Jay Lemke University of Michigan jaylemke@umich.edu Meaning & Feeling

Jay Lemke

University of Michigan

jaylemke@umich.edu

Meaning & FeelingMeaning & Feeling

A feeling for the organismA feeling for the organism

• How do we feel, bodily and emotionally, when we mean with and speak in a particular language/dialect?

• What is the role of affectivity in learning to use a language across times, sites, and media?

• How do we begin to answer these questions?

An AppetizerAn Appetizer

Feeling & MeaningFeeling & Meaning

• We feel when we mean

• We feel when we learn

• “You feel, you learn” [Alanis]

• We mean, feel, and learn across time

• On and across multiple timescales

• Feeling-and-meaning is situated, distributed, and social

Meaning & FeelingMeaning & Feeling

• Semiotics as formal analysis of meaning affordances – the possible

• Phenomenology in pursuit of the actual – feelings, embodiment, pacing and dynamics

• Meaning-making as a felt and feelingful process: feeling and meaning inseparable

• 1st person experiencing, 2nd person interactivity, 3rd person analytics

Make Love not War ?Make Love not War ?

Learning across TimeLearning across Time

• Learning as an aspect of development

• Learning as transient vs. maintained

• Learning along life traversals

• Across settings and timescales

• The relevance of the past to the present: retrospective view of learning

• What keeps learning alive and growing?

Affect in LanguageAffect in Language

• Feelings vs. feeling-expressions in a language

• Affects, emotions, and appraisals: semantics and language ideology

• The Big List

• Cultural specificity of emotions

• Feelings as relational, interactive, and distributed social phenomena

Affect & Language LearningAffect & Language Learning

• How we feel about a language

• How we feel when speaking a language

• How we speak our feelings in a language

• How we learn new feelings in a language

• How to take feeling into account in designing language learning environments?

Affect, Identity, & LearningAffect, Identity, & Learning

• Social-affective learning along traversals

• Across settings & timescales: issues of continuity and maintenance of learning

• Within and across quotidian, mixed, and virtual learning environments

• Who we can be when using a language in old and new settings

MMO GameWorldMMO GameWorld

Affect & Designs for LearningAffect & Designs for Learning

• Commercial video and computer games as models for affect-inclusive design

• Reciprocal responsiveness and the amplified role of feeling in interaction

• Immersion and affective realisms

• Chronotopes and chronopaths

• Traversing realities

Research StrategiesResearch Strategies

• Complicating the semantics of affect

• Integrating semiotic and phenomenological approaches & data

• Mapping chronopaths in realtime video

• Analyzing video of virtual worlds

• Documenting learning across time and place

• Attending to researcher feelings

With feeling!With feeling!