Courses: Visual Rhetoric, Visual Communication, Multiplatform Journalism, Advertising, Journalism, Public Relations. Objective: This unit activity requires that students analyze and produce imagery with the help of semiotic theory. Students will: (1) learn to connect theory with practice holistically by simultaneously practicing visual analysis…

Supported by critical theoretical frameworks, this book is a purposeful engagement with bodies of knowledge rooted in popular culture, yet routinely excluded from "common sense" visions of curriculum. Aimed at teachers as well as teacher-educators, the book examines areas such as Disney, African American stand-up comedy, intersections of…

Describes a course in semiotics (the study of signs and systems of communication) taught for the past 10 years by the author. (DD)

Semiotics, the study of signs of all kinds, can be subdivided into (1) semantics, dealing with the meanings of signs and systems of signs; (2) pragmatics, dealing with inferential meaning; and (3) syntactics, dealing with the structure and systems of signs. As such, semiotics provides a useful framework for conceptualizing curriculum. Such a model…

Approaches taken in the United States and France to use of visual pedagogy are compared and discussed. The necessity of integrating semiotic theory and visual pedagogy is underscored, a semiotic model of visual literacy and decoding is outlined, and some advertisements are analyzed, giving suggestions for teaching use. (MSE)

Reviews some of the basic notions of semiotics to show how they can be applied to composition teaching. (FL)

Uses central ideas from Roland Barthes's essays on connotative semiotics as a rationale for directing students in technical and professional writing classes to develop the critical reflex to analyze and then make judgments about the values implied by connotative systems. (SR)

Contends that play scripts are written to be performed and that a critical response to a play should reflect the fact that the script is a blueprint for a live happening. Proposes that students need to study a play both in the theatre and as written text. Explores aspects of Shakespeare's plays as performed theatrical works. (PM)

Links are drawn between text theories, both linguistic and semiotic, and the teaching of writing. Presents class activities designed to motivate students and teach good writing based on these theories. (MSE)

An approach to literary analysis of foreign language texts uses the tools provided by the study of semiotics. The technique is illustrated in the analysis of an excerpt from a French novel. (MSE)

Discusses teaching visual literacy by teaching students how to decode advertising images, thus enabling them to move away from being passive receivers of messages to active unravelers. Shows how teachers can use concepts from semiotics to deconstruct advertising messages. (SR)

To help students develop a broadly generative approach to reading and writing about literature, teachers of literature should employ not only systematic procedures, but also the eclectic and utilitarian spirit of rhetorical invention. A semiotic perspective offers the most solid theoretical foundation for establishing a genuinely heuristic…

A series of French language classroom exercises to be used over four class sessions applies principles of semiotics to literary textual analysis. The session themes include decoding and interpreting, reconstructing meaning, sociocultural connotations in the text, and sense of time and space. (MSE)

Texts from a variety of genres (letter, narrative, biography, film scenario, and dialogue) and a variety of French authors of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries are provided as examples of discourse with the common theme of passion and as sources for the study of the semiotics of passion. (MSE)

Describes the sequences of drama involving two stories and analyzes two samples of responses from three students in a kindergarten classroom. Suggests how process drama, informed by an understanding of social semiotics, could help teachers begin to reimagine writing instruction using drama as central to their work with young writers. (SG)