Using Video Games for Learning: Developing a Metalanguage for Digital Play

With technological advancement, digital play is increasingly popular as digital games appeal to all ages but are particularly attractive to youths and children. It is useful to develop a deeper understanding of digital play and to explore ways in which caregivers can guide young people in their play to recognize and develop different types of learning. This article attempts to address these issues through proposing a metalanguage for digital play. The theoretical orientation adopted in this article is that of social semiotics and critical multiliteracies. Our focus is on harnessing the affordances of digital play for learning by systematizing them into a metalanguage based on social semiotic theory that models the meaning potential of semiotic resources into the representation, engagement, and organization functions. From the metalanguage, the pedagogical implications or a set of principles of using digital play for learning in the classroom context are discussed.