Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / There is increasing awareness among linguists that discourse analysis inevitably involves analyses of meanings arising from the combination of multiple modes of communication. The evolving multimodal pedagogic environment for teaching English as a foreign language (henceforth EFL), among other communicative contexts, calls for a social, semiotic, and linguistic explanation. Situated within the theoretical landscape of social semiotics and in the pedagogic context of EFL education, the present study aims to elucidate how linguistic and visual semiotic resources are co-deployed to construe interpersonal meaning in multimodal textbooks. The data drawn upon are eighteen EFL textbooks for primary and secondary schooling, published by People’s Education Press between 2002 and 2006. The research design consists of three complementary sub-studies. First, it investigates the ways in which the semantic regions of ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION can be modelled in multimodal texts, with special reference to the interplay of voices in textbook discourse. The second sub-study analyzes how verbal and visual semiotic resources are co-deployed to construe the ‘emotion and attitude’ goal highlighted in curriculum standards, with a particular focus on verbiage-image relations. Third, it extends the linguistic concept ‘modality’ to multimodal discourse, exploring coding orientation in texts for different educational contexts and between different constituent genres. The main findings of this thesis are as follows: (1) A range of multimodal resources (i.e. labelling, dialogue balloon, jointly-constructed text, illustration and highlighting) are identified as enabling editor voice to negotiate meanings with reader voice and character voice. It is found that the way in which an ENGAGEMENT value can be scaled is strongly associated with the intrinsic property of the given multimodal resource. The interaction between multiple voices is closely related to contact, social distance, and point of view. (2) It is shown that images play an essential role in realizing attitudinal meanings. Together with verbal APPRAISAL resources, visual semiotic features work to position the readers in ways that align them to set pedagogic goals, guiding them in completing jointly-constructed texts. Moreover, an attitudinal shift from an emotional release to a more institutionalized type of evaluation can be identified as students advance through the school years. (3) It is argued that what counts as real in multimodal texts is socially defined and specific to a given communicative context. The nature of pedagogic discourse should be taken into account when visual displays are produced for pedagogic materials. The implications of this study include both theoretical and pedagogic aspects。Theoretically it adapts and extends APPRAISAL analysis to multimodal discourse, exploring the intersemiotic complementarity and co-instantiation in construing global evaluative stance. This semiotic exploration, in return, suggests ways in which discourse analysis may help textbook users better understand and interpret the multimodal features. With the affordances as well as limitations of semiotic resources made explicit, we may have one step further towards a comprehensive and critical understanding of multimodal construal of interpersonal meaning in pedagogic materials.

This study compares how newspaper yearbooks and current upper secondary school history textbooks represent the Cold War between the years 1985-1991. As earlier research, this multimodal study focuses discourses and images. In addition I examine the usefulness of mediatization as illuminating tool in this context. For these aims, I have constructed a three-step model, in which concepts from mediatization theory are operationalized, and combined with Theo Van Leeuwen’s social semiotic theory. This thesis compares 356 representations from two yearbooks to 16 ones from three textbooks. At present, historical images are neither addressed nor regulated in the national curriculum, yet both educators and researchers within the field of education address them. The contribution of this paper is hence to shed light on the complexity of images, which shows how their meanings, including degree of mediatization, depend on context. Thereby I add a new aspect to multimodal literacy research.

The U.S. farm populace is declining rapidly, and the majority of Americans are generations removed from food and fiber production. Society now receives the majority of its information about agriculture-related topics from sources removed from the industry itself, including entertainment media such as films and television programs. To better understand how these entertainment media influence societal perceptions of the food and fiber industry, the researcher sought to explicate the content of entertainment media texts related to agricultural production and to compare that content to previously recorded public perceptions of the industry. Using themes outlined by the Kellogg Foundation’s 2002 survey of perceptions of rural life—the pastoral fantasy, the traditional family farm, and the decline of the agrarian tradition—a social semiotic content analysis of 23 films and television programs released between 1950 and 2012 was conducted to identify parallels between the content of those media texts and the findings of the Kellogg study. Films and television programs released between 1950 and 1990 contained narrative and visual elements that closely linked those texts to the three themes identified by the Kellogg researchers, indicating that those perceptual elements could have been influenced by pervasive images of traditional agricultural production practices. Films and programs released after 1990 also contained components strongly tying them to the Kellogg study themes with added emphasis on the decline of the agrarian tradition theme.

Doctor of Philosophy(PhD) / There is increasing awareness among linguists that discourse analysis inevitably involves analyses of meanings arising from the combination of multiple modes of communication. The evolving multimodal pedagogic environment for teaching English as a foreign language (henceforth EFL), among other communicative contexts, calls for a social, semiotic, and linguistic explanation. Situated within the theoretical landscape of social semiotics and in the pedagogic context of EFL education, the present study aims to elucidate how linguistic and visual semiotic resources are co-deployed to construe interpersonal meaning in multimodal textbooks. The data drawn upon are eighteen EFL textbooks for primary and secondary schooling, published by People’s Education Press between 2002 and 2006. The research design consists of three complementary sub-studies. First, it investigates the ways in which the semantic regions of ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION can be modelled in multimodal texts, with special reference to the interplay of voices in textbook discourse. The second sub-study analyzes how verbal and visual semiotic resources are co-deployed to construe the ‘emotion and attitude’ goal highlighted in curriculum standards, with a particular focus on verbiage-image relations. Third, it extends the linguistic concept ‘modality’ to multimodal discourse, exploring coding orientation in texts for different educational contexts and between different constituent genres. The main findings of this thesis are as follows: (1) A range of multimodal resources (i.e. labelling, dialogue balloon, jointly-constructed text, illustration and highlighting) are identified as enabling editor voice to negotiate meanings with reader voice and character voice. It is found that the way in which an ENGAGEMENT value can be scaled is strongly associated with the intrinsic property of the given multimodal resource. The interaction between multiple voices is closely related to contact, social distance, and point of view. (2) It is shown that images play an essential role in realizing attitudinal meanings. Together with verbal APPRAISAL resources, visual semiotic features work to position the readers in ways that align them to set pedagogic goals, guiding them in completing jointly-constructed texts. Moreover, an attitudinal shift from an emotional release to a more institutionalized type of evaluation can be identified as students advance through the school years. (3) It is argued that what counts as real in multimodal texts is socially defined and specific to a given communicative context. The nature of pedagogic discourse should be taken into account when visual displays are produced for pedagogic materials. The implications of this study include both theoretical and pedagogic aspects。Theoretically it adapts and extends APPRAISAL analysis to multimodal discourse, exploring the intersemiotic complementarity and co-instantiation in construing global evaluative stance. This semiotic exploration, in return, suggests ways in which discourse analysis may help textbook users better understand and interpret the multimodal features. With the affordances as well as limitations of semiotic resources made explicit, we may have one step further towards a comprehensive and critical understanding of multimodal construal of interpersonal meaning in pedagogic materials.

This thesis explores issues in the development of foreign language writing abilities in a Portuguese setting. The study is based on a research project carried out in 1993 in three University classrooms, where the author was teaching. It investigates what happens when educational drama is brought into the EFL classroom as part of a teaching programme with a view to improving writing abilities. Set in a Vygotskian framework, educational drama is used as a mediating device to attend to a whole set of factors not usually salient in L2 writing. The study covers all 108 students majoring in EFL at that time. The students were proficient in both oral work and grammar exercises but had difficulties writing in English. Two obligatory drama workshops were carried out in English with each group of students during their second term of study and all written work carried out during the term stemmed from the workshops. Large amounts of data were analysed by qualitative and quantitative methods. Writing assignments pre/post drama workshops were collected. Drama workshops were monitored via audio and video recording. Questionnaires were given to the students during the pre and post data collection periods to measure writing apprehension. Student writing was found to improve significantly in both content and grammatical fluency in a relatively short period of time. Drawing on linguistic and social semiotic analyses, the project examines the nature of the different written texts produced in this particular educational environment and the interaction between the use of drama and the writing process itself through the concept of transformation. In terms of a larger Vygotskian framework it looks at the role of thinking in learning, development and instruction in a way which bridges difficult conceptual phases in foreign language teaching. Key words: EFL, foreign languages, writing, Vygotsky, drama, Social Semiotics, transformation.

The goal and purpose of this essay is to study if and how multimodality is used within a Swedish school in Kalmar. This is accomplished by observing the different modalities inside the classroom and how the use of different modalities affects the teaching. Unstructured observations combined with a material-based thematic presentation leads up to an analysis based on social semiotics and multimodality. The essay shows how the teaching uses lots of modalities: sound, images, movies, speeches and literary text in lots of different ways. These different types of modalities are used in a multimodal context, providing good conditions for learning.

What is ‘legitimacy’? Is legitimation possible through non-linguistic modes? These are the key theoretical questions with which this study is concerned. It explores them in conjunction with an analysis of American political spot advertisements. These ads are situated at the nexus between legitimation and multimodality, and their relevance to contemporary politics on the world stage is reflected in the immense financial and skilled resources which have been — and continue to be — devoted to them. A historical perspective into legitimation, multimodality and the attendant concepts of rationality and irrationality is given, followed by a discussion challenging the assumed rational role accorded to language. So challenged, the discussion moves to looking at the pairing of multimodality and politics; first from a historical viewpoint, and then from a more contemporary one. The role of myth, in the form of the American Dream, is investigated, leading to discussion of political appropriation, branding, tangibility, affordances and the (im)possibility of restricting interpretation. Spot ads are analysed with a specific focus: first on modal salience, and secondly on how the semiotic richness of the concept of nature is exploited for purposes of legitimation.

Student Number : 0311003J - MA research report - School of Literature and Language Studies - Faculty of Humanities / This dissertation examines the representations of youth identity in print advertisements found in Y Magazine and SL Magazine. The researcher uses Critical Discourse Analysis to analyse the identities that are constructed in four fashion brands. The print advertisements are also interpreted by young people from Grade 11 classes in two Johannesburg high schools. Learners completed survey questionnaires and participated in focus group discussions. My interpretation of the advertisements reveals three over sexualized identities in the Soviet, Guess and Diesel advertisements. Soviet depicts an image of a male penetrative sexual fantasy; Guess depicts feminine self-centred sexual pleasure and Diesel communicates a message of funky, sexy, heterosexual male-female desire. It is proposed that advertisers base their strategies on assumptions that sex sells to the youth. The Levi’s advertisement differs from the rest by constructing a Hip Hop brand identity that appeals to a majority of the respondents. The learners’ responses are varied; some identify with the brands and accept the subject positions that are offered by the advertisements and others critique the sexuality that pervades the majority of the advertisements. Learners’ interpretations also reflect different reading positions, as well as unclear gendered target audiences. I conclude that media representations provide a range of powerful resources, which young people draw on in constructing their identities. I argue that print advertisements can be used productively in the language classroom as part of the body of literature that is studied in the English syllabus, especially because of their contemporary value and role in shaping post-modern subjects.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The distinctive objects designed by Dr Maria Montessori as the centrepiece of her approach to pedagogy are the topic of this study. The Montessori approach to pedagogy, celebrating its centenary in 2007, continues to be used in classrooms throughout the world. Despite such widespread and enduring use, there has been little analysis of the Montessori objects to evaluate or understand their pedagogic impact. This study begins by outlining the provenance of the Montessori objects, reaching the conclusion that the tendency to interpret them from the perspective of the progressive education movement of the early twentieth century fails to provide insights into the developmental potential embodied in the objects. In order to appreciate that potential more fully, the study explores the design of the objects, specifically, the way in which the semiotic qualities embodied in their design orient children to the meanings of educational knowledge. A meta-analytic framework comprising three components is used to analyse the semiotic potential of the Montessori objects as educational artefacts. First, Vygotsky’s model of development is used to analyse the objects as external mediational means and to recognise the objects as complexes of signs materialising educational knowledge. In order to understand how the objects capture, in the form of concrete analogues, the linguistic meanings which construe educational knowledge, systemic functional linguistics, the second component of the framework, is used to achieve a rich and detailed social semiotic analysis of these relations, in particular, material and linguistic representations of abstract educational meanings. Finally, the pedagogic device, a central feature of Bernstein’s sociology of pedagogy, is used to analyse how the Montessori objects re-contextualise educational knowledge as developmental pedagogy. Particular attention is paid to the Montessori literacy pedagogy, in which the study of grammar plays a central role. The study reveals a central design principle which distinguishes the Montessori objects. This principle is the redundant representation of educational knowledge across multiple semiotic modes. Each representation holds constant the underlying meaning relations which construe quanta of educational knowledge, giving children the freedom to engage with this knowledge playfully, independently and successfully. The conclusion drawn from this study is that the design of the Montessori objects represents valuable educational potential which deserves continued investigation, as well as wider recognition and application. To initiate this process, the findings in this study may provide insights which can be used to develop tools for evaluating and enhancing the implementation of Montessori pedagogy in Montessori schools. The findings may also be used to adapt Montessori design principles for the benefit of educators working in non-Montessori contexts, in particular, those educators concerned with developing pedagogies which promote equitable access to educational knowledge.

Western museums are public institutions, open and accessible to all sectors of the population they serve. Increasingly, they are becoming more accountable to the governments that fund them, and criteria such as visitation figures are being used to assess their viability. In order to ensure their survival in the current climate of economic rationalism, museums need to maintain their audiences and attract an even broader demographic. To do this, they need to ensure that visitors feel comfortable, welcome and secure inside their spaces. They also need to give visitors clear entry points for engaging with and valuing the objects and knowledge on display in exhibitions. This thesis maps a grammar of three-dimensional space with a strong focus on the interpersonal metafunction. Building on the social semiotic tools developed by Halliday (1978, 1985a), Halliday and Hasan (1976), Martin (1992) and Matthiessen (1995), it identifies two interpersonal resources for organising space: Binding and Bonding. Binding is the main focus of the thesis. It theorises the way people�s emotions can be affected by the organisation of three-dimensional space. Essentially, it explores the affectual disposition that exists between a person and the space that person occupies by focussing on how a space can be organised to make an occupant feel secure or insecure. Binding is complemented by Bonding. Bonding is concerned with the way the occupants of a space are positioned interpersonally to create solidarity. In cultural institutions like museums and galleries, Bonding is concerned with making visitors feel welcome and as though they belong, not just to the building and the physical environment, but to a community of like-minded people. Such feelings of belonging are also crucial to the long-term survival of the museum. Finally, in order to present a metafunctionally diversified grammar of space, the thesis moves beyond interpersonal meanings. It concludes by exploring the ways textual and ideational meanings can be organised in three-dimensional space.