The Kinetic-Vectorial Design of Internet-Mediated L2 Teaching Practices: The Case of BBC Learning English Website

Abstract

This study offers new insights into the educational-linguistic visual semiotics of online teaching as a digital practice with kinetic-vectorial design. Towards this end, a twofold social semiotic approach is utilized as a synthetic methodology. First, Van Leeuwen’s (2016) kinetic design model is employed with a view to revealing the movement types of Internet-mediated L2 teaching practices. Second, Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2021) model of ideational vector analysis is used in a way that uncovers the subtle pedagogical practices of the same type of teaching as directional and transactional acts addressed to educational-website networked L2 learners worldwide. The data sets targeted for analysis comprise screenshot-styled images from the BBC Learning English Website available for public purposes of L2 teaching. A total number of functionally related five images have been selected with an eye to the BBC’s pedagogic content online on the techno-semiotic levels of design kinetics and vectoriality. The current study has reached three findings (with emerging relevant implications). First, the synthetic kinetic-vectorial method of analysis has proved to be empirically effective in investigating the visual semiotics of design mediated by educational websites such as the BBC Website. Second, there emerged kinetically motivated ‘pedagogic’ and ‘digital’ vectors, respectively controlled by the BBC instructors and the design features of the website itself. Third, and last, the kinetic-vectorial analysis of the BBC Website revealed a sort of spatiotemporal compression of pedagogic content; further, the visual aspects of spatial and temporal movements (mobility and movability) appeared to have occurred across different semiotic modes, verbal and visual.