Search results for "Meaning-making"
showing 10 items of 30 documents
“Do you understand (me)?” negotiating mutual understanding by using gaze and environmentally coupled gestures between two deaf signing participants
2020
Abstract In this paper we explore the use of multimodal and multilingual semiotic resources in interactions between two deaf signing participants, a researcher and an asylum seeker. The focus is on the use of gaze and environmentally coupled gestures. Drawing on multimodal analysis and linguistic ethnography, we demonstrate how gaze and environmentally coupled gestures are effective semiotic resources for reaching mutual understanding. The study provides insight into the challenges and opportunities (deaf) asylum seekers, researchers, and employees of reception centres or the state may encounter because of the asymmetrical language competencies. Our concern is that such asymmetrical situati…
How do people talk decades later about their crisis that we call psychosis? : A qualitative study of the personal meaning-making process
2019
Psychosis refers to a severe mental state that often significantly affects the individual’s life course. However, it remains unclear how people with the lived experiences themselves view these phenomena, as part of their life story. In order to evaluate this personal meaning-making process, we conducted in-depth life-story interviews with 20 people who had been diagnosed with non-affective psychosis 10 to 23 years previously in one catchment area. 35% of them were still receiving mental health treatment, and 55% of them were diagnosed with schizophrenia. Only a minority named their experiences as psychosis. On the basis of narrative analysis, two types of stories appeared to encompass how m…
Heteroglossia in Action: Sámi Children, Textbooks and Rap
2013
This chapter examines heteroglossia in the complex, continuously evolving multilingual context of Samiland, the historically and culturally central area for indigenous Sami culture and languages. The analytical discussion is of a rap about textbooks, created and performed by a group of Sami children with the help of their teachers and parents that they presented as their petition for more Sami language teaching materials. The rap is viewed as an example of heteroglossic practices, a strategic mobilization, mixture and recycling of multiple meaning making resources that result in a polyphonic performance.
Affective (re)orientations in online discussions on the threat of violence posed by migrants
2020
Online discussions are rife with fear-evoking images and meaning making that highlight a perceived threat to the security of European nations and their inhabitants posed by migrants’ violence in the wake of increased immigration. This paper examines the role of emotions in shaping anti-immigration views as a response to the threat of violence attached to migrants in online conversations. Using a dataset of Finnish online discussion threads from 2015 to 2017 that were prompted by extensive media attention paid to various cases of violent crime in which migrants were suspects, we particularly analyse the affective dynamics of interpellation processes wherein discussants are invited to adopt a…
Multimodality: Art as a Meaning-Making Process
2021
AbstractThe authors of the book see multimodality as intrinsic to human communication and texts, and as consisting of a multiplicity of signs. This chapter discusses how this applies in educational settings, to examine how different modes of communication are intertwined and utilized in learning, including children’s creative learning practices. In this, the authors use the semiotic concepts that operate in all communicative contexts: Field, tenor, and mode. Through them, the authors view the CLLP as a space that enables social activities, exploration of cultural, social, and societal contents and topics, and the development of social relationships. All this occurs through various communica…
Metaphor as a Focal Concept in Sound Design
2014
A central challenge in the design of non-speech sounds is to understand the relating conceptualisation process. In the current paper, we propose the use of metaphor theories as a framework to understand what sound design is fundamentally all about. In the proposed framework, we handle metaphors as conceptual entities, which are the basic constituents of meaning making.
Pictorial meaning-making in a community project in Helsinki. Freirean interpretations of a dialogical process
2018
Participation in public discourse belongs to a democratic citizenship. However, part of the population is excluded from such communal discussion. This paper describes how the photography group Camera Obs., which principally contained unemployed people in Helsinki, created pictorial voices from their own everyday experiences through a dialogical process, rendering them also visible to other people. The research focuses on the group’s activity during the years 2004–6, from the beginning of the project to its first exhibition. As a theoretical background, Paulo Freire’s ideas of dialogue and voice creation, combined with Vygotsky’s and Mezirow’s concept of meaning-making, have been applied. T…
Decolonising European minds through Heritage
2019
By analysing three museums exhibition, this article investigates how the history of European colonialism is approached in an attempt to identify potential for decolonising European minds. The case studies consist of a temporary exhibition (2016–2017) concerning German colonialism at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin; the permanent exhibition of the House of European History in Brussels and the permanent exhibition of the Sagres Promontory (Portugal), a heritage site related to the conquest of the Americas. The analysis will focus on three aspects: 1) acknowledgement of connections between colonial histories and their contemporary influences in and for Europe; 2) the role of histor…
Positive Learning and Pluriliteracies
2017
Deeper learning and the development of transferable knowledge and skills are highly desirable goals in Higher Education programs. However, current studies indicate that these goals are rarely achieved. In this article, we will present a model of deeper learning that promotes the development of disciplinary literacies and transferable knowledge. Based on our joint work we will outline a revised course design that aims at putting the principles of deeper learning into practice through a focus on affect, student engagement, knowledge construction, meaning making and active demonstration of understanding as well as reflective practice. Further, we will outline a research agenda for evaluating a…
The Post-Process Era in Composition Studies and the Linguistic Turn of the 20th Century
2013
In order to present the post-process era in composition as part of the general phenomenon known as the linguistic turn of the 20th century rather than as only the social turn in composition, in this chapter I point to some epistemological developments in composition studies, developments that underlie and define the process and post-process eras in composition as distinguishable rather than distinct periods in the history of the discipline. I apply the term linguistic turn specifically to the epistemological evolution that has taken place in composition studies and present post-process as a phase of this evolutionary process. Accordingly, I try to pinpoint some crucial changes in the ways w…