LINGUIST List 11.1636

Wed Jul 26 2000

Books: Semiotics in Language Education

Editor for this issue: Scott Fults <scottlinguistlist.org>



Links to the websites of all LINGUIST's supporting publishers are available at the end of this issue.

Directory

  • Gillian Caglayan, Semiotics in Language Education, M. Danesi

    Message 1: Semiotics in Language Education, M. Danesi

     Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 16:23:53 +0200
    From: Gillian Caglayan <G.CaglayandeGruyter.de>
    Subject: Semiotics in Language Education, M. Danesi


    New publication from Mouton de Gruyter!!!

    >From the series Approaches to Applied Semiotics

    Series Editor-in-Chief: Thomas A. Sebeok Executive Editor: Jean Umiker-Sebeok

    Advisory Board Jeff Bernard - Institute for Socio-Semiotic Studies, Vienna Donald J. Cunningham - Indiana University, Bloomington Marcel Danesi - University of Toronto

    Semiotics has had a profound impact on our comprehension of a wide range of phenomena, from how animals signify and communicate to how people read TV commercials. This new series will feature books on semiotic theory and applications of that theory to understanding media, language, and related subjects. The series will publish scholarly monographs of wide appeal to students and interested non-specialists as well as scholars.



    Marcel Danesi

    Semiotics in Language Education

    2000. 23 x 15,5 cm. 218 pages. Cloth DM 178,- /EUR 91,01 /�S 1299,- /sFr 158,- /approx. US$ 111.00 ISBN 3-11-0169142

    Paperback DM 68,- /EUR 34,77 /�S 496,- /sFr 62,-/ US$ 34.95* ISBN 3-11-0169150 * for orders placed in North America (Approaches to Applied Semiotics 2)



    Students of foreign languages in classroom settings customarily characterize their learning experience as a monumental struggle, especially when they compare it to how easily and naturally they learned how to speak their native language. Throughout the twentieth century, this question came to constitute a central preoccupation of language educators throughout the world. Using insights from psychology and linguistics, the normal plan of language educators for resolving the problem of how to impart native-like fluency in the classroom was a relatively simple one - it consisted in devising pedagogical practices and instructional materials based on these insights. Teachers were then expected to adapt these to their specific situations. But after a century of working under this plan, surveys continue to show that only a small fraction of all language students exposed to "scientifically-designed" classroom instruction eventually achieve native-like proficiency. The vast majority of students continue to struggle.

    This book purposes that the challenges posed by classroom language learning could be studied much more profitably from the particular perspective of semiotic theory, than from the perspective of other sciences.

    Based on a series of research projects whose results show how powerful semiotics is as a framework for investigating classroom language learning, it is written as an introductory text for teachers, educators, applied linguists, and anyone else interested in the contribution that semiotics can make to language education.

    The opening chapter provides a brief historical analysis of the main trends in second language education in the twentieth century; the second introduces the notion of network theory and the semiotic principles upon which it is based; the third, fourth, and fifth chapters then deal respectively with denotative, connotative, and metaphorical concepts and the pedagogical implications that these entail. Network theory is drafted in this book to provide a framework for discussing student discourse in comparison to native-speaker discourse. It is based on the idea that concepts form associative connections based on sense and on inference.

    In the book the notion of conceptual fluency is also developed as a framework for describing learner errors, modes of discourse, and typical representations in the foreign language.

    Table of Contents

    LANGUAGE TEACHING AND SEMIOTICS Introductory remarks Language education in the 20th century Language acquisition Semiotics and language education Revisiting the SLT dilemma from a semiotic perspective

    CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE Introductory remarks Concepts Surface structure Pedagogical considerations

    DENOTATIVE CONCEPTS Introductory remarks Denotation Denotative discourse Pedagogical considerations

    CONNOTATIVE CONCEPTS Introductory remarks Connotation Connotation in discourse Pedagogical considerations

    METAPHORICAL CONCEPTS Introductory remarks Metaphor Mataphorical circuits Pedagogical considerations Concluding remarks



    For more information please contact the publisher: Mouton de Gruyter Genthiner Str. 13 10785 Berlin, Germany Fax: +49 30 26005 222 e-mail: ordersdegruyter.de

    Please visit our website for other publications by Mouton de Gruyter http://www.degruyter.com
    Pubs-postscript-html