Hi Johnny, nice mindmap! I appreciate how you emphasized trans-semiotizing and re-sourcing in the language classroom, highlighting the need to move beyond decolonial perspectives to create inclusive spaces for our students. Additionally, I like that you emphasized the importance of bringing diverse voices and knowledges to our classroom, allowing our students (and us) to feel represented. As teachers, I think it’s important to focus on our superdiverse classrooms, keeping in mind our students’ diverse identities and different semiotic resources. However, in my opinion, the difficult part is not identifying these differences but addressing them. How do you think we should do it? In my case, I sometimes bring materials that represent cultures or ideals that have been historically silenced or ignored, propose topics that allow students to explore and discuss new perspectives, or invite students to bring their own texts to class. Although I believe these practices acknowledge the complexities around us, I feel I fell short when navigating across semiotic resources. I keep focusing on linguistic resources for communication and transmitting that focus to my students. Do you think we, as language teachers, can somehow decenter the “status of language as the main meaning carrier” (Álvarez Valencia, 2021, p. 181)?
My answer to the question: In what ways does Álvarez Valencia’s argument resemble or contradict that of Wei’s argument in “Translanguaging as a practical theory of language”?
Álvarez (2021) and Wei (2018) share the common ground that meaning, rather than being framed and reduced to formal, static linguistic structures, is situated, alive, multimodal, historical, and, therefore, embedded in power dynamics. This common conceptualization of meaning challenges rigid, neutral, and monolingual views of language. These are some of the divergent and different ideas on how they approach the conceptualization of meaning, with the common ground I mentioned before. A key point of convergence is that the authors recognize that students creatively utilize linguistic and semiotic resources to construct meaning (Wei, 2018), reinvigorating their cultural resources as powerful tools for learning and identity (re-sourcing Álvarez, 2021). Likewise, Álvarez and Wei underscore that by mobilizing diverse repertoires and semiotic models, as active creators of meaning, students can challenge hegemonic views of language and speak up with their own voices. As I mentioned before, even though they share a common ground, there is a difference that lies in the conceptualization they propose on where and how meaning-making has its emphasis. Wei, for its part, identifies language as the core category in the analysis of translanguaging, while Álvarez focuses on the concept of transmiotizing, advocating for moving beyond linguistic signs (translanguaging) to other semiotic modes in a spectrum of semiotic resources: linguistic, visual, embodied, and ideological. To conclude, I would like to end this comment by mentioning my takeaways from these texts. The first is that there is an urgent call, we tend to avoid, for transformative pedagogies in language learning. This implies that in the language classroom (and outside of the course), we should challenge hegemonic ideologies and mainstreams about language approach and leverage students’ semiotic resources and linguistic repertoire, which are historical in nature and rich in meanings, as the resources to move to more inclusive language learning and teaching practice in our unique contexts. The second, which derives from the first takeaway, is that the language classroom should be revigorated as a (safe) space/environment where diversity and marginalized voices are valued and a source of agency. This is an important message for us. Teaching a language, therefore, should be an intercultural enterprise, and an invitation to conceive our classroom as an intercultural encounter space, which may lead to real transformation in how students value and learn from diversity.
Dear Jhonny, Thank you for sharing your mind map and your comment! Regarding your post, I would like to highlight your second takeaway as I think diversity is a key concept in regards to interculturality and how those voices that are frequently silenced can be heard and some actions are taken to reduce inequalities and have a broaden understanding of social realities. The idea of the classroom as an intercultural encounter space makes me think on the need to change our roles, not only as language instructors but also as promoters of reflection, dialogue, and social change by re-structuring the activities we propose and how we assess our students moving from the mere linguistic repertoires and allowing other modes of expressions. Finally, based in your experience working in a private university, what institutional barriers, if any, do you think need to be addressed to really make language classrooms as spaces of intercultural encounters? What do you think about it in public universities? I look forward to reading your answer. Thank you, Yuranny
Thank you Jhonny for your mindmap. I think you identify some of the central concepts that I propose and that connect with Wei's paper. All of these concepts, perhaps will need refinement if we think in terms of posthumanism. Social semiotics as signaled by Newfield by nature highlights the role of the social, the human , in meaning-making. However, it does not deny the role of materiality in how meanings are designed and mobilized. Yet, more emphasis will need to be placed on their agentive nature as actants in semiosis. As Carolina suggests, all of this is a little complex and even difficult to bring down to the classroom. Our understandings could be complex but our materializations simpler. This means that beyond all of this complex theorization, we need to bring to the classroom and watered down version to make it applicable. That is what yI try to do through the introduction of multimodality and other forms of representations in my classes such as this exercise itself. A visual representation of a reading through transmodalization in a mindmap.
Hi Johnny, nice mindmap! I appreciate how you emphasized trans-semiotizing and re-sourcing in the language classroom, highlighting the need to move beyond decolonial perspectives to create inclusive spaces for our students. Additionally, I like that you emphasized the importance of bringing diverse voices and knowledges to our classroom, allowing our students (and us) to feel represented.
ResponderEliminarAs teachers, I think it’s important to focus on our superdiverse classrooms, keeping in mind our students’ diverse identities and different semiotic resources. However, in my opinion, the difficult part is not identifying these differences but addressing them. How do you think we should do it? In my case, I sometimes bring materials that represent cultures or ideals that have been historically silenced or ignored, propose topics that allow students to explore and discuss new perspectives, or invite students to bring their own texts to class. Although I believe these practices acknowledge the complexities around us, I feel I fell short when navigating across semiotic resources. I keep focusing on linguistic resources for communication and transmitting that focus to my students. Do you think we, as language teachers, can somehow decenter the “status of language as the main meaning carrier” (Álvarez Valencia, 2021, p. 181)?
My answer to the question: In what ways does Álvarez Valencia’s argument resemble or contradict that of Wei’s argument in “Translanguaging as a practical theory of language”?
ResponderEliminarÁlvarez (2021) and Wei (2018) share the common ground that meaning, rather than being framed and reduced to formal, static linguistic structures, is situated, alive, multimodal, historical, and, therefore, embedded in power dynamics. This common conceptualization of meaning challenges rigid, neutral, and monolingual views of language. These are some of the divergent and different ideas on how they approach the conceptualization of meaning, with the common ground I mentioned before. A key point of convergence is that the authors recognize that students creatively utilize linguistic and semiotic resources to construct meaning (Wei, 2018), reinvigorating their cultural resources as powerful tools for learning and identity (re-sourcing Álvarez, 2021). Likewise, Álvarez and Wei underscore that by mobilizing diverse repertoires and semiotic models, as active creators of meaning, students can challenge hegemonic views of language and speak up with their own voices.
As I mentioned before, even though they share a common ground, there is a difference that lies in the conceptualization they propose on where and how meaning-making has its emphasis. Wei, for its part, identifies language as the core category in the analysis of translanguaging, while Álvarez focuses on the concept of transmiotizing, advocating for moving beyond linguistic signs (translanguaging) to other semiotic modes in a spectrum of semiotic resources: linguistic, visual, embodied, and ideological.
To conclude, I would like to end this comment by mentioning my takeaways from these texts. The first is that there is an urgent call, we tend to avoid, for transformative pedagogies in language learning. This implies that in the language classroom (and outside of the course), we should challenge hegemonic ideologies and mainstreams about language approach and leverage students’ semiotic resources and linguistic repertoire, which are historical in nature and rich in meanings, as the resources to move to more inclusive language learning and teaching practice in our unique contexts. The second, which derives from the first takeaway, is that the language classroom should be revigorated as a (safe) space/environment where diversity and marginalized voices are valued and a source of agency. This is an important message for us. Teaching a language, therefore, should be an intercultural enterprise, and an invitation to conceive our classroom as an intercultural encounter space, which may lead to real transformation in how students value and learn from diversity.
Dear Jhonny,
EliminarThank you for sharing your mind map and your comment!
Regarding your post, I would like to highlight your second takeaway as I think diversity is a key concept in regards to interculturality and how those voices that are frequently silenced can be heard and some actions are taken to reduce inequalities and have a broaden understanding of social realities. The idea of the classroom as an intercultural encounter space makes me think on the need to change our roles, not only as language instructors but also as promoters of reflection, dialogue, and social change by re-structuring the activities we propose and how we assess our students moving from the mere linguistic repertoires and allowing other modes of expressions.
Finally, based in your experience working in a private university, what institutional barriers, if any, do you think need to be addressed to really make language classrooms as spaces of intercultural encounters? What do you think about it in public universities?
I look forward to reading your answer.
Thank you,
Yuranny
Thank you Jhonny for your mindmap. I think you identify some of the central concepts that I propose and that connect with Wei's paper. All of these concepts, perhaps will need refinement if we think in terms of posthumanism. Social semiotics as signaled by Newfield by nature highlights the role of the social, the human , in meaning-making. However, it does not deny the role of materiality in how meanings are designed and mobilized. Yet, more emphasis will need to be placed on their agentive nature as actants in semiosis. As Carolina suggests, all of this is a little complex and even difficult to bring down to the classroom. Our understandings could be complex but our materializations simpler. This means that beyond all of this complex theorization, we need to bring to the classroom and watered down version to make it applicable. That is what yI try to do through the introduction of multimodality and other forms of representations in my classes such as this exercise itself. A visual representation of a reading through transmodalization in a mindmap.
ResponderEliminar