In this article, we describe a programme of qualitative research and interpretive analysis around an approach to foreign language pedagogy that aimed to develop learners’ symbolic competence through experience with and examination of the of signs in acts of communication. Learners were presented with the problem of visually
representing the abstract concepts of envy, excitement, joy and fear as a means of exploring relationships between mode and meaning and how meaning may be transformed as a result of re-presenting ideas in different modal forms. The data set included learners’ visual compositions, observational field notes on in-class interaction and transcribed semi-structured interviews and student presentations on their work, all
of which were analysed through the interpretive lens of Peircean semiotics, specifically the notion of abduction. Findings suggest that facilitating learners’ creative engagement in shifting meaning across representational boundaries of mode can serve to stimulate socio-cognitive processes of abduction, and thereby heighten students’
awareness of and connection to unique linguistic resources afforded by the target language.