Jay L. Lemke

Textual politics : discourse and social dynamics

Textual Politics: An Introduction Discourse and Social Theory Discourses in Conflict: Heteroglossia and Text Semantics Technical Discourse and Technocratic Ideology The Social Construction of the Material Subject Discourse, Dynamics, and Social Change Critical Praxis: Education, Literacy, Politics Retrospective Postscript: Making Meaning, Making Trouble.

Across the Scales of Time: Artifacts, Activities, and Meanings in Ecosocial Systems

Every human action, all human activity takes place on one or more characteristic timescales. A heartbeat, a breath, a step, a spoken word takes but a moment; a stroll, a conversation extends over many such moments; and an education or a relationship may be a lifetime project. The great cathedrals of Europe were built over many human lifetimes, and the languages and discourse patterns of our communities have developed over still longer times. And yet a conversation consists of many momentary utterances; a relationship may be built of many strolls and conversations together; a building or a social institution is erected by the sum of many individual actions in a community. How?How do actions or events on one timescale come to add up to more than just a series of isolated happenings? How does a languageemerge from many utterances? How does a community emerge from many people-in-action? On how many different timescales is our social life organized? How does persistent organization on longer timescales constrain the likelihood of events on shorter timescales? How do organizational units and processes on shorter timescales make possible the emergent patternings we recognize on longer timescales? Why time?Our material world is organized on many scales: space, time, matter, energy, and information transfer. In many natural systems there is a strong correlation among these scales: the quick is also small and light and weak and simple; however, in more complex systems, especially those in whichsignsandmeaningplay a role in behavior and system dynamics, these simple correlations break down. Classical systems theory is rooted in spatial metaphors and the reductionist project: large systems are to be understood by analyzing them in terms of interactions among smaller component MIND, CULTURE, AND ACTIVITY, 7(4), 273–290 Copyright

Conducting Video Research in the Learning Sciences: Guidance on Selection, Analysis, Technology, and Ethics

Focusing on expanding technical capabilities and new collaborative possibilities, we address 4 challenges for scientists who collect and use video records to conduct research in and on complex learning environments: (a) Selection: How can researchers be systematic in deciding which elements of a complex environment or extensive video corpus to select for study? (b) Analysis: What analytical frameworks and practices are appropriate for given research problems? (c) Technology: What technologies are available and what new tools must be developed to support collecting, archiving, analyzing, reporting, and collaboratively sharing video? and (d) Ethics: How can research protocols encourage broad video sharing and reuse while adequately protecting the rights of research participants who are recorded?

Travels in hypermodality

The power of visual communication is multiplied when it is co-deployed with language in multimodal texts. In hypertexts, such as websites, the interaction of these two semiotic resources affords new forms of informational and design complexity and presents us with some new political choices. This article offers a semiotic scheme for the analysis of composite verbal-visual meanings and some discussions of the semiotic politics of visual communication in hypermedia design.

Analyzing Verbal Data: Principles, Methods, and Problems

This chapter formulates the issues and choices researchers should be aware of when adopting or adapting various methods of analyzing verbal data such as transcripts of classroom discourse and small group dialogues, talk-aloud protocols from reasoning and problem solving tasks, students’ written work, textbook passages and test items, and curriculum documents. It discusses the basic principles of linguistically precise discourse analysis including transcription, the role of context, and intertextuality. Semantic content analysis (thematics), rhetorical-interactional analysis (e.g., speech act theory), and structural-textural analysis (segmentation and cohesion) are distinguished as complementary procedures. Finally, problems of generalizability, interpretation, and cultural bias are briefly addressed, along with a note on extensions of the methods to multimedia and video.

Letramento metamidiático: transformando significados e mídias

RESUMO: Toda semiotica e semiotica multimidiatica e todo letramento e letramento multimidiatico. Aanalise da semiotica multimidiatica me levou a refazer algumas perguntas antigas de maneiras novas e acomecar a olhar para a historia da escrita, do desenho, do calculo e da mostra visual de imagens em umaperspectiva diferente. Faz um bom tempo que as tecnologias do letramento nao sao tao simples quanto acaneta, a tinta e o papel. E na era da imprensa, assim como antes dela, o letramento raramente esteveatrelado de forma estrita ao texto escrito. Muitos dos generos do letramento, do artigo da revista popularao relatorio de pesquisa cientifica, combinam imagens visuais e texto impresso em formas que tornam asreferencias entre eles essenciais para entende-los do modo como o fazem seus leitores e autores regulares.Nenhuma tecnologia e uma ilha. Conforme nossas tecnologias se tornam mais complexas, elas se tornamsituadas em redes mais amplas e longas de outras tecnologias e de outras praticas culturais.Palavras chave: letramento multimidiatico; letramento metamidiatico; semiotica multimidiatica.ABSTRACT: All semiotics is multimedia semiotics, and all literacy is multimedia literacy. Analyzingmultimedia semiotics has led me to ask some old questions in new ways and to begin to see the history ofwriting, drawing, calculating, and displaying images visually in a different light. It’s been a long time sincethe technologies of literacy were as simple as pen, ink, and paper; and in the era of print, as before,literacy has rarely meant verbal text alone. Many of the genres of literacy, from the popular magazinearticle to the scientific research report, combine visual images and printed text in ways that make cross-reference between them essential to understanding them as their regular readers and writers do. Notechnology is an island. As our technologies become more complex they find themselves situated in largerand longer networks of other technologies and other cultural practicesKeywords: multimedia literacy; metamedia literacy; multimedia semiotics.

Multimedia Literacy Demands of the Scientific Curriculum

Abstract Close examination of records of student participation in the post-compulsory science curriculum, including videotapes, student notes, teacher handouts, overhead transparencies, and textbook selections, suggests that the maximal literacy demands of the scientific curriculum arise from the need to integrate specialized verbal, visual, and mathematical literacies quickly and fluently in real time. The resulting “multi-literacies” co-ordinate meaning-making activity across multiple media, modalities, semiotic systems, and hybrid genres of communication and representation. After outlining theoretical issues and useful methodologies for analyzing such complex multi-literacy practices, and describing in some detail a number of representative examples, the article considers the implications of these literacy demands for curriculum design, pedagogy, assessment, and research.

Genres, semantics, and classroom education

Examining both theoretical issues and an episode of classroom teaching, this article argues that competence in academic subjects depends on mastery of their specialized patterns of language use. These patterns are described in terms of: (1) the semantics underlying Hallidays functional linguistics, and (2) the structural analysis of written and spoken communication genres. The breakdown of communication during a classroom episode illustrates important relationships among semantic differences, social conflict, and academic success.

Opening Up Closure: Semiotics Across Scales

Abstract: The dynamic emergence of new levels of organization in complex systems is related to the semiotic reorganization of discrete/continuous variety at the level below as continuous/discrete meaning for the level above. In this view both the semiotic and the dynamic closure of system levels is reopened to allow the development and evolution of greater complexity.

Complex systems and educational change: Towards a new research agenda

How might we usefully apply concepts and procedures derived from the study of other complex dynamical systems to analyzing systemic change in education? In this article we begin to define possible agendas for research toward developing systematic frameworks and shared terminology for such a project. We illustrate the plausibility of defining such frameworks and raise the question of the relation between such frameworks and the crucial task of aggregating data across ‘systemic experiments’, such as those conducted under the Urban Systemic Initiative sponsored by the US National Science Foundation. Our discussion includes a review of key issues identified by groups of researchers regarding (1) Defining the System, (2) Structural Analysis, (3) Relationships Among Subsystems and Levels, (4) Drivers for Change, and (5) Modeling Methods.