Brahim Azaoui: Going Beyond Words in Multicultural and Multilingual Settings: From Multimodality to Transmodality

Reality is more often that not viewed through a simplistic lens that tends to homogenize environments: one language, one standard, one modality, one culture, one identity. Yet, a growing body of research is deconstructing this standardized view of human identities and interactions so as to better acknowledge their inherent semiotic, cultural and linguistic diversity. Based on video data sets recorded in various educational contexts (from nursery day care centres to secondary school classes with migrant students), he will discuss the variability of meaning making in different multilingual and multicultural settings through the use of a diversity of semiotic resources, and the impact on both the teaching-learning process and the construction of conversational norms.

Brahim Azaoui is associate professor of foreign languages education in the Faculty of Education at Montpellier University, in France. He is interested in the place and use of multilingualism and multimodality as interactional resources in educational settings. His recent studies fall within the fields of the pedagogy of multiliteracies and social semiotics.