Condensation: A translation device for revealing complexity of knowledge practices in discourse, part 2—clausing and sequencing

Abstract

Complexity of knowledge practices is undertheorized in education research because knowledge is often conceived cognitively. Legitimation Code Theory conceptualizes this complexity in terms of ‘semantic density’, which explores how meanings are interrelated within practices. This concept is becoming widely enacted in research, a flexibility that raises the question of identifying ‘semantic density’ in specific objects of study. This is the second of two papers that offer a ‘translation device’ for identifying ‘epistemic-semantic density’ (where condensed meanings are formal definitions or empirical descriptions) in English discourse. The first paper (this issue) provided tools for exploring how individual words reveals different strengths of epistemic-semantic density. Those concepts revealed different degrees of complexity of knowledge. This paper outlines tools for exploring how the ways actors combine words reveals ‘epistemological condensation’ or strengthening of epistemic-semantic density. It provides typologies for identifying different kinds of ‘clausing’ and ‘sequencing’ and describes how these types manifest varying degrees of increasing complexity. These concepts reveal different kinds of knowledge-building. Two contrasting examples, from a secondary school History classroom and a scientific research article, are analysed to illustrate the insights into complexity offered by the tools outlined in both papers.