Embodied movement as a stratified semiotic mode: how movement, gaze and speech mean together in the classroom
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Xiaoqin Wu
Xiaoqin Wu received her PhD in linguistics and communication at University of New South Wales, Sydney and is currently Lecturer at Southwest University and Advisory Editor for
Visual Communication . Her research interests include spatial semiotics, digital communication and museum communication. Her most recent publications include a monographA Multimodal Framework of Pedagogic Practices in Space with Routledge (2025), and several journal articles inJournalism (2024),New Media & Society (2023),Journal of Pragmatics (2023),Visual Communication (2023),Multimodality & Society (2022), etc.
Abstract
This paper develops a model to map out embodied movement as a stratified semiotic mode, that is, a conventionalized set of resources for meaning making. The model describes movement structure as a system that realizes specific meanings activated by contexts of situation. The model establishes an explicit link between contextual meanings and textual patterning by theorizing connections between genre, metafunction, and structure. Drawing upon an empirical study of one teacher’s embodied movement in the classroom, this paper maps out movement structure as distinct choices and reveals how movement, gaze and speech function rhythmically to construe information prominence and information boundaries at different levels of discourse organization, which further contributes to coherence and periodicity for the information flow and semantic flow in the lesson. Additionally, the paper reveals that the synthesis of different modes can enact semantic convergence and divergence to aggregate knowledge in pedagogic contexts. The analysis contributes to a systematic understanding of the types of meaning that embodied movement can realize and of the ways in which they are realized together with speech and gaze. The intertwined nature of movement structures, meanings and contexts also indicates that pedagogy is an embodied and situated construction.
Funding source: Southwest University
Award Identifier / Grant number: 2023JY081
Award Identifier / Grant number: SWU2309714
Funding source: Guangdong Provincial Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Project
Award Identifier / Grant number: GD24YWY05
About the author
Xiaoqin Wu received her PhD in linguistics and communication at University of New South Wales, Sydney and is currently Lecturer at Southwest University and Advisory Editor for Visual Communication. Her research interests include spatial semiotics, digital communication and museum communication. Her most recent publications include a monograph A Multimodal Framework of Pedagogic Practices in Space with Routledge (2025), and several journal articles in Journalism (2024), New Media & Society (2023), Journal of Pragmatics (2023), Visual Communication (2023), Multimodality & Society (2022), etc.
Acknowledgments
I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to Professor Louise Ravelli, Associate Professor Susan Hood, Associate Professor Helen Caple for their insightful comments on an early draft of this manuscript. I am also grateful to the three anonymous reviewers and the editor-in-chief, Professor Srikant Sarangi, whose constructive feedback tightens the discussion in this paper.
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Research funding: This work was supported by Humanities and Social Science Fund of Ministry of Education of China, under Grant [24XJC740007]; Southwest University Educational Reform Project, under Grant [2023JY081]; Central Universities Social Science Project, under Grant [SWU2309714].
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Competing interests: The author reports there is no competing interest to declare.
List of transcription notations
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2
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stasis and the duration of stasis
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3
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motion and the duration of motion
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teacher gaze
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student gaze
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teacher motion
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teacher posture
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© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Announcement
- Research Articles
- Narratives about epistemic trespassing
- Damned if feminists do, damned if feminists don’t? Political significance of institutional inclusive writing guidelines in a Belgian francophone university
- Evaluative language in Chinese online food discourse: overall distribution, local patterning, and readers’ involvement
- Metaphorical language in the discourse of Yasser Arafat
- The effects of modal value and imperative mood on self-predicted compliance to health guidance: the case of COVID-19
- Embodied movement as a stratified semiotic mode: how movement, gaze and speech mean together in the classroom
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Announcement
- Research Articles
- Narratives about epistemic trespassing
- Damned if feminists do, damned if feminists don’t? Political significance of institutional inclusive writing guidelines in a Belgian francophone university
- Evaluative language in Chinese online food discourse: overall distribution, local patterning, and readers’ involvement
- Metaphorical language in the discourse of Yasser Arafat
- The effects of modal value and imperative mood on self-predicted compliance to health guidance: the case of COVID-19
- Embodied movement as a stratified semiotic mode: how movement, gaze and speech mean together in the classroom
