Multiple Literacies: Perspectives on Language, Knowledge Construction, and Interdisciplinarity in a Globalized Environment
January 20th, 2014
The premise of this lecture is that the contemporary globalized environment impresses on us the need for a thorough reconsideration of (a) the relation between language and knowledge construction and transmission, (b) the realization of that link within the context of major disciplinary areas, and (c) of the challenges such a framing encounters in the increasing call for interdisciplinarity.
I will explore this nexus from the perspective of language seen as a meaning-making system, that is, as a ‘naturally’ functional semiotic system. With regard to (a) that means that language is best understood as functional not only in its use but in the very make-up of its resources, commonly understood as grammar and lexicon. Such a functional orientation has played itself out phylogenetically and continues to play itself out ontogenetically in the development of the individual as a languaging social being and logogenetically in particular acts of meaning-making. With regard to (b) preferred patterns of meaning-making through language have evolved in the disciplines that reflect typified forms of knowledge construction in the privileged genres of a field of inquiry. Finally, that intricate link poses particular challenges with regard to (c), the call for interdisciplinarity, which, all too often, tends to be seen primarily in terms of different content areas rather than in terms of different forms of knowledge construction through and in and with language.
In this presentation I will explore this nexus by drawing on insights from systemic functional linguistics, genre theory, the sociology of education, and investigations of the impact of globalization on language use and a globalized context.
Main Research:
- analysis of students’ writing development across the curricular level using the theoretical framework of systemic-functional linguistics
- exploring the possibility of tracing the simultaneous development of language abilities and cultural content knowledge
- cultural content knowledge and awareness through language use
- teaching for meaning-making – writing to mean
Publications:
- (with Hiram H. Maxim, John M. Norris) Realizing advanced L2 writing development in a collegiate curriculum: Curricular design, pedagogy, assessment. Modern Language Journal, supplement to vol. 94, 2010.
- (with Janet Swaffar, Katherine Arens) Reading for meaning: An integrated approach to language learning, Englewood Cliffs 1991.
- Contemporary perceptions of language: Interdisciplinary dimensions, Washington, DC 1982.