Semiotic repertoires in bilingual Science learning: a study of learners - meaning-making practices in two sites in a Cape Town high school

Tyler, Robyn Lucy

Semiotic repertoires in bilingual Science learning: a study of learners - meaning-making practices in two sites in a Cape Town high school

Doctoral Thesis

2018

Abstract

Bilingual minoritised youth face challenging conditions for learning Science in South African schools. Among these are restrictive school-level language policies; entrenched monoglossic language ideologies within the education system which play out in classroom practice; and a lack of learning and teaching materials in African languages. Despite these challenges, learners work daily to make meaning in specific Science topics. It is this meaning-making process which is the focus of this case study. The study proceeds from the view of language as one of multiple semiotic resources comprising an individual’s semiotic repertoire which they draw upon to make meaning. Further, following Bakhtin, an understanding of the inherently heteroglossic nature of language is brought to bear on the learners’ bilingual practices as they journey along a meaning trajectory through a Science topic. These practices are described taking up the recently developed term ‘translanguaging’ and Angel Lin’s ‘trans-semiotizing’ with the theoretical work of these terms being extended to include different registers as well as named languages and modes. A case study employing the tools and perspectives of linguistic ethnography was undertaken for a period of nine months in a high school in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. The author joined a Grade 9 (13/14 year olds) class as a participant-observer during their study of the topic ‘Chemical Reactions’ and facilitated a study group with volunteers from the class of 36 learners. Interactional data from multiple sources of audio and video recordings was collected from ten Natural Science lessons and eight study group meetings. Learner texts, school policy documents, photographs, interviews with staff and questionnaires were also employed to enable analysis of the language environment of the school and microethnographic analyses of the multimodal interactional data. Building on the taxonomies developed by scholars of social semiotics working in Science learning contexts (Jay Lemke, Eduardo Mortimer and Philip Scott, Gunther Kress and Carey Jewitt) three broad categories of learner meaning-making are identified in the data: constrained, guided and spontaneous meaning-making. Forming the major theoretical contribution of this dissertation, these categories serve to provide a framework for understanding learners’ meaning-making – conceptual development as well as identity work - in monolingual and/or bilingual contexts. Key insights from the data analysis include that while constrained meaning-making can facilitate the acquisition of fixed words in scientific discourse, guided and spontaneous meaning-making are required for discourse appropriation and flexible expression of scientific ideas, often through a meshed register. Further research and teaching practice attention focused on guided and spontaneous meaning-making in content subjects drawing on multiple modes is argued for.

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PhD / Doctoral

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