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Visit the LLED Graduate Student Blog to find out what these seminars are all about and to view upcoming events. Use the blog to comment on the seminar sessions and or to make suggestions for future sessions. If you have any questions, please contact Steven Talmy.

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Thursday, November 13, 2008 (12.30-2PM – Ponderosa E Boardroom)
Art and Literacy in Baroque Societies: A Cultural-Historical Approach
Juan-Daniel Ramirez, Visiting Scholar LLED, University of Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain

Abstract
Illiteracy has been an endemic problem in many countries from Southern Europe and Latin America. There are several reasons to try to explain this problem from the actual panorama of social sciences (social, demographical, economical, etc.). However, cultural-historical factors, especially closely related to religious questions, have been forgotten by scholars from different sciences. From our point of view, in the actual panorama of social sciences the explanation for many topics of study, especially those related to education, are based on a short-term approach. However, a long-term approach should be included in the analysis of complex processes as those related to communication technologies and the mentalities associated to them in the educational field. For the French historian Ferdinand Broudel and the Annals School the factors conditioning mentalities are always located in a long-term dimension and therefore demand an historical analysis as previous step to other considerations.

Our aim in this presentation is to present an historical view about the origins of illiteracy in Latin countries focusing on cultural-religious issues. To reach this aim we will consider the breakdown between Catholics and Protestants as a result of Reformation in the XVI century. We will analyze how Reformation and Contra-reformation used contraposed semiotic technologies as persuasive strategies to communicate and disseminate their faith.

Reform claimed written language as the main semiotic tool for the communication between the individual and God. That expanded literacy among all sectors of population in the countries affected by the religious Reform. On the other side, Contra-reform neglected written language as direct communication device between populations and God, since God´s words were considered to need literate clergy interpretation. In this context plastic art was also used as semiotic persuasive instrument for indoctrination of populations. Baroque art’s aesthetic techniques played an important role in this process.

These two technologies of communication used by Reform and Contra-Reform involve different persuasive strategies that lead to different ways of thinking or mentalities. In the historical context mentioned, while written language’s mainly searches for rational persuasion, icons mainly search and reach affective persuasion. Different examples will be provided and interpreted in the presentation.

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Thursday, September 25, 2008 (12.30-2:00pm– Ponderosa E Boardroom)
Analyzing interview data as discourse data: The case of "fresh off the boat"
Steven Talmy

• Seminar handout • Powerpoint presentation

Abstract
Content and thematic analyses of interview data in qualitative research have yielded important insights into respondents stated perceptions concerning an array of phenomena. However, scholars (e.g., Holstein & Gubrium, 1995, Sarangi, 2003; Silverman, 2001) are increasingly questioning the often implicit status accorded to interview data in qualitative studies that utilize interview. These scholars argue that by downplaying how respondents answers are occasioned and how meaning is co-constructed in the interview, qualitative researchers neglect an important analytic resource, overlook a means to add accountability to their analyses, and treat interview data in ways that may be inconsistent with the theoretical frameworks of their studies.

In this paper, I consider this discussion and illuminate aspects of it by contrasting a thematic analysis with a discourse analysis of the same interview data. These data are drawn from audio-recorded interviews I conducted with oldtimer ESL students during a 2.5 year critical ethnography in a Hawaii high school. Employing a critical pragmatics analytic framework, and focusing on a social category these students used to differentiate themselves from their newcomer ESL classmates (fresh off the boat), I consider how these students and I together (re)produced a hierarchy of social relations in circulation at the high school, in and through the interview itself.

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Thursday, October 9, 2008 (12.30-2:00pm– Ponderosa F 103)
Multimodal pedagogies in multilingual classrooms
Margaret Early

Abstract
Economic, technological and social transformations of considerable significance are occurring in the contemporary period. Many international scholars argue that the impact of these changes require us to fundamentally rethink our pedagogies. This presentation argues that two interrelated aspects of these changes have particular relevance for re-imagining learning environments in which language and subject area (content) teaching are integrated. The first aspect refers to the growing cultural and linguistic diversity present in our everyday local and globally networked lives; the second aspect refers to the many new forms of digital technology that are changing the production of meaning-making, contributing to a significant increase in the use of images and other modes of representation and communication that have gained prominence, alongside the linguistic, in print and on screen.

To date, there has been limited research in language and content in second language education investigating pedagogical practices other than monolingual, linguistic ones. Drawing on data collected in Canadian classrooms, this presentation reports on multimodal approaches to integrated language and content instruction in elementary and high school classrooms where expanded notions of academic literacies pedagogies, appropriate to culturally plural, postindustrial societies were designed and enacted.

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Thursday, October 23, 2008 (12.30-2:00pm-Ponderosa F 103)
Towards a more efficient language teaching: Is there an ideal method?
Dr. Juan Silvio Cabrera Albert
University of Pinar del Rio, Cuba

Abstract
For a long time in the history of language teaching, researchers and teachers have tried to find the ideal method through which they could solve all the problems in the language classroom making possible an efficient language acquisition by the side of students. Fortunately, lately, most of language educators have realized that there is not an ideal method for teaching the language and that an efficient language teaching depends on many factors including the mastery and ability of teachers to bring to the classroom motivational activities which match learning needs of students and personality traits (age, beliefs, interests, aptitudes, learning styles and strategies, etc).

In spite of the conceptual and real practical progress that the language teaching has experienced all over the world after the appearance of the so- called "communicative approach", it seems that as language teachers, we still have to master a more holistic, cognitive-humanistic teaching conception. From our point of view, such perspective would help us approach language teaching- learning process as cognitive and affective one. Specifically we think, it would enable us to design and put into practice task- based activities which could encourage students to use the language communicatively and also reflect about linguistic knowledge, skills and values they are dealing with in the language classrooms. In this sense, we believe arts can turn out to be a wonderful content and a didactic tool to encourage language learning and to build bridges among people especially in the context of multicultural classrooms.

Dr. Juan Silvio Cabrera Albert is a professor at the Study Centre of Educational Sciences of Higher Education at the University of Pinar del Rio, Cuba. He is also director of the Research Group on Learning and Understanding (GICA) and president of the Association of Pedagogues of Cuba at the same university, and was part of the team that wrote the Cuban national English Language Curriculum. His research concerns learning styles and strategies, and foreign language teaching and learning. Most recently he has worked on a language learning and community arts project in Pinar del Rio.

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Thursday, October 30, 2008 (12.30-2:00pm– Room change: From Ponderosa F 103 to Ponderosa E 105-Boardroom)
The YouthCLAIM project: Critical literacies and arts-integrated media practices of youth in school and community settings
Theresa Rogers

Abstract
In this talk I will share an ongoing multiple case study of youth engagement in arts and media that I have investigated along with a team of doctoral students (Mia Perry, Kari Winters and Anne-Marie LaMonde). The sites are quite diverse -- a street-entrenched youth zine project, a youth anti-violence video project, and a school-based devised theatre performance. We are currently analyzing the data and asking questions about how youth take up the discursive resources of arts and media for cultural engagement and social critique across these school and community sites.

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