The Relationship between the Use of Emoticons and Virtual Engagement on Facebook among the Expatriates in the UAE

This study explores the practice of utilizing emoticons on Facebook and the different levels of virtual engagement according to gender among the expatriates in United Arab Emirates. The primary responses from 236 expatriates were collected using survey questionnaire. The data collected included demographic variables that constitute gender, age and nationality, frequency, social engagement level and motives of use of emoticons. The variables were analyzed using frequencies, correlations and t- tests. The results of the analysis show that both males and females used emoticons on Facebook; however, emoticons were used more frequently in personal communication than on official chats. It was further found that the main motives for the utilization of emoticons were to express emotions and to enhance the meaning of chat

The Relationship between the Use of Emoticons and Virtual Engagement on Facebook among the Expatriates in the UAE

This study explores the practice of utilizing emoticons on Facebook and the different levels of virtual engagement according to gender among the expatriates in United Arab Emirates. The primary responses from 236 expatriates were collected using survey questionnaire. The data collected included demographic variables that constitute gender, age and nationality, frequency, social engagement level and motives of use of emoticons. The variables were analyzed using frequencies, correlations and t- tests. The results of the analysis show that both males and females used emoticons on Facebook; however, emoticons were used more frequently in personal communication than on official chats. It was further found that the main motives for the utilization of emoticons were to express emotions and to enhance the meaning of chat

Learning English in translocal exchanges in Instagram chat

This chapter analyses how social media-Instagram chats-is employed by a group of youth in Catalonia and in Greece for communicating in English as a lingua franca, as an extension of a translocal project initiated in their schools. We set out from the premise that learners' participation and willingness to use the language to communicate in this context can be attributed to a genuine, agentive interest in learning English, even though learning English is neither the immediate nor the main goal of the youths' communicative exchanges. Our study focuses on the plurilingual and multimodal procedures participants employ to organise participation, construct meaning and build relationala bonds. Our results suggest that learners' communication in the lingua franca is scaffolded by a channel they are well acquainted with-Instagram-and a shared code including emoji and multimodal resources. Additionally, we discuss the methodological and ethical challenges teachers and researchers face when supporting out- of- school digital spaces for learning and conducting research

Livestreaming Vico: Imagination and the Ecology of Literacy in Online Gaming

The following research thesis seeks to understand the connection between Giambattista Vico’s conception of imagination and literacy in online spaces. This research delves into how users of the video game based live streaming platform Twitch.tv utilize imagination in written communication primarily through pictographs commonly referred to as emotes, and how broadcasters and moderators on the platform act as literacy sponsors for these unique language practices on the platform

Vernacular mobile literacies: multimodality, creativity and cultural identity

This paper focuses on how advanced learners of English at a woman’s college in Saudi Arabia use Snapchat to communicate with their classmates. It examines not just the way the English language becomes a meaning making resource in these exchanges, but also how English is strategically mixed with photos, drawings, emoji’s, and other languages to create meanings, identities, and relationships. The theoretical framework used to understand these strategies is adopted from Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) model of ‘geosemiotics’, an approach to discourse that focuses on how meanings (as well as identities and relationships) are created through the ways semiotic resources are arranged in physical space. The analysis highlights how Snapchat creates opportunities for female learners of English in Saudi Arabia to open up new ‘cultural spaces’, and how these spaces can facilitate their language learning. At the same time, it is argued, these new ‘cultural spaces’ are contingent on the various creative ways these learners make use of physical space. Implications for understanding the relationship between creativity and translanguaging are discussed

Plurilingual Classroom Practices and Participation

Plurilingual Classroom Practices and Participation contributes to a better understanding of plurilingual education in Catalonia by providing a description of the interactional resources mobilised by learners as social actors. This volume is a collection of studies that show interactions containing plurilingual and multimodal sequences that illustrate moments of potential acquisition of aspects of language use. Analysing data collected through ethnographic fieldwork, the studies explore interactions in primary, secondary, and tertiary milieus as well as non-formal settings and examine how participants organise their interaction, their ways of participating, and the resources they mobilise for them. The linguistic policies of the educational settings studied establish the use of a given language but contain samples of plurilingual practices in which languages like Arabic, Catalan, English, French, Greek, Mandarin, Punjabi, Riffian Berber, Spanish and Urdu come into play. The chapters explore the links between these practices and the construction of participation in the ongoing interaction. Although focused on language education in Catalonia, results can be transferred to classrooms worldwide which host plurilingual learners. Thus, the volume is an excellent resource for teachers and researchers interested in plurilingual education and can be used as a reference book in doctoral studies and teacher training programmes in this research field

Style and Intersubjectivity in Youth Interaction

This book examines how style and intersubjective meanings emerge through language use. While numerous studies on youth language focus on face-to-face interaction, this book draws data from conversation, e-forums, teen fiction, and comics to offer an integrated account of language change in a community in flux

Content-aware : investigating tools, character & user behavior

Content—Aware serves as a platform for investigating structure, corruption, and visual interference in the context of present-day technologies. I use fragmentation, movement, repetition, and abstraction to interrogate current methods and tools for engaging with the built environment, here broadly conceived as the material, spatial, and cultural products of human labor. Physical and graphic spaces become grounds for testing visual hypotheses. By testing images and usurping image-making technologies, I challenge the fidelity of vision and representation. Rooted in active curiosity and a willingness to fully engage, I collaborate with digital tools, play with their edges, and build perceptual portholes. Through documentation and curation of visual experience, I expose and challenge a capitalist image infrastructure. I create, collect, and process images using smartphone cameras, screen recordings, and applications such as Shrub and Photoshop. These devices and programs, which have the capacity to produce visual smoothness and polish, also inherently engender repetition and fragmentation. The same set of tools used to perfect images is easily reoriented towards visual destabilization. Projects presented here are not meant to serve as literal translations, but rather as symbols or variables in experimental graphic communication strategies. Employing these strategies, I reveal the frames and tools through which we view the world. By exploring and exploiting the limitations of manmade technologies, I reveal the breadth of our human relationships with them, including those of creators, directors, users, and recipients

Linguistic, multimodal and cultural code-meshing: Exploring adolescents’ language and literacy practices in social networking sites

This thesis will explore language and literacy practices in social networking sites (SNSs) that both draw on and expand beyond traditional principles of composition. Particularly, it will examine how adolescent participants are engaging with SNSs in ways that extend their learning and life opportunities beyond what is typically accessible in their rural province of Chiang Rai. Despite considerable research on language and literacy, there remains a limited body of research focused on adolescent literacy in Thailand and in rural contexts, such as Chiang Rai. There is also limited research in this area that provides a combined framework to account for the social, cultural, multimodal and linguistic repertoires of adolescents as materialised in their SNS practices. This thesis will draw from sociolinguistic and sociocultural theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and intertextuality to analyse adolescent participants’ linguistic and multimodal texts and how they shape and are shaped by a range of discourses in SNSs. However, both of these theories cannot provide a systematic account of adolescent participants’ multimodal texts in depth. Therefore, this thesis will also draw from multimodality as an analytical framework to account for participants’ multimodal texts (e.g., images, colours and layout). As key findings will demonstrate, the complexity of participants’ language and literacy practices in SNSs involves the blending of not only different languages and modes but also cultural resources (e.g., textual conventions and genres) – or what I refer to as linguistic, multimodal and cultural code-meshing practices. This study will set out a critical perspective on how such practices on SNSs are shaped by Chiang Rai adolescents to make new kinds of meanings, negotiate identities and relationships, and establish belongingness within both local and transnational SNS communities. Evidence from empirical data collected will include surveys and online observations

Learning English Out of School: An Inclusive Approach to Research and Action

This volume reports on the main results of the research project Inclusive epistemologies and practices of out-of-school English learning. The study reacts to low attainment levels in English as a foreign language among socioeconomically disadvantaged youth. The contributors to this volume research teenagers’ existing practices of using and learning English out of school time and implement new, inclusive, nonformal English language educational initiatives. They evaluate the impact of the nonformal English language educational initiatives implemented and support their sustainability and transferability. The project embeds collaborative and arts-based methods into its methodology, fostering inclusive and creative educational practices and ways of knowing