Multimodal positioning of artifacts in interaction in a collaborative elementary engineering club

This exploratory case study uses multimodal positioning analysis to determine and describe how a purposefully crafted emergent artifact comes to influence and/or manipulate social dynamics, structure, and positionings of one design team comprised of five third-graders in an afterschool elementary engineering and literacy club. In addition to social semiotic theories of multimodality (e.g., Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: a social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. New York, NY: Routledge) and multimodal interactional analysis (Norris, S. (2004). Analyzing multimodal interaction: a methodological framework. New York, NY: Routledge, Norris, S. (2019). Systematically working with multimodal data: research methods in multimodal discourse analysis. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell), Positioning Theory (Harré, R. and Van Langenhove, L. (1991). Varieties of positioning. J. Theor. Soc. Behav. 21: 393–407) is used to examine group interactions with the artifact, with observational data collected from audio, video, researcher field notes, analytic memos, photographs, student artifacts (e.g., drawn designs, built designs), and transcriptions of audio and video data. Analysis of interactions of the artifact as it unfolds demonstrates multiple types of role-based positioning with students (e.g., builder, helper, idea-sharer). Foregrounding analysis of the artifact, rather than the student participants, exposed students’ alignment or opposition with their groupmates during the project. This study contributes to multimodal and artifactual scholarship through a close examination of positions emergent across time through multimodal communicative actions and illustrates how perspectives on multimodality may be analytically combined with Positioning Theory.

ONLINE BOOK OF LETTERS OF LITERACY IN THE TIMES OF COVID

Learning in a pandemic is a challenge in which education needs to rethink and offer various alternatives that adapt to the situation in which we live. At CEU Cardenal Herrera University, we understand this new teaching role and prepare our students to create synchronous and asynchronous communicative actions and strategies that respond to the isolation of their future students. Literacy is one of the most serious problems and one of the most serious problems for pre-school teachers. It is even more difficult if the student is not physically present in the classroom. From this social reality follows the importance of creating interactive materials for future teachers that enable pre-school students to work with different phonemes, and are necessary prerequisites for acquiring reading and writing skills.

Gestures in ensemble performance

Gestures, defined as meaning-bearing bodily actions, play important and varied roles in ensemble performance. This chapter discusses how the term “gesture” differs from physical “motion” and perceived “action.” The functional differences between sound-producing, sound-facilitating, sound-accompanying, and communicative actions are presented, alongside how these can be performed and/or perceived as meaning-bearing gestures. The role of gestures in ensemble performance is examined from four perspectives: (1) ensemble size and setup; (2) the musical degrees of freedom of the ensemble; (3) the musical leadership; and (4) the role of machines in the musicianship. It is argued that the use of gestures varies between different types of ensembles and musical genres. The common denominator is the need for meaning-bearing bodily communication between performers, with such gestures also playing an important part in the musical communication with the audience.

“Find Your Own and Feel Comfortable…”: Communicative Space of Russian Officials of the Resettlement Administration as a Factor of Professional Adaptation (Late 19th – Early 20th Century)

Based on the published memoirs of the employees of the Migration Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the article reconstructs the communicative space of the Russian bureaucracy, which was responsible for organizing population migrations to the eastern outskirts of the empire in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The research identifies the actors, conditions and channels of communicative actions of managers, who belong to the formed in the post-reform period generation and performed their duties under the influence of socio-cultural transformations of the second half of the 19th century. It has been proved that the main features of the identity of the new type of imperial bureaucracy were: breadth of views and a democratic style of behavior within a professional group, a sense of responsibility towards society and the state, a categorical rejection of radical political ideas and ways of their manifestation. The research demonstrates that the cultural and historical background of organizing the communicative space of resettlement officials was a qualitative rethinking of the tasks of the “resettlement case”, which became an important element of the colonial policy in the eastern parts of the country. The concernes of the authorities on the agrarian issue gave the resettlement movement a priority status in the domestic policy of Russia. In this aspect, the significance of the bureaucracy that was involved in solving problems related to the organization and regulation of the resettlement process has also changed. The article establishes that, in contrast to the bulk of Russian officials, the employees of the resettlement department were characterized by greater mobility and intensity of contacts with various class categories of the empire’s population, primarily with the peasantry. It was the communication with the peasantry that named the considered category of officials “resettelers”, which eventually determined their identity as specific, different from the identity of other groups of the Russian bureaucracy. Thus, within the space of official and informal interaction of resettlement officials, the principles of paternalism and partnership underlied the communicative action, which contributed to the “soft” professional adaptation of young employees of the department, the collective adoption of conventions of mutual understanding, cooperation and maintenance of comfortable conditions for activity. All this, taken together, increased the efficiency of the work of the empire's representatives on the colonized territories, and raised the prestige of the Russian state in the Trans-Ural regions.

Language creativity of the protest discourses in Belarus after the 2020 presidential election

The subject of the article is the use of language and linguistic aspects of social behavior within the protest discourses that took place after the results of the presidential elections in Belarus were falsified in August 2020. The author considers the concept of protest discourse, referring to scientific literature and comparing its interpretation by various researchers. The analysis of around 500 posters, chosen from the corpus of a first month of Belarusian numerous and various protesting activities, is focused on both rhetoric and language means of protesting communicative actions, namely on lexical nomination and code switching, wordplay and structural modifications, neologisms, paronomasia, irony, graphic operations and others, which, in the format of peaceful demonstrations (on behand of the demonstrators) actualizes the features of carnivalization and the acratic type of discourse.

Peculiarities of the Semantic Component of Communication Activities in Preschoolers with Developmental Delay

The article examines the peculiarities of the semantic component of communication activity of preschoolers with developmental delay. We have determined that an emotional attitude to an interlocutor introduced into communicative actions, together with the understood meanings of created messages, means transition to the semantic level of communication. We have theoretically and experimentally substantiated that this semantic level presupposes that an interacting subject is able to express emotional attitudes towards partners, to interpret and understand their mental states, which contribute to an understanding of any event or socio-communicative situation. To study the semantic level (component) of communication activities, we examined implicit and explicit mentalization. Implicit mentalization included the respondents’ assessment of the mental properties of objects proposed as partners; recognition by them of emotions and mental causes of these emotions in socio-communicative situations. Explicit mentalization means the respondents’ ability to understand causes of behaviour based on knowledge of people’s mental states, the ability to predict other people’s behaviour based on knowledge of their own and others’ mental states, the ability to understand the moral and ethical aspects of the Other’s behaviour. We have determined experimentally that children with the mentally deficient type of communication activity are characterized by difficulties in communicative prediction, misunderstanding of the causes of behaviour, low level of implicit and explicit mentalization. Hence, these children often get into conflict situations due to misconceptions about the results of their own actions or the actions of others. The identified patterns of implicit and explicit mentalization will be the basis for the technology forming communicative activity, in particular its semantic component in preschoolers with developmental delay.

Experience in teaching standardized patients in Russia

The assessment of communication skills in the accreditation procedure is carried out in simulated conditions with the participation of a standardized patient (SP). SP is a clinical history simulator. A standardized patient in accreditation is a standard of behavior: the same conditions for all accredited, strict adherence to the clinical scenario, a dosed story of the scenario strictly in accordance with the accredited’ communicative actions (actions according to the checklist). The preparation of a joint venture in Russia at the moment is a continuous complex process. The theses present the results of the work carried out.

Intra-individual behavioural and neural signatures of audience effects and interactions in a mirror-game paradigm

We often perform actions while observed by others, yet the behavioural and neural signatures of audience effects remain understudied. Performing actions while being observed has been shown to result in more emphasized movements in musicians and dancers, as well as during communicative actions. Here we investigate the behavioural and neural mechanisms of observed actions in relation to individual actions in isolation and interactive joint actions. Movement kinematics and EEG were recorded in 42 participants (21 pairs) during a mirror game paradigm, while participants produced improvised movements alone, while observed by a partner, or by synchronizing movements with the partner. Participants produced largest movements when being observed; and observed actors and dyads in interaction produced slower and less variable movements in contrast to acting alone. On a neural level, we observed increased mu suppression during interaction, as well as to a lesser extent during observed actions, relative to individual actions. Moreover, we observed increased functional brain connectivity during observed actions relative to both individual and interactive actions, suggesting increased intra-individual monitoring and action-perception integration as a result of audience effects. These results suggest that observed actors take observers into account in their action plans by increasing self-monitoring; and on a behavioural level, observed actions are similar to emergent interactive actions, characterized by slower and more predictable movements.

Religious Exclusivity, Harmony and Moderatism amid Populism: A Study of Interreligious Communication in West Sumatra

The religious moderatism is one of the constructive efforts in a diverse religious society. Plurality of beliefs as a whole part of the social landscape of Indonesian society is not yet fully understood and believed by the religious community. In the era of Populism, moreover in the dimension of religious practice, the case in West Sumatra shows horizontal disagreement or disharmony related to symbols and material aspects of religion such as the establishment of religious ritual places and supporting resource. This article confirms that communication serves vitally in addressing religious exclusivity. Resistance to religious entities is always found, as one of the markers of Populism, so that the symbolic interaction of religious leaders in undermining conflict and violence is indispensable. Religion pays particular attention to a social construct and practice with the main purpose of harmony and moderatism of religion. It serves effectively as a contribution of communicative actions, as conveyed by Jurgen Habermas, through reconciliation among religious people. The values of interaction between religious people are emphazised with the principle of agreement and respect as fellow citizens and human beings.