Despite his linguistic handicap, Richards has just won the francophone world Scrabble championships after reportedly memorising the entire French Scrabble dictionary in just nine weeks.
Engages with French version of scrabble (to borrow the language of Gee) as passive content rather than something to participate in and undertand the semiotic domain
o think, act, interact, value, and feel in certain specific ways. In this sense, theyattempt to get people to learn and take on certain sorts of new identities,to be-come, for a time and place, certain types of people
This connection to identity is really interesting
In different situations, the word “coffee” canmean a liquid, grains, beans, tins, or a flavor.
A really helpful visual example
Theoretical linguists tend to look down on people who study the socialand cultural aspects of language (people like me now). They tend to believethat only the structural aspects of language (e.g., syntax or phonology) can bestudied rigorously and scientifically in terms of deducing conclusions fromquite abstract and mathematically based theories.
Elitist, pedantic, and out of touch
Meaning, then, is both situation and domain specific
!!
producers are often so deeply embedded intheir social practices that they take the meanings and values of the texts asso-ciated with those practices for granted in an unquestioning way
Such an important point! It calls to mind, for me, a concerning norm in academic writing (particularly that concerned with critical theory), which is that texts are written in a way that is inaccessible to anyone who is not highly educated or in posession of the time to read these texts over and over to make sense of them.
knowing about a socialpractice always involves recognizing various distinctive ways of acting, inter-acting, valuing, feeling, knowing, and using various objects and technologiesthat constitute the social practice
What an important point!
we always read or write somethingin some way
It's so important to keep in mind how the genre or medium of a text (of any kind) impacts how we interpret, interact with, or approach it.
oday images, symbols, graphs, diagrams, artifacts, andmany other visual symbols are particularly significant. Thus, the idea of dif-ferent types of “visual literacy” would seem to be an important one
Definintely true in a society where things are increasingly digital/online. I am currently teaching a unit on rhetorical analysis and am finding that students have an easier time reading the intent behind visual artifacts/subjects than written ones
Playing Games Reports:
Will the prompt for this include an example? Is there a limit to what can count as a game? Ex: Does it have to be a physical game?
ctivities throughout the semester will organize and structure your game design experience and provide you with resources that you can use to create your game (most notably, the Twine interactive storytelling software).
I love that the course is set up to allow up to develop our final project over the course of the semester; all too often finals sneak up on us and are overwhelming!
All course materials will be available throughCanvas.
It is always such a relief to not have to buy expensive textbooks!
Grad school can be stressful enough during normal times, but it's likely worse during a global pandemic. You may be (or know) someone who has lost their job, tested positive for COVID-19, been hospitalized, or taken on new family responsibilities. Not only this, but there are other ongoing events that are constant reminders of inequalities and injustices you may be facing.I am fully committed to making sure that you learn everything you were hoping to learn from this class! Although formal deadlines are an important part of giving structure to a class, my late policy and willingness to make accommodations are pretty generous even during normal times, and if this pandemic (or anything else) is turning your life upside down, I'm willing to be as flexible as you need me to be. I have also adjusted the weekly activities for the course so that some are optional. I think all of the activities are worth completing, but this isn't the semester to be picky about that.
It is always so reasurring to see that a professor is compassionate and understand about how stressful everything is right now!