Social innovation
Communication, Education

Exploring human communicationfrom the perspective of “semiosis”
Division of Language and Culture, Graduate School of Humanities
Associate Professor Takeshi Enomoto
https://researchmap.jp/t-enomoto?lang=en

Abstract
Communication is such a complex phenomenon that grasping
its entire picture is a formidable challenge. My research confronts
this challenge by centering on three core ideas. (1) Drawing onsemiotics, it focuses on the three modes of signification based on“similarity,” “existential contiguity,” and “social convention”; (2) itviews communication as the “interaction between occurring signs
and their surrounding contexts” mediated by such sign modes; (3)it recognizes that human communication is fundamentally socialand closely related to identities and power relations. By adopting
this approach, I am trying to address seemingly disconnected issues of communication within a unified framework.

by such analyses. I hope to contribute to society by committing tocommunication research that encompasses both identification ofpatterns and contextual diversity.

Social innovation▍ Background & Results
I am currently involved in two main (collaborative) researchprojects. One is an attempt to establish “multimodal semiotics.” Incommunication, we respond not only to language, but also to various body movements, such as body orientations, movements of
the head, hands, and feet, and pointing. We react to them because
they serve as signs that “point to” (index) something related to ongoing communication, and we are actually reading such indexing.
Hence, communication is an empirical site in which different signs,
including language and body movements, and various contextual
elements that are made relevant by mediating signs “come to coherence,” generating a variety of interpretations. From this stance,
I am analyzing (partly) annotated video data to figure out semiotic
mediation processes that underlie co-occurrence and sequence ofgestures and other body movements.
The other is investigation of identities, power relations, and ideologies associated to communicative practices in the context of language education, especially English language education in Japan.
We not only use certain languages in society, but also hold beliefs
about languages (language ideologies) like “English is a globallanguage.” In addition, (often institutional) sites of language education, like schools, have specific social norms, roles, and asymmetrical relations in which language learning is always embedded. Witha goal to support practices to nurture critical language awareness,
my research aims to uncover what values regarding language andcommunication are reproduced in language education, how teachers and learners internalize and resist them, and what contexts arereinforced and/or transformed by such acts.

Embodied interaction between a science communicator andvisitors [Data provided by National Institute of Informatics]▍ Significance of the research and Future perspective
The projects introduced here are driven by consistent questions;“How do various constitutive factors of human communication, fromlanguage and body movements to social relations, intersect?” and“What are the processes that make such intersection possible?”
While contemporary technological development enables highly advanced statistical analyses based on “big data,” the significance of
my research lies in shedding light on areas that may be overlooked

Joint emergence of “learning English” and “being a student”

P a t e n t
Enomoto, Takeshi, Rethinking “language education and peace” from the perspective of communication theory: When will the end of “eigo kyoiku” come inJapan?, Sato, Shinji; Kamiyoshi, Uichi, Okuno, Yukiko, Miwa, Sei (Eds), Language education and peace, Akashi Shoten, 2023, 97-129 (in Japanese)T r e a t i s e Kataoka, Kuniyoshi; Takekuro, Makiko, Enomoto, Takeshi (Eds), New vistas in poetics: Plurimodal approaches to poetic practice, Hituzi Syobo, 2022 (inJapanese)
Enomoto, Takeshi, Linguistic anthropology of EFL education, Osaka University Press, 2019 (in Japanese)
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Scientific Research Grants for Research in the Field of Academic Change (B) 2022
UR
L “Embodied semiotics: Understanding gesture and sign language in language interaction”
https://research.nii.ac.jp/EmSemi/index_e.html
K e y w o r d semiosis, communication, context, language ideologies