The role of signifier differences, associations, and combinations in creative digital video composing: making meaning with gestures, objects, actions, and speech. (3rd April 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Ranker, Jason
• Is Part Of: Pedagogies. Volume 12:Number 2(2017)
• Page Start: 196
• Page End: 218
• Publication Date: 2017-04-03
• Subjects: Film -- digital video -- multimodality -- semiotics -- media -- composition; Teaching -- Periodicals; Education -- Study and teaching -- Periodicals; 370
• DOI: 10.1080/1554480X.2017.1287571
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1554-480X

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article presents an analysis of a digital video created by a student (age 13) in a classroom setting. Since sign functioning is a key focus in theories of meaning making as it occurs through language and through other modes, my analysis focuses on the relations between signifiers as they are inscribed in her video. This analysis explores new ways to use a theory of signification as a lens for considering, interpreting, and conceptualizing student video creations. My analysis focuses on how the focal student's video is constituted by signifiers (gestural, actional, object, and spoken) that are arranged into chains of signifiers. These signifiers come into relation, combination, and association with one another across varying degrees of difference and similarity, both delimiting and opening up their possible meaning potentials. This analysis provides a heuristic that offers a signifier-based method of interpreting student-created digital videos, conceptualizing them as composed of signifiers drawn from across modes. This study also offers ways to recognize how creative or novel uses of the medium involve complex semiotic association and dissociation processes occurring in multiple modes.