the disciplinary map. Such close collaboration is leading to exciting theoretical innovations in both fields, as well as to the emergence of a generation of younger scholars equally at home in both theories. In this paper I discuss the nature of this collaboration, illustrate the value of the ideas that are being developed, and show how the challenges it poses are being met.
I begin by briefly sketching out the background to our current phase of collaboration. I then discuss recent work using both LCT and SFL together to analyse education. Specifically, I focus on the ‘Semantics’ dimension of LCT, which explores knowledge practices in terms of semantic gravity and semantic density (or context-dependence and condensation of meaning). Drawing on a wide range of research, I discuss how studies of student assessment, classroom practices, and research writing are showing the significance of semantic waves (recurrent shifts in context-dependence and condensation) for achievement and knowledge-building. In terms of classroom practice, I focus on two major interdisciplinary research projects that explore how secondary schooling enables and constrains the building of knowledge through time. I discuss theoretical developments this collaborative work has introduced, and questions it raises. In particular, I focus on challenges posed to LCT by analysing data at the fine-grained level common to SFL. I illustrate how these challenges are being met by detailing a sophisticated typology for enacting ‘semantic density’ to explore words, word groups, clauses and sequences. Finally, I suggest that the ability of LCT and SFL to fruitfully collaborate rests on three key shared features: realism, relationalism, and risk. I conclude by considering why using LCT and SFL together is offering greater explanatory power for understanding educational practices, and how it may develop further in future.
Teresa Oteíza
Des/legitimación de las memorias históricas: valoración en discursos intermodales
La construcción de las memorias históricas constituye un espacio dinámico y subjetivo que no sólo varía junto con los cambios políticos y culturales de una sociedad, sino que también transforma y determina la interpretación del pasado, del presente y del futuro de una nación (Achugar 2008; Ricoeur 2010; Wodak 2011). Las memorias son consideradas como formas de acción mediadas por herramientas culturales (Wertsch 2002), lo que ha implicado, en el caso chileno, la legitimación y deslegitimación de los discursos del pasado reciente que circulan en la sociedad como memorias emblemáticas y contra memorias (Stern 2006; 2014). Este trabajo se centra en la negociación de las memorias de la violación a los derechos humanos y de represión política n y memoria ((ento de la verdad, justicia, reparaci el Estado por la reconciacicisterio de Educacilidad, la dimensi un enfoque dpresentados en textos escolares de historia oficiales (2005-2013) para primaria y secundaria en Chile. Estos textos están alineados con las iniciativas y políticas del Estado por el establecimiento de la verdad, justicia, reparación y memoria, las cuales se han caracterizado por un énfasis en la reconciliación nacional, la despolitización de la memoria y la evitación del conflicto. ¿Cómo se construye intermodalmente la evidencia histórica en discursos pedagógicos oficiales del pasado reciente de la violación a los DDHH en Chile? ¿Cuál es el rol de los modos visuales, en particular de las fotografías consideradas como fuentes primarias, en la constucción de la evidencia histórica? ¿De qué manera son relevantes para el discurso pedagógico de la historia los hitos de memoria, justicia y verdad propiciados desde el Estado y de otras fuentes subalternas de memorias cotidianas? El estudio de las des/legitimaciones de las memorias históricas se realiza desde los estudios multimodales y críticos del discurso (Kress y Van Leuween 2006; van Leeuwen 2008; Djonov y Zhao 2014) y la incorporación de categorías del modelo de valoración (Martin y White 2005) para explicar cómo se construye la orientación de los puntos de vista en ambos modos semióticos e intersemióticamente (Painter, Martin & Unsworth 2013; Economou 2009). De este modo, se explora el sistema de ACTITUD, con la inclusión de una reelaboración del sistema de APRECIACIÓN (Oteíza y Pinuer 2012; 2013) para dar cuenta de procesos y eventos en discursos históricos desde un análisis intermodal. Asimismo, y de manera particular, se analizan las posibilidades de construcción intermodal del sistema de COMPROMISO en relación con la dimensión de la evidencialidad histórica. Algunos resultados preliminares nos indican que la evidencialidad descansa en ambos modos y con un rol especial del sistema de GRADACIÓN como Fuerza. Los espacios semióticos verbales/visuales interactúan generando una distancia social y una representación más orientada hacia el conocimiento, con baja presencia de actores humanos. Las fotografías conceptuales de memoriales, edificios de gobierno y museos de la memoria funcionan como fuentes primarias que co-construyen un discurso objetivado y ritualizado. Se elimina el conflicto y la violencia y se privilegian los ritos de denuncia y de reparación social, lo que resulta concordante con las políticas de despolitización de la memoria del país.
Bibliografía
Achugar, M. (2008). What we remember. The construction of memory in military discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Djonov, E. y S. Zhao (Eds.) (2014). Critical Multimodal Studies of Popular Culture. New York: Routledge.
Economou, D. (2009). Photos in the news: appraisal of visual semiosis and visual verbal intersemiosis (PhD Doctoral), University of Sydney.
Kress, G. y T. Van Leeuwen. (2006). Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design. London/New York: Routledge.
Martin, J.R. y P. White. (2005). The Language of Evaluation. Appraisal in English. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Oteíza, T. y C. Pinuer (2012). Prosodia valorativa: construcción de eventos y procesos en el discurso de la historia”. Discurso y Sociedad, 6(2): 418-446.
Oteíza, T. y C. Pinuer (2013). Valorative Prosody and the symbolic construction of time in historical recent national discourses, Discourse Studies 15(1): 43-64.
Painter, C., J.R. Martin y L. Unsworth (2013). Reading Visual Narratives. Image Analysis of Children’s Picture Books. Lancaster/Bristol: Equinox.
Ricoeur, P. (2010). Memoria, historia y olvido. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Stern, S. (2006). Remembering Pinochet’s Chile. On the Eve of London 1998. Durkam/ London: Duke University Press.
Stern, S. (2013). Luchando por mentes y corazones. Las batallas de la memoria en el Chile de Pinochet. Santiago: Ediciones Universidad Diego Portales.
Wertsch, J. (2002). Voices of Collective Remembering. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Van Leeuwen, T. (2008). Discourse and Practice. New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wodak, R. (2011). La historia en construcción/La construcción de la historia. La “Wehrmacht alemana” en los recuerdos colectivos e individuales de Austria. Discurso & Sociedad 5(1): 160-195.
Len Unsworth
Elevating empathy in animated movie adaptations of picture books: Exploring media-specific orientations to focalization, social distance and attitude
Different styles of character drawing in picture books have been described as minimalist, generic and naturalistic and recognized as key signifiers of a system of reader alignment or PATHOS. The non-realistic, minimalist style in picture books is associated with an ‘appreciative’, detached observer view of characters, the generic (realistic but not naturalistic) style encourages empathy where the reader ‘stands in the character’s shoes’, while the naturalistic style supports more personalized reader engagement with characters as individuals (Painter, Martin, & Unsworth, 2013).With the minimalist character depiction style in picture books, there is often the concomitant use of relatively long shots and frequent oblique angles, together with observe rather than contact choices from focalization options – creating the ‘appreciative’ reader stance of relative distance from which story events and characters are observed and lessons learned.
But in movie versions of minimalist style picture books there is a shift in PATHOS to a more empathetic interpretive stance constructed through different choices in focalization, social distance and attitude, as well as in the communication of affect, notwithstanding essentially maintaining in the movie the minimalist character depiction style of the picture books. The nature and interpretive significance of this interpersonal shifts examined in animated movie adaptations of picture books including Where the Wild Things Are (Deitch, 1973; Sendak, 1962), traditional Chinese stories such as The Little Stone Lion (Xiong, 2007) and Pangsao Visits Her Mother (He & Bing, 2010), the recent Oscar-winning animation of The Lost Thing (Ruhemann & Tan, 2010; Tan, 2000), and the movie and graphic novel version of the popular children’s novel, Coraline (Gaiman & Russell, 2008; Selick, 2009).
Implications for refining existing systems of focalization choices and their realizations in static and moving images are discussed in relation to issues such as the interaction of social distance, horizontal and vertical angle with rear view portrayal of a character such that the audience point of view is positioned ‘along with’ that of the character, and the subtlety of depicting just the part of the body that could be seen by the focalising character(usually the hands or feet out in front of the unseen body) as a means of inscribing the audience viewpoint as that of the focalizing character. The paper will conclude by briefly emphasizing the significance of further explicating systematic accounts of such meaning-making resources of still and moving images to support the development of explicit multimodal literacy pedagogies.
References:
Deitch, G (Director. (1973). Where the Wild Things Are. In M. Schindel (Producer). US: Weston Woods.
Gaiman, N., & Russell, P. C. (2008). Coraline: The Graphic Novel. London: Bloomsbury.
Deitch, G. (Director). (1973). Where the Wild Things Are. In M. Schindel (Producer). Us: Weston Woods.
Gaiman, N., & Russell, P. C. (2008). Coraline: The Graphic Novel. London: Bloomsbury.
He, Y., & Bing, C. (2010). Pangsao returned to see her mother. Yianjin City: New Buds Publishing House.
Painter, C., Martin, J. R., & Unsworth, L. (2013). Reading Visual Narratives: Image Analysis of Children’s Picture Books. London: Equinox.
Ruhemann, A., & Tan, S. (Writers). (2010). The Lost Thing [DVD/PAL]. Australia: Madman Entertainment.
Selick, H (Director). (2009). Coraline. C. Jennings, Linden, H., Mechanic, B.
Sandell, M. Selick, H (Producers). Universal City, USA: Focus Pictures.
Sendak, M. (1962) Where the Wild Things Are. London: The Bodley Head.
Tan, S. (2000). The Lost Thing. Sydney: Hachette.
Xiong, L. (2007). The Little Stone Lion. Jinan City, Shandong Province, China: Tomorrow Publishing House.