ABSTRACT
In the era of rapidly advancing technology, multilingual writers’ semiotic landscapes are increasingly multimodal, such that semiotics other than the written and spoken word – images, lighting, movement – are implicated in their composing processes. While some multimodal scholarship focuses on the writer's process of converting traditional prose into multimodal forms, this chapter considers the multimodal pedagogical activities using technology that supported one South Asian writer in generating print-based prose and engaging in critical writing practices in the context of a university developmental English writing course in the Northeastern US. We consider the writer's interaction with an equity video introduced during class, which prompted her examination of linguistic hierarchization in India. The chapter features a multimodal analysis (Norris, 2019) of the video to deconstruct its interconnected semiotic nature and illuminate its potential resources for composing. Subsequently, our case analysis triangulates multiple data sources (writing samples, transcripts) which were generated with the focal learner (who participated in dissertation research by Author 1) to understand the “resemiotization” process which transpired through the learner's interactions with the video (Iedema, 2003). Ultimately, we offer a fine-grained perspective on multimodal idea development and a vision for multilingual pedagogies that integrate videos to support L2 writing development.
