Materialising semiotic repertoires: challenges in the interactional analysis of multilingual communication

This article takes the inquiry into semiotic repertoires beyond their classifications and inventories to analyse their interactions with each other and the way they gain indexicality in situated communication. As previous theorisation suggests that semiotic repertoires are deployed by agentive individuals, this article draws from New Materialism to focus on how social agents, semiotic repertoires, and material ecologies work together in distributed practice for meaning making. Expanding sociolinguistic constructs for this purpose, the article defines the relevant units and objects of analysis, and illustrates the framing of activities in indexing the values, meanings, and relationships of semiotic repertoires. The role of these repertoires in the interaction of an international community of scientists is analysed through the research group meeting of a team of microbiologists. The article demonstrates that though the focal participant from Korea claims limited English grammatical proficiency in his personal repertoire, he draws strategically from the repertoires in the physical setting and those of his disciplinary community to communicate successfully.

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Work Title Materialising semiotic repertoires: challenges in the interactional analysis of multilingual communication
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Open Access
Creators
  1. Suresh Canagarajah
Keyword
  1. Semiotic repertoires
  2. Interactional sociolinguistics
  3. Frames
  4. Indexicality
  5. New materialism
  6. Distributed practice
License In Copyright (Rights Reserved)
Work Type Article
Publisher
  1. International Journal of Multilingualism
Publication Date January 31, 2021
Publisher Identifier (DOI)
  1. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2021.1877293
Deposited July 24, 2022

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  • Created
  • Added Materialising_semiotic_repertoires__challenges_in_the_interactional_analysis_of_multilingual_communication.pdf
  • Added Creator Suresh Canagarajah
  • Published
  • Updated Work Title, Keyword, Subtitle, and 1 more Show Changes
    Work Title
    • Materialising semiotic repertoires
    • Materialising semiotic repertoires: challenges in the interactional analysis of multilingual communication
    Keyword
    • Semiotic repertoires, Interactional sociolinguistics, Frames, Indexicality, New materialism, Distributed practice
    Subtitle
    • challenges in the interactional analysis of multilingual communication
    Publication Date
    • 2021-01-01
    • 2021-01-31
  • Updated