Abstract
In this paper we provide a multimodal account of historical changes in secondary school textbooks in England and their social significance. Adopting a social semiotic approach to text and text making we review learning resources across core subjects of the English national curriculum, English, Science and Mathematics. Comparing textbooks from the 1930s, 1980s and 2000s, we show that a) all modes operating in textbooks -typography, image, writing and layout- contribute to meaning and potential for learning b) that the use of these modes has changed between 1930 and now, in ways significant for social relations between and across makers and users of textbooks. Designers and readers / learners now take responsibility for coherence, which was previously the exclusive domain of authors. Where previously reading paths were fixed by makers it may now be left to learners to establish these according to their interests. For users of textbooks the changes in design demand new forms of ‘literacy’; a fluency not only in ‘reading’ writing, image, typography and layout jointly, but in the overall design of learning environments. We place these changes against the backdrop of wider social changes and features of the contemporary media landscape, recognizing a shift from stability, canonicity and vertical power structures to ‘horizontal’, more open, participatory relations in the production of knowledge.
Highlights
The contemporary semiotic world poses sharp questions about text
Where previously grooved routines of convention could serve as reliable guides in composition, in a multimodal world there is a need to assess on each occasion of text-making what the social relations with an audience are, what resources there are for making the text, what media are going to be used, and how these fit with what is to be communicated and with a clear understanding of the characteristics of the audience
In this paper we aim to investigate text and text making from a social semiotic perspective, which amongst other assumptions implies that we treat ‘image’, ‘writing’ and other modes of communication as distinctly different yet potential resources
Summary
Introduction The contemporary semiotic world poses sharp questions about text. Increasingly text makers draw on several modes of representation and in many texts writing is not the central means for making meaning. It ascribes meaning to all modes of communication, including image, writing, typography and layout; and it treats signs of any kind as reflecting the interests of the makers of these signs – here, curriculum planners, textbook designers, teachers.
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