background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); color: rgb(31, 47, 76);">In this course we want to introduce you to some of our recent work and thinking in the areas of new (and old!) media of communication and meaning-making. We also want to discuss the interpretive research methods that we, and many others, use.

The content of the course is centered around the ways in which we interpret the changing meanings of meaning, particularly in the light of the digital and now AI disruptions people have experienced since the last quarter of the twentieth century. These have affected almost every aspect of life. These writings and videos are a demonstration of our approach to interpretive methods. The two core volumes (linked to the library e-editions below) that support this course can be read either in a linear way or on the basis of your interests. As well as articulating our own view, they are a tour through some of the main interpretive frameworks and interpretive frameworks that have shaped our thinking. This is a series of short stories, and you hope you will find them, at the very least, interesting!

There are two ways you can approach this course:

Using interpretive methods, in your course project to dig deeper into ideas you find here or the work of the people you encounter, applying in your own writing the theoretical-interpretive models of thinking and exposition that these people exemplify.
Use this course as a way to develop your own understanding of interpretive methods in general, and how you might apply these methods to a research project that you have in mind.

Course Materials

We are in the process or revising and adding this material to the new CGScholar: Meaning Patterns: Semiotics and the Interpretation of Meaning in Education and the Social Sciences. Start with the directory pinned at the top of the page.

For the rest of the material, visit:

Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. 2020. Making Sense: Reference, Agency and Structure in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
Kalantzis, Mary and Bill Cope. 2020. Adding Sense: Context and Interest in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
As you read these books, be sure to view the supporting media.

Weekly topics

Week 1

Reference: Making Sense book Introduction and Part 1 linked above, and video series. Use this link to start with the first video, then follow the arrows.
Read wider: We recommend particularly digging into the writings of: Walter Benjamin, MAK Halliday, Vygotosky. If you don't them already, we suggest: AI summary > Wikipedia bio > read at least a little of what this interpretive/theoretical practitioner has written in order to hear their voice.
AI considerations: See "The Clause Revised" and "Multimodal Grammar of Generative AI".

ERAM 557: Meaning Patterns