ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the practicality of using Chinese visual arts in implementing multimodal pedagogy in TCFL classrooms. By drawing on concepts of mode and multimodality in interdisciplinary semiotic studies, the chapter has examined the literacy route of Chinese language in relation to its dual-modalities and argued that, unlike learning an alphabetic language, which is essentially monomodal, to learn Chinese as a multimodal language, it is necessary to develop multimodal literacy. The difference between monomodal and multimodal literacies, in its essence, is the difference between humanist and posthumanist understandings of meaning-making practice. This chapter has deliberated that to develop multimodal literacy in Chinese entails the need to apply multimodal pedagogy in TCFL classrooms with a posthumanist perspective. The chapter has conceptualized four principles of multimodal pedagogy for TCFL classroom teaching. Based on the proposed four principles of multimodal pedagogy for TCFL classrooms, the chapter has demonstrated the practicality of using Chinese visual arts as semiotic resources in TCFL classrooms. The central theme of the chapter is to propose a shift in pedagogical stance from humanist monomodal verbal language teaching to posthumanist multimodal distributed language teaching for two reasons. First, meaning making, no matter it is inside or outside language classrooms, is situated, distributed, emergent, and embodied, not verbal-centered. Therefore, rather than ‘internalizing’ the language in the ‘head’ and ‘fixing’ it in the ‘text’, language teaching needs to distribute the language across semiotic resources. Second, the meaning making of Chinese language as an ideographic language is multimodal and distributed. Therefore, the teaching of L2 Chinese needs to be multimodal and distributed, i.e. to implement the multimodal pedagogy as proposed in this chapter.
