Academic Research: Enhancing digital literacy through the understanding of multimodal creativity in social media: A case study of Elon Musk's social-influencer discourse in his Twitter posts

 

Image: JOGLTEP

My latest publication / innovation:

Law, L. (2020). Enhancing digital literacy through the understanding of multimodal creativity in social media: A case study of Elon Musk's social-influencer discourse in his Twitter posts. Journal of Global Literacies, Technologies, and Emerging Pedagogies, 6 (1), 968-994.

#DigitalCreativityMultimodalAnalysis (DCMA)

#DigitalLiteracy

#ElonMusk

#Twitter

#MultimodalAnalysis

Download free copy here: http://jogltep.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/6.1.1-Law.pdf

Official webpage: http://jogltep.com/published-issues/

Abstract:

Digital literacy is becoming increasingly popular topic in education as online communication continues to evolve. Social media, in particular, have been the main driving force behind the monomodal-to-multimodal evolution, providing vast opportunities for multimodal texts and multimodal creativity production and dissemination. However, advanced searches on several academic databases performed in this study revealed a paucity of literature on multimodal creativity in social media, making it highly difficult for teachers of digital literacy to find references to support their teaching. This study conducts a case study of Elon Musk’s social-influencer discourse in his Twitter posts in an attempt to enhance digital literacy through the understanding of multimodal creativity in social media. A total of 5,266 Musk's tweets dated between 1 Feb 2017 and 31 May 2019 (28 months in total) was collected and analysed before selecting five examples from 248 multimedia tweets for digital creativity multimodal analysis (DCMA). Using Law’s (forthcoming; 2020) Analytical Framework for Creativity in Multimodal Texts (AFCMT) in DCMA, this study is able to identify Musk’s multimodal creativity patterns and strategies.

Keywords: 

digital literacy, multimodal creativity, creativity, Twitter, social-influencer discourse, social media, Elon Musk, COVID-19

Environment: Should hybrid (taxis) be incentivised?

LPG taxis in Hong Kong
Image from pxhere.com

Locky Law, director of education at ChargedHK, a non-profit group that promotes electric vehicle use, said the government could consider offering short-term incentives for taxi drivers to switch to hybrid models, if the official data offered by the hybrid carmakers was trustworthy, and if there was evidence to prove that hybrid taxis emitted lower emissions.

#TeslaFriendly #hybridvehicles #EV

Extra note: In summary, if we could either trust the official data offered by the hybrid automakers (which some reports disagree, e.g. Greenpeace's) or government departments could perform their own highly-rigorous emission testing on every model, and that the government and electric companies would not improve the fuel mix in the short run (e.g. in the next five years), then those low-emission hybrids and plug-in hybrids could enjoy short-term incentives. Lots of 'if's.

Read more:
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/transport/article/3094763/hong-kong-taxi-distributor-says-including-hybrid-models 
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/cleaner-cars-cradle-grave 
https://thedriven.io/2020/06/28/plug-in-hybrids-may-not-be-delivering-emissions-cuts-new-report-finds/

Academic Research: Applying partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in an investigation of undergraduate students’ learning transfer of academic English

Image from Journal of English for Academic Purposes

My latest publication / innovation:

Law, L., & Fong, N. (2020). Applying partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) in an investigation of undergraduate students’ learning transfer of academic English. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 46, 100884. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2020.100884

Abstract:

Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is a statistical analysis technique that has been widely adopted in marketing and strategic management disciplines, yet there is a paucity of application in language education research. This study applies PLS-SEM in an investigation of undergraduate students’ learning transfer by analysing their perceptions of learned skills they find transferable in a general EAP course and the extent of transferability to interdisciplinary-organised Common Core courses. A theoretical model was proposed to examine the interrelationships of variables, namely content relevance, understanding of learning, transfer/applicability and transfer outcome. Two rounds of in-class e-survey were administered with 675 (63.2%) and 689 (64.3%) valid responses respectively. The results from the PLS-SEM reveal that there are significant relationships between the variables. This study not only can fill the research space of learning transfer in EAP in language learning, it can also model a new quantitative empirical research method which can be used to explain and predict learning transfer. Implications for future EAP research using PLS-SEM are discussed.

Keywords:

EAP, Learning transfer, Training transfer, PLS-SEM, Partial least squares, Content relevance

Download a free copy using this URL before 20 August 2020:

https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1bKZt_XYery-jR 

#ResearchInnovation #PLSSEM #SmartPLS

Academic Research: My first-ever book chapter is finally out!

Image from Springer

My first-ever book chapter is finally out! Many thanks to my The Hong Kong Polytechnic University - Department of English PhD supervisors Prof. Christian Matthiessen and Prof. Francisco Veloso for their teaching and guidance.

Cite this chapter as:

Law L. (2020) Creativity and Television Drama: A t-Score and MI Value Cut-off Analysis of Pattern-forming Creativity in House M.D.. In: Yang B., Li W. (eds) Corpus-based Approaches to Grammar, Media and Health Discourses. The M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics Series. Springer, Singapore

Link:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-981-15-4771-3_14

 #Creativity #Statistics #Media #Health #TV #HouseMD #Springer

Usage & Writing: Locky's Top 10 Tips for Mastering The Use of Tables and Equations

Image from Locky's English Playground

Stay home and master the use of tables and equations in academic, scientific and technical Writing. #EAP #ESP #Writing

Watch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sG--HUAfM8

Usage & Writing: Locky's Top 10 Tips for Mastering The Use of Figures

Image from Locky's English Playground

Stay home and master the use of figures in academic, scientific and technical Writing. #EAP #ESP #Writing

Watch video: https://youtu.be/mUbfd0uCpP0

Languages & Usage: The Translation of 唔見棺材唔流眼淚 is Never Good Enough

Image from RTHK

Image from RTHK

This beautiful Cantonese saying 唔見棺材唔流眼淚 is one of the toughest metaphors to find an equivalent in English. Translation can match either its images or meanings in one clause, but to have both, you will need two. And you will lose the brevity. #WARS #Translation #Saying #Metaphor

LegCo translation 1: This is the so-called "he will not cry until he sees the coffin (refuses to be convinced until one faces the grim reality)"

LegCo translation 2: come to its senses only at the eleventh hour.

LegCo translation 3: "will not weep until it sees the coffin"

References:

指有官員對疫情樂觀　袁國勇引俗語：唔見棺材唔流眼淚
https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/ch/component/k2/1518681-20200403.htm?spTabChangeable=0

Officials taking outbreak lightly: Yuen Kwok-yung
https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/component/k2/1518699-20200403.htm

https://www.linguee.com/chinese-english/translation/%E4%B8%8D%E8%A6%8B%E6%A3%BA%E6%9D%90%E4%B8%8D%E8%90%BD%E6%B7%9A.html

Message: Coronavirus Alert!

Original image from NBC Universal
Meme text by Locky's English Playground
Meme generated by imgflip.com
Inspired by Hong Kong Medics

Reference:
【武漢肺炎】醫護舉標語籲市民留在家中　「我為你堅守崗位，你為我留守在家」
https://www.thestandnews.com/society/%E6%AD%A6%E6%BC%A2%E8%82%BA%E7%82%8E-%E9%86%AB%E8%AD%B7%E8%88%89%E6%A8%99%E8%AA%9E%E7%B1%B2%E5%B8%82%E6%B0%91%E7%95%99%E5%9C%A8%E5%AE%B6%E4%B8%AD-%E6%88%91%E7%82%BA%E4%BD%A0%E5%A0%85%E5%AE%88%E5%B4%97%E4%BD%8D-%E4%BD%A0%E7%82%BA%E6%88%91%E7%95%99%E5%AE%88%E5%9C%A8%E5%AE%B6/?fbclid=IwAR1zo3Jcib8NLGLBF399tQvQCaa5XqTTXGXnnlVVF9XDExqlgowFvhB4oTg

Academic Writing: The Microsoft Word referencing style extender for linguistics journals

APA 7th Edition (Alpha)
Image from Locky's English Playground

Frustrated by the fact that Microsoft Word doesn't have the referencing styles for linguistics journals, I created my own stylesheets by extending Yves Dhondt's BibWord project. 

Download link: https://github.com/lx3h/LinguisticsJournals

Please feel free to make requests for new styles, report bugs and leave comments.

Latest addition:

1. APA 7th Edition (Alpha version)
2. Language, Context and Text : The Social Semiotics Forum
3. Corpora
4. De Gruyter Mouton journals
5. SAGE Harvard for SAGE journals

Citation: Law, L. (2020). The Microsoft Word referencing style extender for linguistics journals. GitHub. https://github.com/lx3h/LinguisticsJournals

Medical: How environmental temperature affected #SARS outbreak?

How environmental temperature affected #SARS outbreak and how might this affect #WARS? Let's have a read.

#StandWithMedics

References:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1733040/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870397/

Medical: Size of #SARS vs #WARS virions

Is WARS virions really bigger than SARS'? If so, by how much? The following references will give us some clues.

#StandWithMedics

References:
https://www.jbc.org/content/281/25/17134.full

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbiology/sars-related-coronavirus

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30211-7/fulltext

Academic Research: [回應訴求 during #WARS?]

Image from BYU BNC

Image from BYU COCA

[回應訴求 during #WARS?]

Maybe it is just me and my poor Cantonese / Chinese + translation, but the expression 回應訴求 doesn't sound right to me (and always irritates me every time I hear it).

Given that

回應 (vb) = to respond to;
訴求 (n ) = (public / popular / - ) demand(s);

Asking HKGov to 回應訴求 (in Cantonese) does not seem to imply that a positive outcome is expected, which may explain why HKGov officials almost always claim that "we have responded, and the answer is 'no'".

Statistically, in UK / US English at least, "to meet demands" and "to satisfy demands" (滿足訴求 in Cantonese) are much more frequent (FYI: by the multiples) than "to respond to demands".

So maybe it is time to start using 滿足訴求 instead of 回應訴求 from now on.

Just saying.

#StandWithMedics

#CorpusLinguistics
#NotACantoneseExpert #CantoneseLinguistsPleaseFeelFreeToComment