This thesis focuses on how different semiotic resources, such as spoken and written texts, artefacts and activities interact with classroom design and classroom communication in three school subjects in Swedish secondary school: Home and Consumer Studies, Biology and Chemistry. The research process has been concerned with the affordances that are created through different semiotic resources in classroom design and in classroom communication in the three school subjects, focusing on academic language and student participation. The study used an ethnographic approach, employing multiple methods for material production and analysis. Video and audio recordings formed the foundation for analysis. Material production also includes field notes, photographs and interviews with teachers and students. The research draws on sociocultural theory using a three-legged theoretical framework based in sociocultural theory. Basil Bernstein’s sociological theories were used as an overarching theory for understanding the results. The sociosemiotic theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Social Semiotic Multimodality were adopted for analyzing classroom design and classroom communication. This study shows that classroom design and classroom communication are tied together. Classroom design presents affordances for a subject’s ideational and interpersonal meaning. These affordances are reproduced in classroom communication. In classrooms with subject-focused design, classroom communication is school-focused. Learning is segmented without connection between school subjects or other contexts. In one classroom, designed to create relevance for both school and everyday knowledge, communication is both school-focused and also creates relevance for students’ use of the contents in other contexts. Learning in this classroom is cumulative and students’ participation and meaning-making is integrated in teaching and design. This study also shows how different semiotic resources influence teacher’s and students’ linguistic choices. Vertical discourse, i.e. abstract and distant academic language, is realised in written texts such as text books and whiteboard texts. Few other artefacts introduce and encourage participants’ vertical discourse. Teacher and student communication realises mainly horizontal discourse, i.e. context embedded everyday language. Classroom communication provides few opportunities for students to appropriate academic language through semantic waves, as academic language is only unpacked into everyday language and not repacked into academic language.

Föreliggande studie undersöker tre mellanstadielärares språkbruk både i kommunikativa metoder och planering av lektionsinnehåll. Studien utgår från två frågeställningar som behandlar hur lärarna använder och resonerar om sitt språkbruk i förhållande till kommunikativa metoder. Data samlades in genom observationer och intervjuer. I studien används legitimation code theorys semantiska vågor som teoretisk utgångspunkt och analysmetod. Lärarnas språkbruk analyseras därmed utifrån semantisk densitet och semantisk gravitation. Studiens resultat skildrar de tre deltagande lärarnas syn på vilka kommunikativa aspekter som främjar elevers lärande såsom kooperativa metoder eller relationell kommunikation. Vidare framgår även att eleverna har stor inverkan på lektionsplaneringen och de kommunikativa metoderna som lärarna tillämpar. Studien åskådliggör hur lärare motiverar elever till lärande genom att använda kommunikativa metoder som är anpassade efter deras elevgrupper. Slutligen belyser studien ytterligare utvecklingsmöjligheter och hur den kommunikativa kompetensen i skolan kan studeras ur andra perspektiv.

Föreliggande studie undersöker sex elevers självskattade förståelse av tre mellanstadielärares språkbruk i tre olika ämnen. Studien utgår från tre frågeställningar som behandlar lärarnas språkbruk, elevernas självskattade förståelse samt elevernas tankar om förståelse och inlärning. Datainsamlingsmetoder är ljudinspelningar, deltagande observationer samt enkäter. Legitimation code theorys semantiska vågor är studiens teoretiska utgångspunkt och analysmetod. Semantisk densitet och semantisk gravitation används därför för att analysera lärarnas språkbruk i kombination med elevernas självskattade förståelse. Studiens resultat åskådliggör att eleverna i stor utsträckning har svårt att förstå ämnesspecifika begrepp som förklaras med hög informationstäthet. Eleverna angav även att muntliga och skriftligaförklaringar bidrog till att skapa större förståelse av ett ämnesinnehåll. Eleverna ansåg även att uppgifter som utfördes i kooperativa och praktiska arbetssätt påverkade deras förståelse positivt. Avslutningsvis presenteras vidare utvecklingsmöjligheter med studien.

The project has been implemented as teacher driven action research, where subject-specific reading was studied in classroom practitioners and analyzed by using Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). The purpose was, partly to research which linguistic domains the teachers used in the part detailed reading in Reading to Learn (R2L) and how the discursive movement looked, and partly if progression could be seen during a school year and in that case, how it affected the educators’ teaching.    Participating in the study were four teachers working in a Swedish gymnasium: a chemistry teacher and a teacher of social studies, who were working in academic preparatory programs and a teacher in Swedish as a second language and a teacher in history in one of the introductory programs. The leader of the project and author of this study is also a teacher and colleague to the participants. Totally, twelve observations of detailed reading were implemented: three observations each teacher during one academic year.    The most prominent characteristic of the project was how the teachers, by becoming aware of the linguistic domains, changed their way of using detailed reading and by using the discursive movement, they were able to make semantic waves. The experience of the teachers was that through the action research they received new tools to develop their subject-specific reading and therefore the students’ language and knowledge increased which contributed to a higher object achievement. Notable was that all students seemed to benefit from detailed reading, even the high performing and/or the students with Swedish as their native language.    The result of this study may be relevant to studies on how to augment classroom practices to better implement the subject-specific reading which may lead to change for both teachers and students, regardless of students’ language and knowledge level, stage, or subject.