Photographic Illustrations in Chinese College English Textbooks: A Semiotic Analysis

• 作者: Juming Shen Xiaojun Su
• 来源期刊: 语言与符号学研究
• 学科: 文学
• 年，卷（期）: 2015,（1）
• 页码范围: 144-160
• 页数: 17页
• 分类号: H319.3

摘要

In recent years, the curriculum of College English(CE) in China has seen a trend that veers away from pure language-oriented teaching toward an emphasis on the cultivation of students’ cultural or intercultural competence. In this context, the CE textbooks have been highly responsiblized in the transformative agenda, and the use of photographic illustrations in the textbooks has been increasingly valued as a way to include culture carriers. Our study draws perspectives from communicative semiotics and visual semiotics to investigate the way in which photographic illustrations have been involved in the learning process in order to find out whether and how they promote students’ cultural and intercultural acquisition. We focus on the semiosis process engendered by the photos as signs and their modes of representation, which largely determines the process and result of cultural acquisition. Our analysis demonstrates that while the photographic illustrations have been designed to enhance cultural learning in hypothetical situations, when placed in a real learning context together with the texts and learning tasks, some of the photos may not successfully promote the process of cultural acquisition, since learners’ interpretation of the photos can be diverted or limited by other aspects of the learning context.