Algunas reflexiones sobre geometría y educación

Social semiotics originates from Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar. This view focuses on the role of language as a resource for making meanings (Halliday, 1978). His work shifted attention from “language as a static system to language as a social system” (Jewitt, 2013:252), emphasising the way that language is shaped by its social functions.

Social Semiotics is based on the semiotic perspective of Halliday’s theory, which is more focused on meaning of signs in addition to language. It is a study of “the science of the sign, a fusion of form/signifier and meaning/signified” (Kress, 2003:41). This focus is driven by the fact that in contemporary

communication practices, language is not the only, or main means of making meaning; other modes are increasingly being used to express meanings that cannot be expressed using language alone, and these other modes, in a lot of situations, may even be more prominent and significant than language. In light of this, linguistic theory alone can no longer provide a holistic account of

meaning-making in communications, and therefore a new theory which accounts for not only language, but other modes of representation, and the agency of sign-makers is needed to explain meaning-making practices which are multimodal in nature. As Kress (2003) explains, “the move from linguistics to semiotics is … a move from a primary concern with form to a concern with form- and-meaning” (p. 40). Nonetheless, it does not mean that language-based modes, for example, speech and writing, will be made redundant in this theory of social semiotics; rather, they will be considered as “a part of the whole landscape of the many modes available for representation” (Kress, 2003:36). Kress (2010) points out the following uses of social semiotics in helping us to understand a multimodal text:

Social semiotics and the multimodal dimension of the theory, tell us about interest and agency; about meaning(-making); about processes of sign-making in social environments; about the resources for making meaning and their respective potentials as signifiers in the making of signs-as-metaphors; about the meaning potentials of cultural/semiotic forms. The theory can describe and analyse all signs in all modes as well as their interrelation in any one text. (Kress, 2010, p. 59)

He concludes that social semiotics and multimodality “provides an

encompassing theory of representation and communication” (Kress, 2010:105; original emphasis). Chapter Five of the thesis explains how social semiotics and multimodality are put in practice to analyse a multimodal learning environment. There are several key concepts used in social semiotics that need to be

discussed. They are sign, meaning-making, interest, mode, modal affordance, and text.

3.3.3 Sign

Sign is an important concept in the theory of semiotics. It is “a fusion of form and meaning” (Kress, 2010:54). Semiosis concerns with how signs are made rather than used. The focus on sign-making rather than sign use sets social semiotic theory apart from other semiotic theories. It focuses on how the meaning of signs are social, culturally constructed and shaped (Kress, 2010). Sign-makers choose the sign which aptly represents a meaning, based on their interests.

Social semiotics is based on the assumption that signs are motivated. In other words, the relation between signifier and signified is not wholly arbitrary (Kress, 1997, 2003, 2010). The signifier is chosen to represent the signified based on its aptness for expressing the meaning of the signified. An example of the concept of motivated sign and interest is illustrated in an example of a drawing of a car by a three-year-old boy, who used a number of circles to represent a car. From the boy’s perspective, circles are the most apt signifier to represent wheels of the car, the signified. The use of wheels to signify a car reflects the boy’s interest that a car has many wheels (Kress, 1997, 2003, 2010). The notion of motivated sign allows us to assume that signs are always meaningful conjunctions of signifiers and signifieds so that all forms are meaningful and should be taken seriously (Kress, 1997, 2003, 2010).

Kress considers his notion of motivated sign and Saussure’s assumption of arbitrariness between the signifier and signified to be contradictory. As Kress puts it,

Saussure’s mistaken assumption that the relation of signifier and signified is an arbitrary one was, as is all theory, a product and

realization of the social conditions of his time (Kress, 2010:65; original emphasis)

Following this, Kress (2010:65-66; original emphasis) offers three objections as to why the relation of signifier and signified is motivated, but not arbitrary:

1. [A]rbitrariness takes no account either of the patent facts of the histories (of change) of semiotic resources … nor of the facts of contemporary sign-making practice in every instance. 2. [Saussure’s notion of arbitrariness] rests on a confusion on

Saussure’s part about the characteristics and the levels at which signifier and signified operate.

3. [Saussure’s notion of arbitrariness] denies agency to those who make meaning in making signs

However, it could be argued that the selection of apt signifiers does not

necessarily mean that signifiers are not arbitrary symbols, as in the case of the use of different languages to refer to the same signified. For instance, tree (English) and (Chinese) both refer to the same signified, with the use of

different symbols (form), and these two symbols (tree and ) has no relations with each other except that they all refer to the same signified. In other words, the arbitrary symbols (tree and used are arbitrary in relation to the signified, and they are established by conventions rather than motivated (see Saussure (1916/1983) on the arbitrariness of sign). To sum up, Kress’ conception of motivated sign and Saussure’s arbitrariness of sign are in fact referring to different things, and it should not be seen as a refutation of Saussure’s claim.

3.3.4 Meaning-making

From the perspective of social semiotics, “meaning is the result of (semiotic) work, whether as articulation in the outwardly made sign…or as interpretation in the inwardly made sign” (Kress, 2003:37; original emphasis). Kress describes semiotic work as the work of filling the signifier with meaning. When meaning is made, there has to be a ‘maker’, and hence agency is important in social semiotics (Kress, 2010). As sign-makers choose the apt signifier to make meaning for the signified, meaning-making involves the interaction between the sign-makers’ interests and the meaning potential of the resources available. The sign-makers have the ability to choose modes with the potential to carry meaning, which is motivated by their interests. Thus, meaning is realised differently in different modes (Kress, 2003). In the theory of social semiotics, signs are always made twice, first by the rhetor when the sign is being articulated, and then by the interlocutor when the sign is being interpreted.

3.3.5 Interest

Another important concept in the theory of social semiotics is the notion of interest. Kress (1993) defines interest as

the articulation and realisation of an individual’s relation to an object or event, acting out of that social complex at a particular moment, in the context of an interaction with other constitutive factors of the situation which are considered as relevant by the individual. (p.174)

The same example of the three-year-old boy’s drawing of a car can also be used to explain the concept of interest. From his perspective, a car is seen as something that has a lot of wheels. This information is taken as criterial about

what a car is, and so he chose to use wheels as a signifier to represent a car, the signified. Similarly, wheels for him are similar to circles. Again, this property of wheels is taken as criterial and so he chose to use circles as a signifier to represent wheels, the signified. In other words, it is the interest of the boy, the sign-maker, that determines what is taken as criterial about the signified, and it is this attention to certain features of the signified that helps sign-maker choose the most apt signifier to represent the signified.

Under the assumption that all signs are motivated, it can also be deduced that representation is always partial. As Kress explains, the sign is always both a representation of what sign-makers wished to represent and it is an indication of their interest at a particular moment. It is a “direct consequence and expression of the sign-maker’s subjectivity – focused in this instance and at the moment on the representation of a particular object or event” (Kress, 1996:20).

The notion of interest has important implications to learning. In the words of Kress (2010), this “”interested attention” frames an aspect of the

communicational environment as a prompt” which influences the way how readers choose to navigate a text (p. 175). Bezemer et al. (2012) also pointed out that interest plays an important role in meaning-making and learning as it shapes the attention of learners to what they choose to focus in learning. This idea of ‘interest’, to a certain extent, resembles ‘motivation’ which is widely used in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research.

3.3.6 Mode

Kress (2010) defines mode as a “socially shaped and culturally given semiotic resource for making meaning” (p. 79). Some examples of modes are image, writing, speech, animation, etc. As these semiotic resources are socially and culturally shaped in the way they are used to convey meanings, Kress and other social semiotic multimodalists believe that they display regularities in how they are used. Through analysing multimodal texts, researchers seek to

understand the principles behind the selection of modes and what modal resources are available in a situated communicative event (Jewitt, 2009).

What can be seen as a mode is shaped and construed by social, cultural and historical factors (Jewitt, 2009). Kress (2010) proposed two approaches: a theoretical one and a social one. In the theoretically oriented approach, one needs to know about the socially accepted features of existing modes. For instance, Kress mentioned that “treating speech and writing as modes is to accept that modes consist of bundles of (often deeply diverse) features”, and one needs to know what are the features inside and outside of a mode (p.86). For example, “everything that happens ‘inside’ the barrier of lips and nose can be part of speech” but “the sarcastic curl of the lips is not” (p. 87). On the other hand, in the socially oriented approach, a resource can only be considered as a mode when it has fulfilled the social and the formal aspects in social semiotics (Kress, 2010). Socially, as mode is socially shaped, a resource can be

classified as a mode when a community or a culture decides to use it to make meaning. Formally, a resource can be regarded as a mode when it is able to perform the ideational function, interpersonal function, and the textual function (Halliday, 1978). Generally speaking, “a shared cultural sense of a set of resources and how these can be organized to realize meaning” is needed (Jewitt, 2009:22). Norris (2004b) also pointed out that a communicative mode should not be seen as a bounded unit; instead, it should be seen as “a heuristic unit that is loosely defined without clear or stringent boundaries” which overlaps with other communicative modes (p.101).

3.3.7 Modal Affordance

Different modes have different potentials for making meaning. The notion of affordance was first introduced by Gibson (1986). Jewitt (2013) defines modal affordance as the “potentialities and constraints of different modes” (p. 254). For instance, writing offers different potentials of meaning making from images. These different potentials allow sign-makers to express their meanings that best suit their interests as well as the interests of the audience (Bezemer and Kress, 2008). In a study that compares the modes used in textbooks published over time and online resources, Bezemer and Kress (2008) found that different potentials for learning are realised by the use of different modes. In a website teaching ‘Angles’, the image showed students how the angle was measured by a protractor whereas the writing showed the ‘actions performed’ and the

definition of an angle. This example illustrates that different modes perform different functions, and they have different affordances that complement each other in making meaning. In another study on food blogs, Domingo, Jewitt, and Kress (2015) discovered that when a blogger described the steps of making cupcakes, she used writing to tell readers about the consistency of the mixture, afterwards she used an image of the mixture to show what the mixture looked like at that stage of baking. The authors argued that the mode of writing is now not sufficient to let readers know what the mixture is like at that particular stage of baking and an image is a better way to show it. However, it has to be clarified that it has never been sufficient when only one mode is used to make meaning. The point is that now with the advancement of technology, more modes such as images are available for sign-makers, which were not as easily available in the past. This example indicates that the affordances of each mode – what modes can do – is dependent on context. The uses of mode can also reshape its affordances in line with the changes in social practices (Kress, 2010). Thanks to high-speed Internet connection and the ease of connecting to the Internet, image, sound, and video has increasingly gained importance because people want instant comprehension without reading and thinking too much. The above- mentioned modes are apt for people who need to obtain information on the go in a short amount of time.

In communication, several modes are often used in combination to form a multimodal ensemble, in which “the affordances of each mode are used for the purposes which seem to the maker of signs on a specific occasion most aptly served by the mode” (Kress, 2015:57). The meaning of any message is distributed across all modes, and is carried in different ways by each mode in the ensemble. Each mode in the ensemble carries part of the message, and therefore “each mode is partial in relation to the whole of the meaning” (Jewitt, 2009:25). It has to be noted that in the multimodal analysis in Chapter Five, in particular section 5.8, modes are analytically separated to unpack the functions that they carried out. It does not intend to suggest that modes are separated in communicative contexts.

3.3.8 Text

A social semiotic understanding of the term text goes beyond linguistic modes such as writing. In other words, all texts are multimodal. For me, I see texts as a representation of multimodal ensembles. It is the site where meanings are made. In the words of Kress, text refers to any instance of communication in any combination of modes which has a ‘site of appearance’, for instance, on paper or on screen (Kress, 2003). In the past, a lot of texts used to appear on paper, but increasingly more and more texts appear on screen, which is

organised by the logic of image rather than writing. This is the reason why texts that appear on paper and on screen are often designed differently, as the two mediums have different affordances.