Faculty Publications

Navigating Discourses In Place In The World Of Webkinz

Document Type

Article

Keywords

discourses in place, multimodal analysis, nexus analysis, online play, peer mediation, virtual worlds

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Journal of Early Childhood Literacy

Volume

11

Issue

2

First Page

141

Last Page

163

Abstract

Geosemiotics (Scollon and Scollon, 2003) frames this analysis of play, multimodal collaboration, and peer mediation as players navigate barriers to online connectivity in a children's social network and gaming site. A geosemiotic perspective enables examination of children's web play as discourses in place: fluidly converging and diverging interactions among four factors: (1) social actors, (2) interaction order, (3) visual semiotics, and (4) place semiotics. The video data are excerpted from an ethnographic study of a computer club for primary school-aged children in an afterschool program serving working-class and middle-class families in a US Midwest university community. Discourses of schooling in the computer room and Webkinz complicated children's goal of coordinated game play and mutual participation in online games. Barriers to online connection produced ruptures that foregrounded children's' collaborative management of time and space. This foregrounding makes typically backgrounded practices, modes, and discourses visible and available for deconstruction and critique. © The Author(s) 2011.

Department

Department of Curriculum and Instruction

Original Publication Date

6-1-2011

DOI of published version

10.1177/1468798411401862

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