(Educational Futures Rethinking Theory and Practice 62) Inna Semetsky, Andrew Stables (Eds.) - Pedagogy and Edusemiotics - Theoretical Challenges - Practical Opportunities (2014, SensePublishers)

Pedagogy and Edusemiotics: Theoretical Challenges/
Practical Opportunities
EDUCATIONAL FUTURES
RETHINKING THEORY AND PRACTICE
Volume 64
Series Editor
Michael A. Peters
University of Waikato, New Zealand
Editorial Board
Michael Apple, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

Miriam David, Institute of Education, London University, UK
Cushla Kapitzke, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Australia
Mark Olssen, University of Surrey, UK
Fazal Rizvi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Susan Robertson, University of Bristol, UK
Linda Tuahwai Smith, University of Waikato, New Zealand
Arun Kumar Tripathi, Indian Institute of Technology, Mandi,
Himachal Pradesh, India
Scope
This series maps the emergent field of educational futures. It will commission books
on the futures of education in relation to the question of globalisation and knowledge
economy. It seeks authors who can demonstrate their understanding of discourses
of the knowledge and learning economies. It aspires to build a consistent approach
to educational futures in terms of traditional methods, including scenario planning
and foresight, as well as imaginative narratives, and it will examine examples of
futures research in education, pedagogical experiments, new utopian thinking, and
educational policy futures with a strong accent on actual policies and examples.
Pedagogy and Edusemiotics
Theoretical Challenges/Practical Opportunities
Edited by
Inna Semetsky
RosNOU, Moscow, Russia
and
Andrew Stables
University of Roehampton, UK
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 978-94-6209-855-8 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-94-6209-856-5 (hardback)
ISBN: 978-94-6209-857-2 (e-book)
Published by: Sense Publishers,

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Preamble 1
Inna Semetsky & Andrew Stables
1. Two Poems 5
Kevin Brophy
2. Signs as Educators: Peircean Insights 7

Winfried Nöth
3. Poetry Meets Pedagogy: Conversations in/about Classrooms 19

Jen Webb & Michael Rosen
4. Schools and Schooling as Semiotic Engagement: A Focus on Design 35

Andrew Stables, Susannah Learoyd-Smith, Harry Daniels
& Hau Ming Tse
5. Interpreting Metaphoric Acts: A Dialogic Encounter with the Very Young 51

E. Jayne White
6. On the Implementation of Technology in Education 69

Mariana Bockarova
7. Two Poems 89
Jessica L. Wilkinson
8. Education, Values and Authority: A Semiotic View 91

Eetu Pikkarainen
9. The Pedagogy and Politics of Governing Childhoods Through Images 107

Marek Tesar
10. Learning Existential Lessons: The Edusemiotics of Images 121

Inna Semetsky
11. ’Skirts: Thinking Thoughts and Unthoughts 137

Cair Crawford
12. Two Poems 151

Diane Fahey
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
13. Edusemiotics of Educational Gestures 153

Sébastien Pesce
14. Images of Research and Scholarship in a University

Promotional Brochure in the Era of Marketization and Audit Culture 173
Helen Andersson & David Machin
Postscript 189
Andrew Stables & Inna Semetsky
Contributors 193
vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editors wish to thank The International Network for Semiotics and Education that
provided a forum for discussing some of the initial ideas leading to the publication
of this volume.
The editors also express their gratitude to Proof This in Melbourne, Australia for
their assistance during the editorial process.
The authors of Chapter 4 wish to extend their thanks to the Arts and Humanities
Research Council (UK) for sponsoring the Design Matters? project, data from which
is discussed in their chapter.
Special thanks are due to Mia Kushner (b. 2010) for her kind permission to use
her original painting titled Masks on the cover of this book.
vii
INNA SEMETSKY & ANDREW STABLES
PREAMBLE
This collection is a companion volume to the recently published co-authored book

Edusemiotics: semiotic philosophy as educational foundation (Stables & Semetsky,
2014) by Routledge. Edusemiotics is an integrative conceptual framework for
education that takes the sign as an irreducible, though unquantifiable, unit of
analysis. While more often than not signs are taken as solely linguistic and in
compliance with analytic philosophy of language, edusemiotics includes images,
pictures and, indeed, anything that potentially signifies, in the category of signs, on
the grounds that what something means determines, in effect, what it is. From the
extralinguistic, broadly semiotic, perspective, logic is complemented by inter alia
art and poetics, and the edusemiotic framework therefore considers poetry and art
to have great educational potential. This collection, besides theoretically oriented
chapters, includes also contributions from poets and practitioners and explicates the
means of expression as including, but going beyond, the verbal and analytic.
A genuine sign has a paradoxical structure enabled by the evolutionary process of
semiosis, as Charles S. Peirce called it, comprising signs as dynamic events. As signs
connect and become transformed in ever-changing contexts, new signs are created as
part of an ongoing open-ended process of interpretation, growth and development.
This dynamics defies some pre-defined final product as the goal of education; instead
education is to be considered as a process of continuous inquiry and exploration,
both formal and informal, through engagement with signs. Education cannot be
reduced to a priori learning objectives, aims, or right versus wrong answers for the
purpose of various forms of measurement, for these are always reductions; education
as a whole is much richer than formal assessment often implies.
Nor is learning a merely individual matter; nor, for that matter, it is uniformly
collective. Rather, signs are relations and we are signs amidst other, human and
non-human, signs embedded in relational dynamics, therefore continuously
developing via a variety of interpretive ways. Education is about interactions and
relations: between students and teachers, between people and their environments,
between ourselves and others, and between elements of that which is to be learned,
understood through various relational perspectives. Edusemiotics considers relations
to be ontologically basic and prior to substantial “things”. Thus edusemiotics
problematizes the Cartesian substance-dualism of immaterial mind and mindless,
mechanical, matter which still informs pedagogy and educational research, even if
implicitly. Edusemiotics insists that the material and the mental cannot be so clearly
I. Semetsky & A. Stables (Eds.), Pedagogy and Edusemiotics: Theoretical Challenges/Practical

Opportunities, 1–4.
© 2014 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
I. SEMETSKY & A. STABLES
demarcated and that education is not merely a matter of developing the mind in a
narrow sense; nor is nature simply a mechanism. Rather, we are embodied creatures
who live in rich networks of experience, and our phenomenal worlds overlap, just
as human experience overlaps, but does not coincide, with the experiences of other
sentient beings.
These theoretical advances should begin to inform pedagogical practice and
educational policy much more comprehensively than they have so far done, and
the practical pedagogy of using signs is the focal point of the present volume.
Edusemiotics offers a set of perspectives on education that go beyond the content-
centred (as content is never fixed), and beyond the child-centred (in that the child,
as well as her teacher and as well as subject-matter, is constantly in formation).
It will not therefore fall into the traps of either narrow rationality or sentimental
Romanticism or reductive empiricism, but rather encourages us all to explore the
richness of life through experience, which is, from the edusemiotic perspective,
nothing more or less than our implication in the reality of signs that we use and from
which we learn.
We begin the volume with poetry, not discursive prose. In Kevin Brophy’s two
entries, Difficult and How To Read a Poem, we are invited to open windows and let
in imagination, creativity, chancy encounters and new relationships; to reconstruct
our habitual attachments and posit a question of How to?, which leaves the very
answer open. Indeed, signs do not simply indicate indubitable facts or timeless
truths. The conceptual chapter by Winfried Nöth, which follows Brophy’s poems,
argues that it is in the very nature of signs to create and that it is signs as icons,
rather than verbal symbols, that are better suited to teach world knowledge. While
people are sign-users, signs are semiotic agents on their own and are self-teaching
learners. In their subsequent chapter, Jen Webb and Michael Rosen adopt a
dialogical approach, a conversation, to explore the relationship between poetry and
knowing, with particular reference to how poetry can enter school and become
a force for a generative and genuinely educative experience whenever poetic
language complements analytic. Drawing on the writings of Pierre Bourdieu, the
authors consider both primary and university education and the ways in which
the teaching of poetry can shift students’ perspectives and provide creative ways
to value their experiences, identity and freedom. Schooling as an engagement
with signs is a central concept of the chapter by Andrew Stables, Harry Daniels,
Susannah Learoyd-Smith and Hau Ming Tse. They focus on design and apply a
framework drawn from semiotics to inform their project concerning the effect of
newly built schools in Great Britain on the students’ experience. Understanding the
school as umwelt and drawing on Tarasti’s existential semiotics and Stables’ model
of functional, cultural and critical environmental literacies, the authors provide an
explanation of how it is that students can respond so differently to schools designed
for their benefit.
The chapter by Jayne White uses Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism and
presents an interpretation of a toddler’s metaphoric acts as a dialogic encounter. The
2
PREAMBLE
chapter contains findings from the author’s empirical research (conducted in New
Zealand) that reveals metaphoric language-use and highlights the intersubjective
nature of metaphoricity and the ideologies brought to the interpretations of multiple
experiential signs, verbal and nonverbal. Mariana Bockarova continues the
discussion of the broad scope of Charles S. Peirce’s model of semiosis by exploring
the effects of learning with new technologies. A case-study of a 9-year-old boy
with clinical anxiety disorder demonstrates the importance of a relation-oriented,
semiotic, approach to learning with technologies that prove helpful to the process of
his reintegration into the phenomenal worlds of others and leading to his becoming
a member of a class engaged in productive relationships.
Jessica Wilkinson’s poems, How The Eyes and Bright Spark, strongly defy their
translation into this Preamble’s prose. Suffice it to say, her words are literally signs:
signs fumbling “around in the dark, trying to define our selves”. The words partake
of vibrant imagery and capture an almost bewildering variety of life when we open
our eyes to it, even if this knowledge may “develop from the camera with a dirty
lens”. The poetry in this volume raises important questions about perception and
understanding that exceed knowing true from false or fact from imagination. To
educate – and to learn – is to “begin a poem” indeed, and not necessarily within a
formal classroom but in the midst of the natural, non-human, world.
While the semiotic universe exceeds the limits of human perception, the
edusemiotic perspective concerns questions of values and authority that seem (at
least) distinctly human. Eetu Pikkarainen in his chapter uses the framework of action
theoretical semiotics, derived from Greimas, to examine education as transformation
or extension from the biosemiotic and zoosemiotic sphere to the anthroposemiotic
sphere: from nature to culture. His chapter focuses on the questions of meaning,
Bildung, and the modern idea of the normativity of rational inference, and considers
the educational implications of this semiotic perspective.
The focus of the volume now moves towards the visual, with a series of chapters
exploring the significance of image in edusemiotics. Marek Tesar’s chapter takes
us back to the days of communist Czechoslovakia, and examines the images and
pictures used to inculcate Soviet-style values in the young in the mode of top-down
indoctrination. This model of pedagogy uses signs and images in texts and stories
representing ideologically charged childhoods. Vaclav Havel plays a key role in
Tesar’s analysis through the recourse to his story The Greengrocer.
Inna Semetsky, in her chapter, presents education in its broader aspect as a
cultural pedagogy of learning existential lessons in life, in experience. Positing logic
as semiotics that defies the classical tertium non datur principle, she introduces the
interpretable signs represented by Tarot images that “speak” a language of sorts.
As embodying egalitarian and inclusive, albeit informal, education, the semiotic
method of interpretation creates a learning process radically at odds with the logic of
the excluded middle that drives most formal curricula. Semetsky concludes that by
interpreting Tarot signs we can lean multiple life-lessons so as to live a meaningful
life.
3
I. SEMETSKY & A. STABLES
Cair Crawford – herself a practicing artist – devotes her chapter to an elaborate

discussion of her series of paintings titled ‘Skirts. She draws from Plato’s
metaphysical description of chora and Julia Kristeva’s appropriation of the semiotic
chora as the pre-verbal relation between mother and child in preparation for entry
into the symbolic order. ‘Skirts are liminal spaces or thresholds, where interiority
and exteriority overlap; they function as the feminine symbols of maternity that
enfold, conceal and express unorthodox objects of desire.
Diane Fahey’s two poems, Portrait and Morning, express both the richness and the
mystery of art. In her reflection on Vermeer’s painting we respond to details as signs,
and seek them avidly; but the richer the picture, the more any final understanding
eludes us. Pedagogy, in the spirit of her poems, can be compared to “the contract
between seeing and believing”. Multiple signs glimmering “between fact and
dream” present us with “shapeless shapes” and reflect the presence of paradoxes, of
the in-between dimension, as a distinctive feature of edusemiotics. The edusemiotic
perspective on pedagogy, as partaking of art and poetry, problematizes the necessity
of being “rewarded” by a simple right answer at the end of the journey.
The journey, as a semiotic inquiry, is never-ending and presents a challenge to our
habits. In his chapter, Sébastien Pesce investigates the habitual pedagogical practices
and the kind of cognition such habits imply, by analyzing the way specific meanings
and broader narratives underpin the establishment, enactment and transformation of
teaching. Pesce’s work with pre-service and in-service teachers in France offers a
fine example of how semiotic approaches can have broad practical application, not
least in terms of meaningful educational gestures enacted by teachers as alternatives
to forms of habitual practices that would have become inefficient.
In the final chapter, Helen Andersson and David Machin draw on Critical and
Multimodal Discourse Analysis and on the semiotic interpretation of images to
discuss how a Swedish university uses its promotional brochure to contextualize
certain institutional roles. The political and ideological aspect of such media in
the West, reflecting Swedish New Public Management strategy, appears to be as
strong as it was at the time of Soviet-era Czechoslovakia analyzed in Tesar’s chapter.
This broad-scope volume thus highlights multiple opportunities of the edusemiotic
perspective on pedagogy worldwide and represents a new educational resource for
educators and students alike.
Inna Semetsky
Andrew Stables
University of Roehampton
UK
4
KEVIN BROPHY
1. TWO POEMS
DIFFICULT
It is difficult to choose the reader for this poem.

I have left its windows open
so you might as well climb inside
where you can be safe for now from weather,
and though your sudden presence feels intrusive
think of yourself as a museum visitor
to a reconstruction of a life now silenced.
The bed, I know, has not been made
but the silver cutlery on the formal dining table is meticulous.
You will not be roped out of any room
and you can be confident
the writer left before you and your party arrived.
The place is left as realistic as anything you might write yourself.
Dirty clothes (for instance) are piled into a predictable straw basket,
their odour not quite human,
though the stiffening socks were plainly meant for feet.
It is difficult to choose a visitor
who must arrive by chance.
Parents too are difficult to choose
though they’re chosen all the same.
The plain truth is the bricks outside are wet with rain
and now you find yourself inside
the couch is sprinkled with the drops that just blew in with you
through the curtains of the open window.
Sounds of possums in the poem’s ceiling must distract you,
a blackbird in the yard outside is startlingly alive,
the cat in here will stay asleep despite your tread,
and a green bin steaming with the evidence of wasteful life
in a corner of the kitchen is what you’ve come to expect from art.
The lived-in emptiness of every room
makes it difficult to choose a reader for this poem.
No meal has been prepared and no money has been left
in an envelope with your name on it.

K. BROPHY
The vases are all empty.

A man has written this you must suspect.
Blue sky outside presses down on us its single thought.
A green and oily ocean’s creeping closer every century
and an ochre desert lies less than three thousand kilometres away.
It is difficult to know what is the greatest threat to this poem:
reader, silence, landscape, weather or its absent occupant.
HOW TO READ A POEM
is too modest and private an aim

when you could learn
How to build a home inside a poem
or How to talk a poem into introducing you to her family.
You might instead of merely reading a poem
wish to learn How to bake a poem
for months, then take it from its oven
without burning one finger on it.
How to resist a poem is a hardback volume
invaluable to lovers, soldiers and lachrymose critics.
How to misread a poem is a necessary read
for the salvation of your own poetry,
as is How to make a poem tell the truth
and How to be smarter than a poem.
For those who understand the social occasion of the spoken word,
How to take a poem out to lunch
can become an expensive pleasure and a puzzle for the lips.
The book and video, How to workout with a poem,
comes with Rilke’s Panther Brand leotards
and promises eloquent beginnings to new relationships.
You will be relieved to find still in print,
How to put a poem back on the shelf,
And that How to get a refund from a faulty poem
requires a standard form unavailable anywhere.
How to replace the batteries in a poem
should not take more than a minute to understand.
Kevin Brophy
University of Melbourne
Australia
6
WINFRIED NÖTH
2. SIGNS AS EDUCATORS: PEIRCEAN INSIGHTS
Semiosis defines our essence, and so

we learn, and our learning is itself an
emanation of the universe’s own learning.
Its eternal verities […] never finish
shaping themselves out […]. And as
we read, we keep turning the pages of a
book of which we all share the authorship,
though not the ultimate one.
De Tienne (2003, p. 52)
LEARNING FROM SIGNS: SEMIOTIC PREMISES
In a weak sense, it should be indisputable that signs are educators. This is the sense
in which one can say that we learn from signs, whether from words or numbers,
drawings or pictures, gestures or sense data conveyed by “our great teacher
Experience,” as C. S. Peirce (1839–1914) calls her (CP 5.51, 1903).
Some will accept the idea that signs are educators only in a metaphorical sense
but object to the idea that signs are educators in any stronger sense. Constructivists
will object that learners are their own teachers because only they are the ones who
construct the development of their knowledge (see Turrisi, 2002, Nöth, 2011).
Educators will object that they are the teachers, and the signs they use in class are
nothing but their instruments, and among the semioticians we can expect three kinds
of objection. The first is the one of those who defended the instrumental theory of
the sign, for reasons similar to the ones given by the pedagogues (see Nöth, 2009a).
The second is the one of the phenomenologists who, in the tradition of Husserl, are
convinced that our experience does not only come from signs but also from sense
data perceived immediately, which are hence no signs. The third is the one of the
structuralists, who will object that only the sign system can be our great teacher
since everything that signs may be able to teach us derives from the system which
determines the value of its signs.
The non-metaphorical sense in which we learn from signs is already implicit
in the ancient Socratic method of teaching through dialogue, for learning by the
maieutic principle is evidently learning from signs. John Dewey went a step further

W. NÖTH
when he argued that we learn from communication in general. In his Pedagogic

Creed (dated 1987, cf. Turrisi, 2002), he writes that
all communication […] is educative. To be a recipient of a communication is
to have an enlarged and changed experience. One shares in what another has
thought and felt and in so far, meagerly or amply, has his own attitude modified.
Nor is the one who communicates left unaffected. […] Except in dealing
with commonplaces and catch phrases one has to assimilate, imaginatively,
something of another’s experience in order to tell him intelligently of one’s
own experience. (Dewey, 1897, p. 6)
To say that we learn from communication is to restrict learning to the acquisition of
knowledge from signs communicated in dialogues. The still stronger argument is that
we learn from all signs, including those that are only observed and not communicated.
This is Peirce’s strong argument. Experience that is not communicated comes to
us through external signs as well as through internal ones, in thoughts or “mental
experience” (CP 4.561, fn 1, ca. 1906). The semiotic premises of this Peircean
pedagogy are the following:
1. First, the definition of the sign: signs occur in processes of semiosis, in which
they represent an object, a term which includes mental images and ideas, and
they create an interpretant, an idea, a feeling, or an action resulting from the sign.
2. Second, the cognitive premises that “all knowledge comes to us by observation”
(CP 2.444, 1903) and that “all our thought and knowledge is by signs” (CP 8.332,
1904), and:
3. Third, and probably the major premise of the following, the premise of the agency
of the sign, at least of verbal signs, according to which “every symbol is a living
thing, in a very strict sense that is no mere figure of speech” (CP 2.222, 1901).
SIGNS AS LIVING SEMIOTIC AGENTS
The premise of the agency of the sign is controversial since it is incompatible with
other theories which attribute semiotic agency exclusively to human beings as
subjects acting in sign processes. It is this premise of the sign as a “living thing” that
makes the thesis of the sign as an educator a strong argument. Let us examine its
validity in three steps: first, to clarify why the sign is a semiotic agent at all; second,
why and how it is an educator; and third, which signs can educate in which way.
Signs, Life, and Learning as Phenomena of Thirdness
Life, semiosis, and learning are phenomena of Thirdness, the “third universe” of
being, according to Peirce’s system of categories, which contrasts with the second
universe, which “is that of the Brute Actuality of things and facts” whose “Being
consists in reactions against Brute forces” (CP 6.455, 1908):
8
SIGNS AS EDUCATORS
The third Universe comprises everything whose being consists in active power
to establish connections between different objects, especially between objects
in different Universes. Such is everything which is essentially a Sign – not
the mere body of the Sign, which is not essentially such, but, so to speak,
the Sign’s Soul, which has its Being in its power of serving as intermediary
between its Object and a Mind. Such, too, is a living consciousness, and such
the life, the power of growth. (CP 6.455, 1908)
When Peirce says that signs have life in the “very strict sense that is no mere figure
of speech” (CP 2.222, 1901; see above), he is actually substituting one figure of
speech for another, the metaphor, which he finds too weak, for the hyperbole, which
he uses to emphasize his argument that the number of characteristics which signs
have in common with life is greater than most scholars assume. Evidently, the
argument cannot be that signs are of flesh and blood. Thus, the question that needs
to be examined is rather: What are the characteristics according to which signs can
be said to have life?
Peirce did not believe that all signs need to be communicated, nor would he think
that the ideas which we have result solely from individual human agency, being “mere
creations of this or that mind”. In contrast to anthropologists who define symbols
as exclusively human inventions, he argued that these signs are endowed with the
capacity “of finding or creating their [own] vehicles” of propagation (CP 2.217,
1901). “In a certain sense”, symbols are living organisms. Among the characteristics
which qualify them as living beings are: purposive and autonomous (but in a sense
vicarious) agency, “the power of bringing things to pass” (CP 2.217, 1901), self- and
metareference (Nöth, 2007, 2009b), procreation and self-replication, survival, and
death. Let us briefly comment on four of these characteristics, purposiveness, self-
replication, autopoiesis, and self-control.
Purposiveness and Intentionality
Peirce writes about the purpose of the symbol: “The symbol, by the very definition
of it, has an interpretant in view. Its very meaning is intended. Indeed, a purpose
is precisely the interpretant of a symbol” (EP 2: 308, 1904), and more generally
of the sign: “The whole purpose of a sign is that it shall be interpreted in another
sign” (CP 8.191). With purpose, Peirce does not mean the sign user’s intention,
but the sign’s intention to represent its object and to create an interpretant, i.e.,
to “be interpreted in another sign” (MS 1476, 1904). Purpose is thus a semiotic
teleology inherent in the sign. Not only uttered or written signs have purposes,
but also thought-signs. Their purpose is to act in a mental dialogue in which one
thought-sign is “translated or interpreted in a subsequent one” (CP 5.284, 1868).
More recently, and in a different context, the argument that signs have purposes has
been defended in the framework of cognitive philosophy under the designation of
teleosemantics (see Nöth, 2009a).
9
W. NÖTH
Self-replication and Autopoiesis
A symbol is self-replicative because it only exists in its replication in the form of a

replica or token; whereas, insofar as symbols are legisigns, they are “a general type
or law” (CP 2.249, 1903) acting as “general rules” (CP 4.447, 1903), which do not
exist materially. The relevance of Peirce’s type-token dichotomy to the theory of the
symbol as a habit becomes evident in the following passage in which Peirce argues:
Take, for example, the word “man”. […] If the word “man” occurs hundreds
of times in a book of which myriads of copies are printed, all those millions
of triplets of patches of ink are embodiments of one and the same word. I call
each of those embodiments a replica of the symbol (ibid.).
The self-replicative power of the symbol man thus consists “in the fact that a habit,
or acquired law, will cause replicas of it to be interpreted as meaning a man or men”
(CP 2.292, 1902). In sum, the symbol is self-replicative since it has “the power of
reproducing itself, and that essentially, since it is constituted as a symbol only by the
interpretation” (EP 2: 322, 1904, see above).
Symbols are needed to create new symbols: “It is only out of symbols that a new
symbol can grow. Omne symbolum de symbolo”, writes Peirce (CP 2.302, 1898), who
describes this autopoietic potential of symbols with the following example: “Perhaps
the most marvelous faculty of humanity is one which it possesses in common with
all animals and in one sense with all plants, I mean that of procreation. […] If I write
‘Let Kax denote a gas furnace’, this sentence is a symbol which is creating another
within itself” (CP 3.590, c. 1867). The argument is likely to provoke the objection
that it is not the symbol itself which creates the new symbol, but the symbol maker.
However, symbol makers cannot create symbols independently from the semiotic
systems, the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of symbolic systems which dictate
their rules of symbol making. Hence, to the degree that the human mind and its
symbolic expressions are molded by the laws of its underlying semiotic systems,
symbol makers are restricted and thus determined by the symbols they believe to
be creating. In this sense, symbols are their co-authors, and their creators are only
semi-autonomous agents when they believe to express “themselves” by means of
symbols.
Self-control and Self-correction
Self-control is one of the essential characteristics of life, as Dewey reminds us in

the first sentence of his Pedagogic Creed where he opposes life and the lifeless as
follows:
A stone when struck resists. […] Never does the stone attempt to react in such
a way that it may maintain itself against the blow […] As long as it is growing
[…], a living being is one that subjugates and controls for its own continued
10
SIGNS AS EDUCATORS
activity the energies that would otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing
process through action upon the environment. Continuity of life means
continual readaptation of the environment to the needs of living organisms.
(Dewey, 1897, p. 1)
Signs evince a potential of self-correction, which Peirce interprets as their “vital power
of self-control” (CP 5.582, 1898). Self-correction is the form of self-control which
takes place through feedback, as it is called in cybernetic terminology (cf. Holmes,
1966). Symbols correct themselves through their resistance against errors and other
deviations from the norm of the system which makes them symbols (Nöth, 1979).
Furthermore, they have the tendency of resisting against false and other erroneous
interpretations, which, in the long run, tend to be corrected. Arguments, for example,
are signs whose form tends “to act upon the Interpreter through his own self-control,
representing a process of change in thoughts or signs, as if to induce this change in the
Interpreter” (CP 4.538, 1906). Language exerts self-control through meta-language,
normative grammars, through language about language and logical criticism, which
makes language a distinctively human sign system, as Peirce points out, for:
All thinking is by signs; and the brutes use signs. But they perhaps rarely think
of them as signs. To do so is manifestly a second step in the use of language.
Brutes use language, and seem to exercise some little control over it. But they
certainly do not carry this control to anything like the same grade that we do.
They do not criticize their thought logically. (CP 5.534, 1905)
The Agency of Signs in Thought
Since thinking is a sign process and “all our thought and knowledge is by signs”
(CP 8.332, 1904; see above), the premise of the semiotic autonomy of signs is not
only valid for external but also for internal signs, i.e., for thought. This premise is
a radical anticipation of an idea, which became central to the structuralists of the
second half of the 20th century: we can only think what the signs, which are not our
own, allow us to think (see Nöth, 2000, p. 51). For Peirce, this means that it is in
some sense wrong to say that we use signs; signs are not our tools but the condition
of our thinking (Nöth, 2009a). De Tienne (2003, p. 40) comments: “When Peirce
made the fundamental discovery that all thoughts were in signs, it was a realization
that it was not the mind that authored representations, but representations that
authored the mind. Signs are the condition of possibility of the mental phenomenon.
To understand the life of the mind, one must first understand the life of signs.”
Adapting a remark which Peirce makes on the illusion of thoughts being in us
instead of us being in thoughts, the autonomy thesis of signs can be formulated as
follows: “Just as we say that a body is in motion, and not that motion is in a body
we ought to say that we are in signs and not that signs are in us” (CP 5.289, fnP1;
“thought” substituted for “signs”).
11
W. NÖTH
THE SELF-LEARNING SIGN AND THE GROWTH OF SYMBOLS
Self-correction from errors or for the purpose of adapting to the semiotic

environment is a form of autonomous learning. By acquiring new and changing
old meanings, signs and sign systems become better adapted to their purpose of
creating interpretants. Through learning, signs and semiotic systems grow: “Once
in being, [the symbol] spreads among the peoples. In use and in experience, its
meaning grows” (CP 2.302, 1898): “How much more the word electricity means
now than it did in the days of Franklin; how much more the term planet means now
than it did in the time [of] Hipparchus. These words have acquired information;
just as a man’s thought does by further perception” (CP 7.587, 1866), and against
the objection that symbols do not teach us but, at most, learn from us, Peirce
objects that
Words might turn round and say, You mean nothing which we have not taught
you […]. In fact, therefore, men and words reciprocally educate each other;
each increase of a man’s information is at the same time the increase of a
word’s information and vice versa. (CP 7.587, 1866)
If the symbols we use are thus semi-autonomous learners of new information, they
are third agents in human communication. They do not act in flesh and blood but
by influencing our thoughts, and this agency of growing is virus-like since symbols
cannot grow on their own but need human minds to spread and grow. Semiotic
agency is “distributed” and the sign producers’ minds become “embodied” outside
their bodies. This insight of cognitive scientists subscribing to the current paradigm
of “embodied cognition” (Clark, 1997) has its largely unacknowledged foundation
in Peirce’s semiotics. In reply to the questions whether we are “shut up in a box
of flesh and blood” Peirce answers that the nature of a human being is to become
embodied outside of their own bodies: “When I communicate my thought and my
sentiments to a friend […] do I not live in his brain as well as in my own – most
literally? True, my animal life is not there but my soul, my feeling, thought, and
attention are” (CP 7.591 1866).
The premise of the autonomous semiotic agency of signs is neglected by
conventional models of communication, which recognize only two agents, the sender
and the receiver. The terms message and code under which the sign is subsumed in
these models fail to acknowledge the agency of the third participant in semiosis.
Scholars in historical linguistics know better when they recognize the agency of the
sign system by saying that languages change instead of saying that languages are
being changed by their speakers.
Not only verbal signs and sign systems learn by self-correction in use and
evolution (see Nöth, 1979); self-correction also occurs in complex systems and even
in mathematical computation (CP 5.575, 1898). Interpretation (CP 7.536, ca. 1899)
means learning, and the essence of cognition is one of “mental growth” (CP 1.381,
1890).
12
SIGNS AS EDUCATORS
Semi-autonomous self-corrective learning is also characteristic of scientific

inquiry. “Fully carried out” research evinces “the vital power of self-correction and
of growth” since “no matter how erroneous your ideas of the method may be at
first, you will be forced at length to correct them” (CP 5.582, 1898). What is true of
scientific inquiry is equally true of any reasoning in general. Reasoning by “common
sense corrects itself [and] improves its conclusions” (CP 6.573, 1905), and learning is
its “preeminent ingredient and quintessence” (CP 1.390, 1899). In fact, “all learning
is virtually reasoning” (CP 7.536, ca. 1899).
SURPRISING EXPERIENCE: THE AGENCY OF SECONDNESS IN THIRDNESS
It is a truism that we learn from experience, but it is less trivial to attribute agency to
experience in learning and to call it a teacher in “more than a metaphorical sense”;
but this is what Peirce does when he attributes the words “Open your mouth and shut
your eyes / And I’ll give you something to make you wise” (CP 5.51, 1903) from
the traditional children’s game (Figure 1) to “our great teacher, Experience” instead
of to a co-player. Does this way of speaking mean that Peirce attributes agency to
experience in more than a rhetorical sense?
Figure 1. Open your mouth and shut your eyes in a 1917 advertisement.
(Source: http://etudemagazine.us/2011/06/open-your-mouth-and-shut-your-eyes-
and-ill-give-you-something-to-make-you-wise.html)
In fact, experience and symbols differ in their teaching methods. Whereas symbols
teach by genuine thirdness, i. e., by mediating between their object and the
interpretant they create, experience begins its lesson with phenomena of secondness,
which pertain to the category of the object of the sign and to the “hard facts” of
reality. Experience, according to Peirce, is not “made” by us. Instead of “to make an
experience”, as the Germans say (eine Erfahrung machen), Peirce would prefer the
13
W. NÖTH
English expression “to have an experience”, but his assumptions concerning the role
of experience in our lives are still stronger. Knowledge “comes to us by observation”
(CP 2.444, 1893), and experience comes to us “from the cognitions which the history
of our lives forces upon us” (CP 2.784, 1902):
For what is observation? What is experience? It is the enforced element in
the history of our lives. It is that which we are constrained to be conscious
of by an occult force residing in an object which we contemplate. The act of
observation is the deliberate yielding of ourselves to that force majeure – an
early surrender at discretion, due to our foreseeing that we must, whatever we
do, be borne down by that power, at last. (CP 5.581, 1898)
The didactic effect of experience is thus one of opposition and shock: “The only
way in which any force can be learned is by something like trying to oppose it. That
we do something like this is shown by the shock we receive from any unexpected
experience” (CP 1.334, 1901). The new information we gather from experience has a
kind of compulsive effect, which testifies to its being a phenomenon of secondness:
We are continually bumping up against hard fact. We expected one thing,
or passively took it for granted, and had the image of it in our minds, but
experience forces that idea into the background, and compels us to think quite
differently. You get this kind of consciousness in some approach to purity
when you put your shoulder against a door and try to force it open. You have
a sense of resistance and at the same time a sense of effort. […] The idea of
other, of not, becomes a very pivot of thought. To this element I give the name
of Secondness. (CP 1.324, 1903)
Phenomena of secondness are also addressed when Peirce describes experience as
“resisting” the experiencing subject, who reacts, in turn, by surprise.
However, secondness in the form of resistance is only the first step towards learning
through experience. In order to be learnt, experience must become transformed into
a phenomenon of thirdness since it needs to be interpreted, to involve reasoning.
Peirce holds that we cannot learn from sense impressions alone: “In order to convince
ourselves that all learning is virtually reasoning, we have only to reflect that the mere
experience of a sense-reaction is not learning. That is only something from which
something can be learned, by interpreting it. The interpretation is the learning” (CP
7.536, undated).
Returning to the question of agency in the process of knowledge acquisition
through observation, we can now conclude that in comparison to symbolic cognition,
experience exerts both a stronger and a weaker effect in learning processes. The
educational effect of experience is stronger since experience resists against being
questioned with the same power by which reality resists against being ignored.
The educational effect is weaker than the one of symbols insofar as secondness is
predominant in learning through experience, for secondness acts by brute efficient
14
SIGNS AS EDUCATORS
causality, whereas the causality of thirdness is the more intelligent causality of final
causes (see Santaella, 1999).
Strictly speaking, only processes in which final causality is involved can be said
to evince agency because efficient causality is blind causality without purpose, but
since learning by experience is no longer restricted to secondness when experience
is interpreted, Dame Experience can nevertheless be said to be a teacher in more
than a metaphorical sense. Peirce’s radical anti-constructivist conclusion is that the
power of external experience on our mind calls the assumption of its autonomy into
question. To call the mind by which we act in semiosis our mind is a self-illusive
anacoluthon:
All knowledge comes to us by observation. A part is forced upon us from
without and seems to result from Nature’s mind; a part comes from the depths
of the mind as seen from within, which by an egotistical anacoluthon we call
our mind. (CP 2.444, 1893)
HOW SIGNS TEACH NEW INFORMATION
Learning is the acquisition of new knowledge; we only can be said to learn whatever
we did not know before. This is another link between learning and experience:
“That consciousness of the action of a new feeling in destroying the old feeling is
what I call an experience” (CP 8.330, 1904). The same holds true for the process of
semiosis in general. The purpose of the sign is to represent its object and “to convey
some further information concerning it” (CP 2.231, 1910):
Nothing can appear as definitely new without being contrasted with a
background of the old. At this, the […] infantile scientific impulse must strive
to reconcile the new to the old. […] All knowledge begins by the discovery
that there has been an erroneous expectation of which we had before hardly
been conscious. Each branch of science begins with a new phenomenon which
violates a sort of negative subconscious expectation. (CP 7.188, ca. 1901)
The contrast between the old and the new is also inherent in reasoning in general,
and the progress from the old to the new in reasoning explains why we learn while
reasoning: “Every reasoning connects something that has just been learned with
knowledge already acquired so that we thereby learn what has been unknown. […]
Reasoning is a new experience which involves something old and something hitherto
unknown” (CP 7.536, ca. 1899).
The insight that we can only learn whatever we do not yet know makes learning
more promising if we have the meta-knowledge of knowing that we do not know.
This is why “the first condition of learning is to know that we are ignorant” and why
“real inquiry begins when genuine doubt begins and ends when this doubt ends”
(CP 7. 322, 1873).
15
W. NÖTH
LEARNING FROM ICONS, INDICES, AND SYMBOLS
Insights into the teaching potential of signs can also be derived from Peirce’s
typologies of the sign in relation to its interpretant (rheme, dicent, argument) and its
object (icon, index, symbol). When Peirce speaks of the sign that conveys “further
information” concerning its object, he cannot mean rhematic signs, such as words
like “mountain” or “rock”. Such signs, which Peirce defines as rhemes, cannot teach
new information since they cannot affirm, deny, or question anything. Words, as
symbolic rhemes, are always vague. “Rock” may mean an almost infinite number of
objects. The referent of such a rhematic symbol (rock, mountain...) is only a possible
object amongst many others, not an actually existent one. Such signs only represent
possible and never really existing objects.
Rhemes, being single words in isolation, do not convey any information. It is
logically impossible for a rhematic sign to be also informative. When we want
to communicate the information that “this rock is grey” we need to combine the
rhematic symbol with indices (this, present tense) and icons (the mental image of
color grey), and this combination results in a sign (as a sentence) that is not a rheme
anymore but a dicent. We can only learn from signs that are at least propositions
(dicents) since only they can convey information at all (see Stjernfeldt, 2011, p.
47). For the same reason, icons, indices, and symbols occurring in the form of mere
rhematic signs cannot teach anything. Only when they are part of a dicent can they
convey information, but even when they are thus combined, their didactic potential
differs. We would need to know what a symbol means – by habit -- in order to be
able to understand it at all.
Symbols, defined as signs which refer to their objects “by virtue of a law, usually
an association of general ideas”, teach badly; they are unable to teach new knowledge
about the objects they represent since they are only related to their objects because of
habits (see Nöth, 2010a). To a learner who does not have the habit which associates
the unknown symbol to its object, the new sign is at first incomprehensible; it must
be learned by a habit change. Mere words and other abstract conventional signs have
no didactic potential. In almost Deweyan words, Peirce has the insight that “thinking
in general terms is not enough. It is necessary that something should be DONE” (CP
4.233, 1903).
It is true that educational discourse, to the degree that it consists of verbal
discourse, uses symbols as instruments of teaching, but in any verbal and even more
so in educational discourse, symbols can only be understood if they become icons
and indices in dicents (propositions) and arguments, in the form of which they create
mental images indexically related to the experiential world to which they refer.
It might be objected that in vocabulary learning students acquire the knowledge
of single words, but this is not true because we can learn unknown words only in
association with previously known words, which makes the information acquired in
vocabulary learning a dicent or proposition of the type A means B where A functions
as a subject and means B as the predicate of the lesson taught (see Nöth, 2010b).
16
SIGNS AS EDUCATORS
Nor can indices alone teach anything; they are uninformative since they can
only show without informing. Peirce describes the didactic power of a pure index
as follows: “The index asserts nothing; it only says ‘There!’ It takes hold of our
eyes, as it were, and forcibly directs them to a particular object, and there it stops”
(CP 3.361). In combination with symbols and icons, however, this characteristic
of the index makes indices very powerful didactic instruments. Indices serve to
relate signs to the learner’s sphere of experience (see Bergman, 2013, p. 15), but to
make this experience come alive, symbols and especially icons are needed. As De
Tienne (2003, p. 49) puts it: “An index without an icon is blind, a symbol without
an index is empty. Pure indexes and pure symbols do not occur, except within the
abstract classification of semiotic theory, where their isolation is of course most
convenient.”
Icons alone are incapable of teaching because they are inherently vague. A pure
rhematic icon has only aesthetic qualities and does not even represent anything
in specific (Nöth, p. 2002). On its incapacity to convey meaning, Peirce writes:
“The idea embodied by an icon […] cannot of itself convey any information,
being applicable to everything or to nothing” (CP 3.433, 1896). Diagrams and
metaphors, by contrast, are great teachers, especially the diagram, which is an
“icon of relations […] aided to be so by conventions” (CP 4.418, 1903), i.e., by
symbols. In fact, diagrams are the only signs from which new information can be
learned.
Maps, e.g., are diagrams by the observation of whose details we can discover
relations “which before seemed to have no necessary connection” (CP 1.383, 1890;
see Nöth, 2012). This heuristic potential is also apparent in the mental diagrams of
deductive reasoning since any syllogism represents its argument by “constructing
an icon […] the relations of whose parts […] present a complete analogy with
those of the parts of the object of reasoning”, and such a mental diagram allows the
learner to “discover unnoticed and hidden relations among the parts” (CP 3.363,
1885).
In sum, Peirce’s teaching methodology is based on the advice that those signs
teach best which he calls “the most perfect of signs” and about which he says that
they “are those in which the iconic, indicative, and symbolic characters are blended
as equally as possible” (CP 4.448, 1903). This insight is quite in accordance with
the principles of holistic education to which current pedagogy is giving much
attention, but instead of restricting itself to the didactics of learning “with all senses”
its didactics is one of teaching with signs which do not only relate to the present
moment of classroom activity but to experience related to the past and to the future,
in a holistic triad inscribed into the typology of signs in the following way:
An icon has such being as belongs to past experience. It exists only as an
image in the mind. An index has the being of present experience. The being of
a symbol consists in the real fact that something surely will be experienced if
certain conditions be satisfied. (CP 4.447, ca. 1903)
17
W. NÖTH
REFERENCES
Bergman, M. (2013). Fields of rhetoric: Inquiry, communication, and learning. Educational Philosophy
and Theory, 45(7), 737–754.
Clark, A. (1997). Being there: Putting brain, body, and world together again. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Dewey, J. (1897/1916). My pedagogic creed. In J. Dewey (Ed.), Democracy and education (pp. 4–6).
New York, NY: MacMillan.
De Tienne, A. (2003). Learning qua semiosis. S.E.E.D. Journal – Semiotics, Evolution, Energy, and
Development, 3, 37–53. Retrieved from http://www.library.utoronto.ca/see/SEED/Vol3-3/De_Tienne.
htm
Holmes, L. (1966). Peirce on self-control. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 2(2), 113–130.
Nöth, W. (1979). Errors as a discovery procedure in linguistics. International Review of Applied
Linguistics, 17, 61–76.
Nöth, W. (2000). Handbuch der Semiotik (2nd Rev. ed.). Stuttgart, Germany: Metzler.
Nöth, W. (2002). Semiotic form and the semantic paradox of the abstract sign. Visio, 6(4), 153–163.
Nöth, W. (2007). Self-reference in the media. In W. Nöth & N. Bishara (Eds.), Self-reference in the media
(pp. 3–30). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
Nöth, W. (2009a). On the instrumentality and semiotic agency of signs, tools, and intelligent machines.
Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 16(3–4), 11–36.
Nöth, W. (2009b). Metareference from a semiotic perspective. In W. Wolf, K. Bantleon & J. Thoss (Eds.),
Metareference across media: Theory and case studies (pp. 89–134). Amsterdam, the Netherlands:
Rodopi.
Nöth, W. (2010a). The criterion of habit in Peirce’s definitions of the symbol. Transactions of the Charles
S. Peirce Society, 46(1), 82–93.
Nöth, W. (2010b). The semiotics of teaching and the teaching of semiotics. In I. Semetsky (Ed.), Semiotics
education experience (pp. 1–20). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense.
Nöth, W. (2011). Some neglected semiotic premises of some radically constructivist conclusions.
Constructivist Foundations, 7(1), 12–14.
Nöth, W. (2012). Medieval maps: Hybrid ideographic and geographic sign systems. In I. Baumgärtner
& M. Stercken (Eds.), Herrschaft verorten: Politische Kartographie des Mittelalters und der Frühen
Neuzeit (pp. 335–353). Zürich, Switzerland: Chronos.
Peirce, C. S. (1931–1958). Collected papers, Vols. 1–6, C. Hartshorne & P. Weiss (Eds.), Vols. 7–8,
A. W. Burks (Ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (quoted as CP).
Peirce, C. S. (1963–1966/1979). The Charles S. Peirce papers (30 reels, 3rd microfilm ed.). Cambridge,
MA: The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Microreproduction Service (quoted as MS).
Santaella, L. (1999). A new causality for the understanding of the living. Semiotica, 127, 497–519.
Smith, H. A. (2010). Peircean theory, psychosemiotics, and education. In I. Semetsky (Ed.), Semiotics
education experience (pp. 37–52). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense.
Stjernfeldt, F. (2011). Signs conveying information: On the range of Peirce’s notion of propositions:
Dicisigns. International Journal of Signs and Semiotic Systems, 1(2), 40–52.
Turrisi, P. (2002). O papel do pragmatismo de Peirce na educação. Cognitio: Revista de Filosofia,
3, 122–136.
Winfried Nöth
Pontíficia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC)
Brazil
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JEN WEBB & MICHAEL ROSEN
3. POETRY MEETS PEDAGOGY

Conversations in/about Classrooms
INTRODUCTION
In 2011 Jen Webb met with Michael Rosen, the fifth Children’s Laureate for the UK,
to interview him about his approach to poetry. Although the conversation remained
focused on poetry, it constantly slid off into the domain of pedagogy. Perhaps this
is not surprising. Michael grew up in a home where education was highly valued,
and with a father (Harold Rosen) who became a professor of education, focusing
on teacher training in general and the teaching of English in particular; and Jen is
a professor of creative practice, with a research interest in pedagogies associated
with creative writing. Michael has spent a considerable part of his life writing and
publishing poetry, and conducting poetry workshops in primary schools; Jen has
spent a considerable part of her life writing and publishing poetry, and both teaching
and researching poetry at university level. Pedagogy in principle, and as put into
practice in the teaching of poetry, is thus important to both.
Michael’s poetry is written for young readers, and his understanding of what he
does (and why), and with what underlying ontological and axiological premises, is
explicated in this discussion. Central to the conversation is Michael’s perspective
on how poetry can be put to work as a generative and genuinely educative domain
for school children. Whether we invite them to write poems, read poems or discuss
poems, Michael shows, we can use approaches, attitudes and techniques that open
up a space in which young people can find their lives, their experiences and their
thoughts validated. This can be a way to intervene in the established ways of
understanding individuals and groups, in schools and in society more generally, and
to open up new ways of knowing.
This chapter picks up themes from our original conversation, and adds to it more
of the scholarly context in which we have both been operating. We begin with a
discussion about what Pierre Bourdieu’s writings illuminate about educational
institutions and practices, and especially about the role of language. We move then
to our conversation, which builds on this contextual foundation and extends it,
drawing on insights gleaned also from Michael’s late father, Harold Rosen, and from
Michael’s own poetic-pedagogic practice.

J. WEBB & M. ROSEN
BOURDIEU’S LEGACY
It is not surprising that two poets who share a commitment to education also share
an interest in the writings of Pierre Bourdieu, because the fields of creative practice
and of education were key elements of his research as topics to which he returned
throughout his career. Both fields are, in Bourdieu’s term, semi-autonomous fields;
or “spaces of objective relations that are the site of a logic and a necessity that are
specific and irreducible to those that regulate other fields” (Bourdieu & Wacquant,
1992, p. 97; emphasis in original). When it comes to (secondary and tertiary)
education, what is specific and irreducible is its role in producing and reproducing
the classificatory principles that shore up the structures and systems of domination
in society (see especially Bourdieu, 1996; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977).
Bourdieu’s project was directed at the absences in educational systems, and the
ways in which educational institutions function to reinforce existing hierarchies and
practices of exclusion. And they do it, writes Grenfell, largely through applying the
unspoken rules of what constitutes linguistic competence:
Those [students] with the necessary cultural dispositions including language,
gained from their family backgrounds, found themselves to be a “fish in
water”, swimming with the current; those without such linguistic and cultural
prerequisites had the opposite experience, and were themselves continuously
ill at ease in the academic environment. And, of course, language was the
medium for this implicit “social selection”. (Grenfell, 2011, p. 17)
This application of language as a medium for social selection is an example of
what Bourdieu describes as symbolic power, or ‘an unperceived form of everyday
violence’ (Bourdieu & Eagleton, 1994, p. 266). Symbolic power obviously relies
on the application of symbolic material, of which language is a key element. But
Bourdieu does not identify language as the culprit. Rather, symbolic power’s
efficacy is based on “the very structure of the field in which belief is produced
and reproduced” (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 170; emphasis in original); and this is, to a
considerable extent, the work of the field of education. Bourdieu is not pointing an
accusatory finger at individual teachers, or holding individual students to account
for failure to challenge normative systems of exclusion and hierarchy, or blaming
individual schools for reinforcing inequity. Rather, he identifies the rules, values,
forms of capital and truths of the field of education as the whole that becomes
normative for such practices: “What creates the power of words and slogans, a power
capable of maintaining or subverting the social order, is the belief in the legitimacy
of words and of those who utter them” (Bourdieu, 1991, p. 170).
Bourdieu’s engagement with the educational field thus urges a reflexive approach,
once that encourages a clear-eyed gaze at the principles of legitimacy. Reflexivity, for
Bourdieu, is the technique by which individuals become aware of, and rupture, their
otherwise-unthinking acceptance of the values, questions and categories of both field
and society. Reflexivity produces a break with received “truth” because it promotes
20
POETRY MEETS PEDAGOGY
radical doubt as a departure point for any activity (see Bourdieu, 1990). And it is an
easier task in contexts where the application of symbolic power is rendered visible.
It is difficult to resist, writes Bourdieu, “since it is something you absorb like air”
(Bourdieu & Eagleton, 1994, p. 271). But poetry is not something that most people
absorb like air. It typically has tiny audiences, a miniscule readership, and it is not an
everyday mode of language use. We say this conscious of the fact that many people
write their own poems at times of elation or despair, or draw on published poetry on
similar occasions. But these are not everyday times; indeed, the many anthologies
of poetry titled or subtitled “For Special Occasions” – usually with their contents
organised under headers such as weddings, funerals, or the birth of a child – show
the role of poetry in marking events outside the quotidian.
For many people it is, therefore, a “difficult” form: Jen has taught poetry at
university level for some years now, and consistently found students anxious about
the mode, with even skilled creative writing students quite sure that writing poetry
will be beyond them. This is perhaps because poetry is segregated from the forms
in which we normally encounter language: the news, social media, movies, novels,
textbooks and so on. And this is despite the fact that poetry is a foundational mode
for much communication: the metaphors used to communicate, the rhythms and
flows of rhetorical speech, even the use of alliteration and internal chiming – all are
part of poetry. We do know it; yet it seems to exist outside our standard use.
Since poetry very often is not “absorbed like air”, but forces a conscious awareness
of itself, it can induce wakefulness in students and teachers about how the educational
field tends to operate as a form of symbolic power, and how to approach a classroom
context with a different frame of mind. Because Bourdieu’s analysis is never one that
simply accepts reproduction of norms or the stability of existing structures; rather,
his work is directed toward an interrogation of the “what is”, and the formulation of
modes of resistance where appropriate. We may “know” that the field of education
is geared toward reproduction rather than revolution, and toward the maintenance of
established social patterns rather than radical change, but nonetheless realize that its
power is predicated largely on belief in the symbolic forms that present it to us. This
means the actions of individual agents in individual classrooms can interrogate of
these practices and norms, and institute new possibilities and new beliefs.
OUR CONVERSATION
Showing or Telling
Jen I want to begin with your father’s work on language and education, and
particularly with his essay The importance of story where he references Derrida,
writing, “We are, God knows, all too familiar with whole atlases of deserted cities
in education and English teaching: Logopolis, Drillville, Skillville” (Rosen, 1986,
p. 228). It seems to me that something similar readily happens in both the writing
and reading of poetry, where its energy, vitality and individuality can be, to use
21
J. WEBB & M. ROSEN
Derrida’s term, “neutralized” (Derrida, 1967, p. 4), because students must attend to
a curriculum’s position on what constitutes, say, “poetry”.
Can I ask you to respond to that indirectly, as it were: by describing your own
practice, and how you resist the “neutralization” of poetry and of thinking in your
writing and in your teaching? So for example: when you’re preparing to write and
are gathering material and thoughts, do you think that your energy is in the concept
that you’re working with – that is, the facts, or knowledge – or is your energy in
finding the right image, the right words, putting down the right line?
Michael Quite often a starting point is a phrase or an image; it might be a memory,

it might be a sensation. It can be triggered off by daydreaming, by an association in
my own mind; it might be something my children have said, or it might be a phrase.
Those are starting points; and then I get quite quickly to concept. I’ll ask myself
questions about why I’ve remembered it or thought about it, and then more abstract
things will come to mind.
Let’s take an example. My dad used to cook us matzo brei, a traditional Jewish
dish made with unleavened bread. I remember he used to say, “Don’t tell your
mother I’m cooking this.” Then I thought about how we always say, “Don’t lie to
your mum”; but there was my dad, basically saying, Let’s collaborate, let’s lie to
Mum. He’d never say anything against her, and so it was quite funny that he did this
naughty thing behind her back and cooked this food that was greasy and schmaltzy.
You can see that my thinking has gone from a memory of him doing it – and
wanting to acknowledge that he did occasionally do parental things – to the
conceptual: into the question of lying, and of lying to your mum. But I don’t want
to make it too conceptual. At the end of the wonderful poem Sheepdog Trials in
Hyde Park, C Day Lewis says, “My work is a kind of controlled woolgathering, too”
(Lewis, 1992, pp. 542-543):
To lift, to fetch, to drive, to shed, to pen
Are acts I recognize, with all they mean
Of shepherding the unruly, for a kind of
Controlled woolgathering is my work too.
I think, You don’t need to say that, Cecil Day; just tell us about the sheepdog trials
and leave us to decide whether your work is a controlled wool gathering or not.
What I try to do is go to the conceptual and then kill it off: to write as authentically
as I can about the incident that has led me to the conceptual thought, and hope that
people will go conceptual themselves if they want to. The poems don’t have to take
you there.
That’s not to say I don’t admire concept. People often ask “What’s your favourite
poem?”, and quite often I say it’s Dulce et decorum est, where Owen shoves it right
in your face (Owen, 1963, p. 55). He doesn’t need to, he could just describe the
trenches and say, “Bent double like old beggars”, but at the end he says The old lie.
I hesitate to write like that: it’s so conceptual that, for children, I mostly avoid it.
22
Jen Are you deliberately avoiding being didactic, or is it that you want to keep this
space for children more playful, more open?
Michael Probably a mixture of both. I think that I like the idea of writing in such a
provocative way that the conceptual stuff will happen afterwards; that teachers and
children will have queries, that they’ll start asking questions in the space you’ve left
at the end of the poem. If you tie it up too much, then there’ll be nothing for them
to talk about.
Jen And if you tie it up too much, then what you’ve done is create an argument and
put it through the poem, rather than letting it just be a poem.
Michael Also you have expressed authority. When I first started writing I didn’t
realise how much authority the printed page has for children, particularly in schools.
It’s a huge institutional weight that comes on a child. If you said something like,
“Well, actually, the sky is blue because God painted it blue” with that level of
authority, children would say, “That’s true”, simply because you’ve said it, and
therefore it must be true. I don’t like that. I prefer to be more provocative, and it’s
easier to be provocative if you’re not too conceptual.
Jen So in your example, instead of telling the child the sky is blue, you might ask
them if the sky is blue, or say something like “When the sky was blue”, which holds
the possibility that things might be otherwise.
Michael Yes, or you can say something surreal, like, “The sky is always brown,
isn’t it?”. That would be more interesting for me, certainly in the context of poetry
for young children. I think that occasionally, when something has really irritated me,
I might have gone a bit conceptual; but mostly I avoid it. I have published books
of political poetry for adults, but they go around lefty circles where nobody thinks
you’re an authority so you feel a bit freer to say things. Your readers don’t take
everything you say as gospel. But when writing for children I think, What are you
doing putting that in a poem? It could be nice to write a book that is didactic, but
only within a framework where you announce, this is a didactic book. I wouldn’t
want to write a poem like that.
Jen Because?
Michael I suppose it’s because I’m trying to reinvent poetry, certainly in the
context of schools. I’m trying to make it something different, so it isn’t offering a
direct statement of belief. One of the models in my mind is The Pardoner’s Tale by
Chaucer. He tells us about the pardoner, and then the pardoner tells a very powerful
story about death and about how, if you pursue greed, you will end up killing yourself
and others. And this story comes from the pardoner who is identified as a complete
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J. WEBB & M. ROSEN
rogue and who, at the end of the book, is trying to sell indulgences. This is the very
thing Chaucer thinks is just appalling, that is a complete hoax. The cunning thing
is that he doesn’t say indulgences are wrong. He just puts this great story in the
mouth of a person he disagrees with, in order to get you thinking about how clever
these people are. He’s showing and telling at the same time just how cunning are
these people who sell indulgences. I think the whole drama of all that is about as
conceptual as I’d ever want to be. It’s sort of Shakespearian, in that the ironies of the
situation make you do the thinking, rather than the text laying out thoughts for you.
Having said that, I like Wilfred Owen saying “the old lie”. The great thing about
that poem is that it was coming from such anger and from such a concrete situation.
I think he’s desperate, he thinks people don’t know what life is like in the trenches
and he is telling them: he’s saying, “Look, you folks at home, every time one of us
dies they keep telling you dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.” Not many of us
are going through that and I tolerate the didacticism of it because of the extreme
situation he was in. I suppose that if I were starving to death or falsely imprisoned
then I might do that too.
Class in the Classroom
Jen What you’re saying makes me think about Bourdieu’s work on education
theory, and particularly his work on reproduction in education. It seems that you’re
quite deliberately avoiding reproduction, which is interesting, given that a lot of your
work is designed for young people in school.
Michael Yes; well, there are several ways to try to avoid it. One way is to avoid
an elite way of talking. As Bourdieu points out, a lot of education is simply about
talking to the children of people who are educated.
Jen Which brings to mind your father’s “contra Bernstein” paper. A major problem
with Bernstein, he wrote there, is that Basil Bernstein “attributes to middle-class
speakers in general certain rare and remarkable intellectual virtues, but there is an
inadequate examination of the way in which their language is affected by their class
position” (Rosen, 1974, p. 106). I haven’t read Basil Bernstein; and in any event, the
context has changed markedly in the past forty years. But that logic of classroom
values and student differentiation still emerges in the form of a consistent effort to
achieve conformity to a norm, and to value only certain ways of speaking or writing
– and thereby, only certain ways of knowing.
Michael I can see it in my own education, because my parents were both teachers
and active politically, and the kinds of dialogue that went on in my home suited the
education I had because it was dialogic, it was very comparative, and it was very
discursive. I always had a sense that whatever I said was part of a wider debate. It
was a gift, really, it was like an A Level at breakfast, perpetually.
24
Jen So if you didn’t become an intellectual person then you really had messed up.
Michael Absolutely. There was no way of avoiding it. Even my brother, who was
desperately trying to avoid it by being a scientist, is the most dialogic scientist that
I’ve ever met. He’s in charge of the Darwin Archive at the Natural History Museum
now, so he’s in dialogue with Darwin.
Jen Your father raises the topic of how educational failure is defined, identified
and represented in the school system. He said:
on the one hand there are honest and devoted people who are trying to answer
the question, ‘Why do so many working-class children fail in school and how
can we change things so that they do not?’ and on the other hand … there
are people who, in the effort to guard their privileges and power within the
educational system, seek tirelessly for new and better theoretical justifications.
(Rosen, 1974, p. 97)
He explains the initial reliance, in the early 1950s, to the theory of intelligence, put
into operation through IQ testing and considered accurate until it was debunked,
only to be replaced by educational theories that identified linguistic competence as
a marker of educational success.
Of course “linguistic competence” did not mean being able to communicate
fluently and fully; it meant competence in received English. Harold Rosen
describes this as a theory that was used to identify children with “restricted”
linguistic competence—meaning they were limited to language that “could
not reach out to certain kinds of meanings and limited the power of speakers
to understand their environment”. In short, such children were marked by a
“cognitive defect”. (1974, p. 99)
This seems to me to be is a pretty naked approach to social construction:
whatever is middle class is perceived as the norm, and working class practices
are, by contrast, deficient. And I imagine that in the decades since your father
wrote this essay, the influx of non-English speaking immigrants adds to the
‘deficit’ side of the educational ledger all those children for whom English is
not their first language, and/or whose parents have limited English.
Michael I’m very aware of these concerns. For instance, if I go into a classroom
sometimes the teacher will say, “I’m so glad you’ve come, Michael, because the quicks
are writing poems and the slows are doing rhyming words.” I have a very strong sense
of Bourdieu at that moment and think, “What are you doing?”. This thing poetry was
invented as a democratic medium, in the broad sense of the word. Homer, or the Homeric
poets, didn’t say that poetry was only accessible to some people. Like Jesus’ parables,
or like Beowulf, this literature was meant to be for everyone; and yet as we developed
class societies, more and more we’ve developed literatures that are very excluding.
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J. WEBB & M. ROSEN
It seems to me, particularly with young people, that there’s no point in a poetry
that excludes. You have to try to say some of the most difficult and interesting things,
but in a way that will not exclude anybody. In a sense you break the reproduction
cycle, and let children see that this form of knowledge – or understanding, reception,
cognition – is different from all that other stuff they do that appears to them like
hurdles, or hoops they have to go through in order to get to the next stage, and where
they can be wrong.
I’m always asking teachers to try and make poetry something you can’t be
wrong about. Their response can’t be wrong; it can only be different. So much of
the education around poetry is about proving certain children can be wrong and,
essentially, the teachers are forced into always being right. I think it’s a false way
of positioning people, and so I’m constantly trying to find methods of teaching and
methods of performance where you can’t be wrong. The child can have a dialogic
relationship with the poem. I ask children questions like, “Does the poem remind
you of anything? If you could ask the poem any questions, what questions would you
ask it? If you could answer those questions, then how would you answer them?” So
I frame the questions in the context of the poem: I open questions we can ask of the
poem, so the kids think of the poem as something you investigate from the point of
view of your knowledge and your awareness.
Poems, to my mind, are very specialised forms of cohesion—of sticking words
together. All language coheres, of course, but poems are specialised forms; they have
developed their own forms, and obviously rhyme and rhythm are most famous. I say
to children, “What secret links can you find between bits of the poem?” It can be
on any basis: linguistics or phonology, or chronology, it could be the lexis. In that
way they investigate the prosody of the poem for themselves. It isn’t the business
of the teacher, who says, “Today we’re going to look at metaphor”, and then have a
discussion around metaphors or symbolism. It all comes out of them finding strings
for themselves.
Jen So it’s genuinely child-centred learning.
Michael Yes, but also it’s investigative. It takes from science the notion that if you
have something in front of you, you say, What does it feel like? What does it look
like? What does it smell like? Why do we think it smells like that? Why does it look
like that? If we put it with that, what happens? And then you observe, you develop
theories about it, and then test the theories. I think we ought to do the same with
poems: ask Why is it like that thing that you remember, that text that you remember?
What’s the link between the Dracula film you saw and that poem? There’s blood?
That’s a good link. That interests me. I hope that is a way of defying the reproduction
process, because it gives authority to the child, and it gives the child the sense that
a poem could be theirs. If you do this with them, they finally crack open things that
they thought they could never crack.
26
Jen Would you have children writing poetry in the same sort of way?
Michael In an ideal world I would always be writing poems with children while we
were involved in activities. I like to work from a film or story or another poem; or we
might go out on a coach or a train, or go to a museum or something like that. In those
situations I like cutting in to whatever is there, taking on the voice of something or
somebody within the situation. I freeze frame, and say to children, “Imagine you
were there. What are you thinking? What are you seeing? What are you hearing?
What are you imagining? What does it feel like?”
So they have this set of open-ended questions, and I write up their answers, and
then I’ll say, “You know what you can do with this? You can pull out bits that you
like from these notes that we’ve made, and see what happens. You can take bits,
repeat bits, move bits around.”
You can do similar things with objects. I did a workshop recently in a school, and
we were in a room that had been the Dinner Hall. I said, “If you were a light in the
Dinner Hall, what could you see? What could you hear? As the light, what would
you be thinking?”. I wrote up about five or six of their answers to these questions,
and had them use the bits, take them and move them around. Nice things come out
of that.
Then there was something a bit different. There was a class of Year Three children,
who are seven to eight years old. I was asked to get them to write things that would
go in a time capsule to be buried just round the corner from them and to be opened
up in about a hundred years. I said, “The thing that most people will want to know
is who you are”. It’s very hard to say who you are if you start with “I am …”,
because you’ll say “I am 12” or “I live in Hackney”, and it’s very difficult to think
of anything else. So I told them I had been listening to the radio and heard a woman
from Montserrat. Quite a few of the children came from the Caribbean so it rang a
bell for them. There had been a terrible volcano there, some people died, a lot of
them came to England, but some people had stayed on the island. The interviewer
asked the woman why she had stayed and she said, “We can survive. And anyway,
we can hear the volcano and we’ve all got volcano bags.” He asked, “What’s a
volcano bag?” and she said, “It’s where we put all the stuff that we need; if we have
to go running, it’s in the volcano bag, waiting on the hook.”
I posed the idea that the time capsule could be the equivalent of a mind volcano bag,
and said, “You’d want to put in a description of the most valuable thing that you’ve
got, something that you really treasure and why you treasure it. You’d probably want
to put in a memory of something that somebody has said that you think is valuable
or helpful. You could put in a dream in, something you’re really afraid of, something
that you hope for.” They wrote absolutely stunning things, things that might or might
not have been poems, but were ultimate statements about themselves. I think they’re
really powerful and it all came from this idea of a metaphysical volcano bag: it lets
them into a space that they occupy, but without knowing it.
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J. WEBB & M. ROSEN
Jen Which means you’re giving them training in self-reflexivity.
Michael Yes, indeed. So that they can stand outside of themselves. The moment
they start saying “This is what I said”, you know you have used the classroom as
a place of knowledge – a place where they’ve produced the knowledge. All right,
it came from my questions, which are very carefully framed, but they have played
with them.
The Texture of Reality
Jen Your father again takes on Bernstein’s theory of class and education, when he
explains Bernstein’s taxonomy of linguistic codes and how they match both class
origin, and students’ capacity to achieve. The restricted (or working class) linguistic
code, in Bernstein’s view, is rigid; the elaborated (or middle class) code by contrast
is flexible. The restricted code can deal only with local issues; the elaborated code
extends to universal concerns. And then – which is interesting for poets thinking
about poetry – the restricted code, he says, relies on metaphor, and the elaborated
code on rationality (Rosen, 1974). After considering Bernstein’s class theory, Rosen
concludes, “The general drift of what I have had to say so far is that the relationship
of the theory to the texture of reality is at best tenuous” (1974, p. 104).
I liked this sentence very much, not only because it is a concise summary about
what sociology needs to do, but also because of that phrase, “the texture of reality”.
It seems to me that what poetry can afford is a way of expressing the texture of an
individual, local reality.
Michael In a very diverse classroom you have very different things that the
children are saying and comparing, and that school is very diverse; the kids go from
refugees who have literally just arrived to people like me. I compare it with when I
was a kid, and my family was thought very adventurous because we went to France,
and there was a sense that there was something slightly strange and exotic about us
because of that. In London suburbs then, nobody did that: they went to Broadstairs
and Hastings. But some of these children go to the Caribbean, or to Africa, or to the
Indian sub-continent. Much poorer kids are travelling, now, in order to make contact
with grandparents, and this has reversed the position as far as knowledge of the
world is concerned. These children do have knowledge that we very rarely draw on.
Jen But if we find ways to do so, that can validate their knowledge—for them, and
to them.
Michael Yes. I’m interested in a poetry that does that. I spend 30% of my time in
face-to-face encounters with children because there is still something special about
it. If there was a lot of it going on in schools I probably wouldn’t think that, but it’s
still a rarity when a writer comes into a school. They find there is a person behind
28
their books, and they can engage with that person about the process of writing. I’ve
been doing this for nearly 40 years now. There is some part of human relationships
where the face-to-face encounter remains the best way we know to negotiate ideas
and feelings. I say one thing, you say another, I say another again, and we’re in a
permanent state of affecting each other at all sorts of levels. You can’t do it with a
book; you can’t do it with a screen. They’re great things but there is something more.
Jen It is interesting in a phenomenological sense. There’s been quite a lot of work

extrapolated from biology in the last decades, much of it emerging from early writings
by Maturana and Varela. They write that cognition emerges from a mix of circularity
and complexity on the part of systems. All life forms are systems, in this perspective,
and they exist and form themselves by interacting with their environments, and
adjusting themselves to their conditions (see Maturana & Varela, 1980). So we –
whatever “we” means – are constantly interacting with our environment: it changes
us and we change it.
Michael Marx put it by saying that in changing nature we change ourselves: “In
thus acting on the external world and changing it, he at the same time changes
his own nature” (Marx, 2007, p. 198). I never understood it when I first read it.
Of course what it means is that in the process of enacting the change, you change
yourself. I’m very interested in that in terms of writing: writing is a way of changing
nature because you textualise something as you write about it. At the moment I’m
looking at this door, for instance, but if I write about it then I textualise the door. It is
no longer the door, it’s the door in the text, and so I have changed something about
my perception of it; and in changing it I have change – have repositioned – myself,
and changed my relationship to that door, and maybe to all doors.
Often, people treat human beings and knowledge and nature as somehow static:
that there is a nature, and you write about it, and then the reader gets it, and nobody
has changed anything. If you read “Ode on a Grecian Urn” there is Keats, trying to
say that there’s this kind of flight that is miraculously captured on the urn: ‘“Beauty
is truth, truth beauty’ – that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” (Keats,
1982, p. 282). At school they presented it to us as a static thing. There was the vase,
there was Keats writing about what was on the vase and what he thought about it, and
you the reader are going to get that whole sense of flux, the impossibility of capture,
one lover chasing after another – which, ironically, he was trying to write about.
It’s very hard to conceptualise the kinds of flux that I think are going on in the way
in which we affect each other and are affected by things. Education is particularly
guilty here because it treats facts as static. Famously, you have a piece to read for
comprehension and teachers ask you about facts in the piece that you’ve just read, as
if they are unalterable. Crazily, they will ask students what colour is the cover of the
book, or which side is Long John Silver’s wooden leg on, as if it matters, as if that’s
what the piece is actually about. It makes it static; it turns literature into a company
report, as if it’s saying that these things are stable facts.
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Jen I wonder if it’s a fault of language. As you spoke I’m reminded of something
that John Berger wrote: “That a poem may use the same words as a Company Report
means no more than the fact that a lighthouse and a prison cell may be built with
stones from the same quarry, joined with the same mortar” (Berger, 1984, pp. 21-22).
How do you mobilise a particular sign, a particular word, and turn it into something
that’s open, as opposed to something that’s closed?
Michael Yes, that’s nice. I think that’s what poets try to do all the time. Famously,
they’re trying to defamiliarise, so that one of the tasks of poems is to take the very
thing that you thought you knew, and say, “What if it was something different?”
You can do that through placing words in unusual relationships with other words,
or you can try to juxtapose concepts in a way that is surprising and odd, and get
outcomes that are surprising. You can see with a lot of poems that there is an effort
to defamiliarise, and some of that will be at the level of the signifier, if you like, that
Berger is talking about. There are some poets who, no matter how often you talk
about feelings and ideas in relation to poems, will say, “That’s not what poetry is.
Poetry is about language itself.” If I represent their position correctly, they say that if
a poem appears to be about ideas and feelings then the poem isn’t doing the job it’s
supposed to do, which is to defamiliarise language itself.
The problem is that when I read the poems that come out of that school, I find
quite often that I don’t understand them. If they defamiliarise the signifier so much
that it becomes very difficult to see what’s going on and to feel it and hear it and
understand it, then I suppose I do give up, to be absolutely honest. I suppose I’m old-
fashioned; but when I read Shakespeare, I feel all the time that he is defamiliarising
things in ways that I understand. So if he says, “Til the last syllable of recorded time”
(Shakespeare, 1807, p. 196 [Act 5, Sc. 5]), then he’s defamiliarised time for me …
Jen … and syllables…
Michael … exactly, yes. How can time have syllables, and how can syllables be
in time? But still I understand it, so there’s a conceptual understanding of a text that
doesn’t actually make sense. The thing that he does, the Shakespeare poet, the thing
that goes on in his poetry is about as much of the defamiliarising of the textural level
that I can cope with.
Jen Are there things that you want people to know? That is, do you have a
pedagogical sense or didactic sense about your work? Is there something you’ve
tried to convey to readers of the world, or to posterity?
Michael I think it’s that I want to remind children, and anybody actually, that there
are layers to culture. There are official cultures and there are unofficial cultures, and
we are all in possession of those. School is quite an interesting place because a lot of
the time it ignores those other cultures; it pretends that the people there are cultureless,
30
and that the only culture around is geography and English and maths. Of course you
can’t absorb that culture unless you have some cultural tools, the apparatus with
which to understand it. How education negotiates that is quite bewildering, because
for most of the time it simply ignores children who lack that sort of culture.
Quite a lot of what I write is, in fact, meant to validate the kind of unofficial
culture in my own life: the conversations at home, relationships with my brother and
parents, the things they talked about, the languages and sub-languages like Yiddish
that they used. A lot of my work is about that. My wife and I were interviewing the
singer/songwriter Billy Bragg for a radio program, and he said had been reading
about something called intangible cultural heritage. It could be gestures; it could
be smiles; it could be the food we eat. There’s a vast amount of this; it may not be
artefact, it may be process, or it may be body, the cultural ways in which people
express who they are and how they are in the world. But a lot of it has absolutely no
value unless you’re of a certain class or certain status in society.
This is linked to what I think are the two most powerful ways in which authority
oppresses us: through instruments of passivity and shame. Passivity is induced
in children all the time, by us as adults, as parents, as teachers. One example is the
disciplinary procedures schools use; the teacher will move things round on the board
to show how the children are behaving. If they’re using the traffic light system then it
will be a set of lights, and all the children at any single moment in the day are a certain
colour of light, with the top light being good and the bottom bad. At any given moment
of the day you, the child, are either very good, good, not so good, bad, or very bad.
Jen So it’s a constant process of external evaluation?
Michael Yes, and this is happening more and more in schools. It seems to me to be
one of the most pernicious things that I’ve seen going on in schools. Inevitably the
same kids are good and the same kids are bad, so all the teacher does is just reinforce
that some children are perpetually bad, and others mysteriously appear to be good.
Whatever a “bad” child thinks about himself, he doesn’t appear to be able to do
anything to lever himself away from that judgment.
Also, as you say, this is an external form of evaluation, so the child has no control
over it. It’s not as if the child says, “Actually, I think I am quite gold at the moment.
Could I be gold?” Couple that with the rigorous streaming and setting going on—so
there’s the quick table and the slow table, and the teachers are saying it in front of
the children—then if you are on the bad traffic light and the slow table, you are
permanently classified as inferior to others. It’s a classification that you can never
question; it is just given to you, and that is quite ironic since it’s happening in a place
of education, where you’re supposed to be questioning things, engaging with the fact
that there isn’t a fixed piece of knowledge.
I suppose part of me thinks that my job as a poet is to do anything whatsoever to
reverse any sense of passivity and shame. It might be because subversive and illicit
things are validated in my poems, or because there are ironies that show you that the
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world adults have created is not perfect and that they aren’t always right. This can
go on at a purely linguistic level where you say, “You know this language stuff that
you are given every day and told it goes like this and has sentences? Do you know
it doesn’t have to?” I always say to children, “When you’re making poems you can
treat language like Lego and move it around. If you want to say ‘The mat sat on
the cat’, then it doesn’t matter. Or you could say ‘mat the cat sat the on’ and see if
that works; sometimes it will and sometimes it won’t.” So, even at the level of the
signifier, I’m trying to say, the world doesn’t control you, you control it.
CONCLUSION
Bourdieu’s investigation of the education system is nearly half a century old now,
and a number of refinements to educational philosophy and curriculum design
have been put into place since his critique of the system. However, there are still
structural issues in place that, arguably, continue to preserve dominant norms and
authorized practices over the (many) alternatives ways of learning, thinking and
making meanings that could enhance learning opportunities and, importantly,
enhance students’ capacity to use language in productive and innovative ways. As
recently as 2011, Cheryl Hardy reported on research that showed how students who
do not possess received English are disadvantaged in schools, and how what she
calls “linguistic advantage” is recast, within schools, as “ability” or “talent”. An
effect of this is the exclusion of students without that advantage from achieving at
school, or moving into higher education; and language, she writes, “is the medium
of this social differentiation” (Hardy, 2011, p. 174).
This, we suggest, makes it imperative that educators look closely at language
and the role it plays in education either to facilitate students’ success, or to reinforce
their identity as “failures”. Poetry is a very good medium to use; it is of course
language, but it is language used in unfamiliar ways. It forms a very minor part of
the curriculum of any primary, secondary or tertiary classroom, but its linguistic
force and fluency, and what is for many students its sheer novelty, means it can have
the capacity to upset language norms and the cultural practices they either privilege
or efface, opening up new ways of thinking and seeing. It is ineffable, as opposed
to conventional use of language in classrooms, which is definable, expressible.
As a mode of language use committed to art more than to exemplification, it
comprises “the sensuous embodiment of conscious enquiry, invites us to reassess
our understanding of the way we interact with other objects and minds” (Cazeaux,
2000, pp. xiv-xv). It is language, but not as we (typically) know it; it is a tool for
learning about and attempting to know the world in which we live, but in a very
under-determined way – at least in pedagogical terms. It facilitates a different mode
of thinking and seeing; and is therefore, we consider, a powerful tool to use in the
classroom in order to afford students a different experience of symbolic power; and
a fresh way of considering their role in the institution and in the broader social field:
their norms, their values, and their cultures.
32
REFERENCES
Berger, J. (1984). And our faces, my heart, brief as photos. London, England: Writers and Readers.
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power, J. B. Thompson (Ed.), G. Raymond & M. Adamson
(Trans.). Cambridge, England: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1996). State nobility: Elite schools in the field of power, L. C. Clough (Trans.). Cambridge,
England: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. - C. (1977). Reproduction in education, society and culture, R. Nice (Trans.).
London, England: Sage.
Bourdieu, P., & Eagleton, T. (1994). Doxa and common life: An interview. In S. Zizek (Ed.), Mapping
ideology. London, England: Verso.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). In other words: Essays towards a reflexive sociology, M. Adamson (Trans.). Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press.
Bourdieu, P., & Wacquant, L. (1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology. Cambridge, England: Polity
Press.
Cazeaux, C. (2000). The continental aesthetics reader. New York, NY: Routledge.
Derrida, J. (1967/2002). Writing and difference, A. Bass (Trans.). London, England: Routledge.
Grenfell, M. (2011). Bourdieu: A theory of practice. In M. Grenfell (Ed.), Bourdieu, language and
linguistics. London, England: Continuum.
Hardy, C. (2011). Language and education. In M. Grenfell (Ed.), Bourdieu, language and linguistics.
London, England: Continuum.
Keats, J. (1982). Complete poems. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lewis, C. D. (1992). The complete poems of C. Day Lewis. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Marx, K. (2007). Capital: A critique of political economy 1.1. New York, NY: Cosimo Press.
Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (1980). Autopoiesis and cognition: The realization of the living. Dordrecht,
the Netherlands: D Reidel.
Owen, W. (1963). The collected poems of Wilfred Owen, C. D. Lewis & E. Blunden (Eds.). New York,
NY: New Directions Pubs.
Rosen, H. (1974). Language and class: A critical look at the theories of Basil Bernstein. The Urban
Review, 7(2), 97–114.
Rosen, H. (1986). The importance of story. Language Arts, 63(3), 226–237.
Shakespeare, W. (1807). The tragedy of Macbeth, London, England: Mathews and Leigh.
Jen Webb
University of Canberra
Australia
Michael Rosen
Goldsmiths, University of London
UK
33
ANDREW STABLES, SUSANNAH LEAROYD-SMITH,
HARRY DANIELS & HAU MING TSE
4. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING AS SEMIOTIC

ENGAGEMENT
A Focus on Design
INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, empirical data from the AHRC funded Design Matters? research
project are subjected to semiotic analysis according to a framework drawn from
biosemiotics, Tarasti’s existential semiotics and Stables’ taxonomy of environmental
literacies as functional, cultural and critical. This framework allows the school to
be understood as umwelt, as place-as-experienced, and offers the potential to bring
together the previously distinct exercises of investigating schooling as experience
and school as designed space. The results show how the functional and the affective
are interwoven in both students’ and teachers’ evaluations of schools as places to
work and socialise. Design influences, but cannot determine, the experience of
schooling.
Traditionally, evaluations of schooling have tended to separate the personal from
the spatial, with research into both effective teaching and learning and the student
experience taking little account of the school as designed space, and architectural
post-occupancy evaluations taking similarly little account of pedagogy or the less
easily measured aspects of students’ and teachers’ lives within them.
Stables (2014) takes the above as his starting point in developing a possible
analytical framework for investigating the school as experienced place drawing
on the three major theoretical sources: biosemiotics (the school as unwelt),
existential semiotics (Tarasti, 2001: experience of school as acts of affirmation and
negation), and a taxonomy of environmental literacies as functional, cultural and
critical (Stables, 1998; Bishop and Stables, 2001). In this chapter, the framework
is used to analyse data from the Design Matters? project funded by the UK Arts
and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the aim of which was to study the
experiences of students, teachers and others in schools built in the early 2000s
under the British Government’s Building Schools for the Future and subsequent
Academies initiative. Although not the case for many later academies, all the schools
studied were commissioned and largely built during the period between 2000 and
2010 under a Labour government. All were considerably more expensive than the
school builds that preceded and succeeded them, and all were situated in relatively

A. STABLES ET AL.
deprived areas with low prior academic achievement. (Further details of the schools
and the project design are available from the authors on request.)
THEORETICAL AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK
A full explanation of the development of the theoretical and analytical framework is

given in Stables, 2014. It can be summarised as follows:
1. The school is understood, in biosemiotic terms, as umwelt, as signifying
environment. Each child or adult’s mental map of the school can be construed
as innenwelt. However, the school is not a natural “found” environment (using
“found” as in the artistic sense of “found object”) but is rather a consciously
constructed complex cultural artefact designed to facilitate certain preconceived
social functions. Thus the umwelt of the school is not merely a selection from
the semiosphere (Lotman, 2005), but is to a large extent an expression of the
collective, or dominant lebenswelt that determined its purpose and construction.
For present purposes, therefore, the umwelt is construed within the context of the
(collective) lebenswelt in opposition to the general tendency within biosemiotics
to construe the lebenswelt (as specifically human culture) as nested within the
umwelt though this relationship is inevitably open to constant reinterpretation.
2. The individual actor within the school (whether student, teacher or other)
responds to the school as signifier as, in effect, a series of invitations to act and
respond in certain ways. The particular dispositions of the individual in question
predispose that individual to respond to the school as signified in a manner that is
not entirely predictable. Inspired by Tarasti’s existential semiotics (Tarasti, 2001),
this response can be understood as relative affirmation or negation. Thus, for
example, a student might respond to an expensive new school building as either
“smart” (approvingly) or “posh” (derogatively) and might feel either empowered
or belittled by it depending on inclination. Given the importance of motivation for
educational success, these responses might have significant consequences;
3. How the individual responds to the school can be understood, from a semiotic
perspective, as analogous to how an individual responds to a text. The school
as text offers conventional signifiers to which the users of the school as readers
respond according to their somewhat various interpretive frameworks. One well
established method of further differentiating readings is as functional, cultural
and critical (e.g. Williams and Snipper, 1990), and this has been applied to
specifically environmental literacy by Stables (1998, and with Bishop, 2001).
On this account, functional environmental literacy is the capacity to understand
an environment and respond appropriately to it for survival. For example, the
new student needs to find her way around the various corridors that are adjacent
to the classrooms in which she will be taught. Cultural environmental literacy
is the ability to “read” environments in terms of their cultural significances.
For example, to respond to a summons to “the Headmaster’s study” nervously
36
SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING AS SEMIOTIC ENGAGEMENT
is to acknowledge both the importance the headteacher within the society of

the school, and the likelihood that such an invitation may be the precursor to
some form of unwanted sanction. Many of a school user’s affective responses
to aspects of schools and schooling are culturally conditioned in this sense.
Consider, for example, how the same doorway into an empty white-walled
space might elicit different responses according to whether it had the words
“prayer room” or “investigation room” inscribed above it. Finally, critical
environmental literacy entails the capacity for both analytic reflection on why
a place is as it is, and for formulation of alternatives. If a student were to note,
for example, that a certain school had been designed so that the teachers could
always observe the pupils, and that this was an intrusion on privacy, this would
indicate some nascent capacity for critical thinking, though it is unlikely school
students, particularly those of younger age, would clearly articulate ideological
issues around school design and organisation.
THE SCHOOLS
The data here below are taken from four schools. All are in areas of relative social
deprivation, with higher than national average proportions of students entitled to
free school meals. (This is a common measure for school affluence and deprivation
in the British context.) School A is an Academy in a large town in the South of
England, School B an Academy with Church of England sponsorship in a large town
in the English Midlands, School C a comprehensive school (though in an area with
academic selection, if opted for, to grammar schools at age 11) in a middle-sized
Southern English town, and School D a former comprehensive school now with
academy status on the outskirts of a large town in the South-West of England. All
were made available for occupancy between 2008 and 2012, and all were funded
very generously, by national standards, either directly by the Labour government
of the early 2000s (Schools B and D) or by other sponsors under the Academies
programme promoted by that government (Schools A and C).
The project team holds a mass of data on each of these schools, more of which
can be made available on request to the author. To contextualise the present analysis,
a brief pen-portrait of each is offered below.
School A is a smart, imposing, perhaps slightly austere building near the crest
of a hill. It is characterised internally by very good site lines (insofar as a teacher
standing near the centre of the construction can see a great deal of what is going on
in all directions around her), a number of experimental design features (working at
differing levels of efficiency) and is almost entirely black and white. The sense that
this is a very “adult” environment is reflected in the organization of daily life within
the school, which characterized by quite tight control and rigid rules (about uniform,
movement and so on) which have helped to improve student behaviour and results,
yet which have also caused a degree of resentment among some students.
37
A. STABLES ET AL.
School B is characterised more by an emphasis on pastoral care, though is also

a fairly tightly controlled environment (less so than School A). Here, there is a
strong commitment to inviting members of the community into the school and, to
an extent, compensating for the community’s perceived weaknesses: for example,
free toast is widely available at the start of the school day for students who have not
breakfasted. This school has had some success in improving examination results
but has been identified as a cause for concern by the school inspectorate (Ofsted)
during the past two years. Again, there is a heavy emphasis on compliance in matters
such as uniform but the overall “feel” is much softer than School A. The school is
predominantly painted in light and pastel colours, for example, and there are far
more notices and displays than in School A.
School C would once have been designated a Secondary Modern school; that is,
it takes students who have not passed the entrance examination to the local grammar
school (which remains publicly funded). As with all the schools, it has a large, open
entrance area, or “heart space” which also serves as a canteen/restaurant and is
generally characterized by good sight lines and thus high visibility of students. At
School C, many teaching spaces were designed on a large open-plan basis, with
the intention that these spaces might be used flexibly and broken up as appropriate.
Despite this, School C operates in a very traditional way pedagogically. Many of the
larger spaces are not used to capacity because teachers feel the noise levels are too
high if more than one class occupies the space. Despite (or perhaps because of) this
lack of innovation, or rejection of the school’s radical design possibilities, School
C features in the data as the first or second happiest of the four schools in terms of
student perceptions, and is enjoying steady progress in terms of examination success.
Interestingly, although teachers have largely rejected the open plan teaching spaces,
School C makes more use of the “heart space” for individual and group work than is
the case in the other schools. This higher level of trust of students, however, may be
indirectly connected to the fact that the intake to this school is less socially deprived
overall than that of the other three schools described here.
School D is the largest campus and the most expensively built of the four schools,
although parts of the original plan (such as covered walkways between its free-
standing buildings) were jettisoned for financial reasons. It is, and feels, generously
spacious. There is widespread use of soft pastel colours and much evidence of
student art work in (for example) the public reception area. This school has more of
a “campus” feel than the other three. Also, there is the greatest evidence among the
sample schools of continuity of personnel and, consequently, of educational vision
during the long commissioning, design and build process. Nevertheless, at a cost of
approaching £30m., this school could not be built now in England at public expense;
indeed, it may have cost more than twice what would be permitted in 2014. School
D is the most lightly managed of the four environments, and has enjoyed some
evidence of improving examination results since its inception.
In the following section, data from student and teacher interviews in each
school are examined in relation to the theoretical framework articulated above (and
38
explained more fully in Stables, 2014). The student data are mostly from those in
their first year at the school (age 11-12) though we have included some data from
interviews with much older students at School A (ages 15-16) to illustrate a particular
tension found in that school alone.
Data: School A
Both teacher and student interviews at School A reveal higher levels of criticality
and negation than at the other three schools, though, as in all the schools, comments
were generally around functionality rather than cultural significance or educational
ideology. Critical readings among staff at School A related to (i) the starkness of
the building, and to (ii) suggestions that spaces did not function well for student
behaviour within the classroom because of distractions, though (iii) they did work
well in terms of surveillance. Functional readings were often negative in terms of
student and staff social relations and behaviour, in that teachers felt that (iv) there
were not enough spaces for students or staff. Overall, there was (v) critical reading
of learning spaces in relation to flexibility and control, amid a more general sense
that certain design features had been unsuccessful at creating a comfortable working
environment.
Comments indicative of each of the above include the following:
(i) I think the building is a little bit, when I came to look round this building, it’s
almost like hush hush closed doors, and I don’t know if I like that kind of thing,
and I don’t know why, I don’t know if it’s because it’s modern and it looks.. gosh
you know it’s nice to hear like the bustling noise of like learning, and here it’s
like “where is everybody?” kind of thing, you know so...
It feels a bit cold, yeah. Um, I mean we’ve got more display boards now but
that’s taken quite a long time for that to happen really. And if you think about
displaying art work, it is, especially in the, in the front hall foyer bit, that’s quite
an amazing space and it would be really nice to have some installations….but
we’ve kind of, it’s always been “nope, we’ve got to keep it as nice as possible
for as long as possible” that kind of thing really.
It’s very similar. Every room you go into is either it’s kind of open plan apart
from the, we call them the fish bowls inside [yeah].
(ii) The main thing is just the more your class is on show, the harder it is to stop
distractions from other people walking by and...
(iii) Um that’s very open, very kind of transparent.
They do get distracted by the stuff that’s outside. Um I can’t remember who it
was, I had one table last year, they’d sit at the back and so many times they’d
be looking like that out the window instead ‘cause there always is someone
wandering around.
39
A. STABLES ET AL.
(iv) Um but they’re all very, they’re quite small, there’s no storage space.
So yeah, it is what it is really [yeah]. I don’t really assess how it affects my
teaching [okay].
(v) I mean the light is the one issue I’ve already said about, I’d like the ability
to make it darker when I want to darken it. I have the ability to open and shut
that window, but that doesn’t have a massive impact. In the summer this room
is sweltering hot.
The only way you can try and get any air moving is by opening a door, but then
the noise from outside comes in. We’ve got a hand drier next door and that’s
just so loud. We were given fans but they upset my contact lenses [right] so I
don’t use the fan. So no, at this time of year it’s quite pleasant. In the winter it’s
alright, the temperature. In summer it’s horrific.
There’s a partition which divides C7 and C6. When we have an exam where
we’ve got quite a few, quite a few older students, we open it up and it’s quite
a nice big space. Or for open evening we open it up. But it’s hard to use that
from day to day because the noise is too disruptive to have two classes going
on at the same time. I think originally it was going to be open the whole time
but there wasn’t any way we could do that really.
This unusual emphasis on the critical, though largely in relation to functional (rather
than ideological) concerns, is also evident in the student data from School A. Purely
functional readings relate to active spaces (such as noting that the sports hall is
used for Physical Education). Critical readings relate to lack of space for social
relations (and not being allowed to use space) (iv above) and high visibility leading
to distraction (ii above). In purely functional terms, the students at School A tended
to focus their comments on areas in which they could be physically active (vi).
Illustrative comments include the following:
(ii) some of the classrooms, do you know where the canteen is, there’s a
classroom there and all the people around it can just look in
for the classrooms when they’ve just got the glass windows it’s kind of
distracting when people walk past ‘‘cause you can see through and some
people stare through the glass.
I don’t like the pods ‘cause people just look in and knock on the windows.
You feel like you’re constantly on display, every time someone walks past they
can watch you and it makes you wary of your actions.
It feels like being in a prison. You’ve got cameras like watching your every move
and they don’t give you a break to have your own time and it’s like, like the pods,
when you’re in class and there’s a disruption you look and you get like really
distracted and I feel that’s why we shouldn’t have the pods and all the glass.
40
(iv) Yeah, you’re all cramped in, you’re all cramped in…
And it’s harder ‘cause when you’re doing your lunch and stuff you’re always
get pushed by the bigger kids…
Last week we got there early and now there’s so many kids there. There’s like
kids, Year 7 ( = Age 11-12), the lines that big full of kids and the little Year 7s
are squashed. They should do it separately, by form. But last week it was easier
for Year 7s to get their food.
Some of the Year 7s now can’t even get their food.
(vi) Like in the hall, the gyms and that, they’re massive. At our old school we
only had a little gym…
You know the long track, they’re doing a cricket thing and apparently there’s a
four hundred meter running track but we’re not allowed over there.
We’re not allowed on the field yet. There’s a concrete court and four goals and
there’s these concrete table tennis tables but no bats or balls and like we can
sit on them.
Sports hall is important ‘cause it’s exercise.
You get to sit down and chat and eat and fart and talk.
You can whisper and talk and you can go there [ = library] if you’ve got a
headache.
We can’t.. we don’t have anywhere, we can’t even go out on the field. We’re not
even allowed on the field are we. [no, no]
Even like at break time you can either go in the canteen or the library but
because of the noise in the canteen it affects the noise in the library and outside
there’s literally just the courts where people play football on so you can’t even
really go there and it’s just sort of like..... It’s really divided, it’s not really like,
in summer we all really want to go outside but we can only go a couple of steps
onto the court and it’s just like... We want to go on the field like we did in ****
(= previous “old build” school). In **** we used to sit on the field for our
breaks and lunch and stuff.
That there is a particular problem at School A, relative to the others in the sample,
is perhaps best summed up by the following critical remarks from 15-16 year old
students, the second of which provides an example of the kind of ideologically driven
critical literacy that is otherwise almost entirely missing from the data and is not yet
apparent in the data from older students so far available from the other schools:
Although we are children we’re not. They want us to behave like adults but they
still treat us as though we’re in Year 7.
41
A. STABLES ET AL.
Putting this school in the middle of a council estate is like trying to make this
area something that it’s not. But with the ***** building everyone knew what
it was and stuff like that.
Overall, the results from School A illustrate the tension between, on one hand,
design intentions and occupancy, and, on the other, differing conceptions of
occupancy. This school was designed to offer innovative and flexible working
spaces, as well as high visibility. In effect, the teaching staff, concerned to instil
more discipline in young people from a relatively deprived area, have used the
visibility as a means of tight control, thus losing the sense of flexibility. Meanwhile,
the students are aware of the possibilities of the building and its grounds which are
denied them as their conduct is so controlled. There are in effect three different
interpretations of the design scheme at play here. It should perhaps be noted that
on an early visit to School A, a student told one of the research team, “This school
is too posh for us”, thus reading its cultural significance in a quite different way
from both the architects, who had aimed to make young people feel as if they had
been given special, positive attention, and the teaching staff, who were using the
design to introduce strict discipline to improve the students’ future life chances.
Very interestingly, at the time of writing, School A is experiencing transition to a
new headteacher who has espoused a somewhat different educational philosophy.
It will be fascinating to see how, and whether, this radically affects future students’
responses to the school, and how long such changes take to emerge.
Data: School B
At School B, there was a similar emphasis on control, but couched far more in the
language of pastoral care and community involvement than at School A, where
the emphasis from senior staff was on control for future academic success. As an
extreme example of this, a reward scheme for students at School B was based entirely
on compliance issues, such as correct wearing of uniform, and placed little or no
emphasis on academic achievement or originality. In some respects the dynamics
of design and occupancy echo those of School A: the building was designed as
spacious, flexible and inspiring, has been used by the teaching staff by the students.
However, while at School A the sense was that the space should instil a businesslike
attitude, at School B the dominant values were softer and more maintain control
and social order, and has thus been seen as somewhat inhibiting prosocial, with the
emphasis relatively less on future achievement and more on present community.
Perhaps because of this, the levels of criticality and negation among both teachers
and students are lower than at School A.
The teachers at School B show overriding concerns with functional issues
of student behaviour, concerned that (i) the school space should be pleasant and
welcoming. (It should be noted that School B is a very colourful environment,
while School A is almost entirely monochrome). However, there is awareness that
42
(ii) physical aggression is an ever-present threat. In insofar as spaces offer flexible

learning environments, this is evaluated largely in terms of the possibilities of
regulating student behaviour (iii).
Illustrative comments are as follows:
(i) Umm restaurant is a really good area, I think even just the naming
“restaurant” instead of canteen, helps the children see it as a restaurant, it is
a good area.
Displays are really really important. It has got to be colourful. In my room I
have always got as much, as much information but not bombarding as I can
because I just feel that if they are not listening to me they are taking something
in the room, and, kind of we have moved little table groupings around, so it
is not as traditionally intense as going into a classroom and seeing rows and
rows of tables. We work in table groups in my classroom and it just comes with
the group that I teach, because I do teach the bottom set and I just think that
sometimes you have to alter the way you teach to suit them, so your room has
to mirror that.
(ii) I think because we have got this T-junction up here, so you have got the big
area up here and then you have got all the people coming up these steps there
is always kind of scuffles round in that bit, because everyone is kind of going
this way, going that way, going down and they are all from different phases so
I think that the wide spaces don’t help with the calm manoeuvring around the
school.
There is a lot of fights. There are a lot of fights in school but it is the big open
wide corridors.
(iii) the dynamics that they have is that we utilise that space that we have
outside, so the old traditional teaching is very much in the classroom, but
I think the space that we have, if we have pupils that are quite independent
workers you can utilise the outside space as well, so, if there are pupils that
you can trust to be able to work outside, they are often very small numbers,
maybe no more than five or six pupils that you can get to work outside, we can
utilise the space that we have. Those pupils if you keep them in the lessons,
generally they are achievers, so they will very much get bored, so if you can let
them work independently then the teachers can focus on the pupils that need a
bit more time. I think that space allows us to do that.
We do have smaller spaces…because they are very easily disrupted and
sometimes even if you work one to one, with an individual that has got SEN
(= Special Educational Needs) they are very much distracted by what is going
on in the office, what is happening in the other classrooms, so with them we
have got more confined, smaller working areas.
43
A. STABLES ET AL.
School B students typically talk about the function of a space. Their perception
appears to be that teachers find spaces important for work reasons whereas students
suggest places are important mainly because they offer a space for social relations,
or simply for fun.
I like the dinner hall because you can get a milkshake whenever you want. I get
a milkshake every day.
I think field should be top ‘cause it’s the funnest area ‘cause you’re with your
mates
I find the library, like it could help you be more smarter but the sports hall all
you do in there is sports but you get a choice to do that.
‘cause it’s quite boring, you can’t do nothing in it, all you have to do is walk
around, eat food, have a drink…
I like being in Mr W***’s class ‘cause it was like our third week in and this boy
licked his window.
[about the sports hall] Sometimes you’ve got to get away from like all the other
like school lessons and then you can like, or from the lads, ‘cause we have it
like separate so the boys can get away from the girls and the girls can get away
from the boys, and so it’s like separate and the girls can like play their stuff and
the boys can do their stuff, so it’s like separate.
The priorities at School B seem overwhelmingly social, but, again, rather differently
interpreted by teachers and students. Teachers evaluate the space according to the
degree to which it promotes harmonious social relations, and the students according
to how far it promotes their social and personal interests (which may or may not
relate to curriculum learning). Against this, there remains a sense that anti-social
behaviour is always a threat. There is not the sense of being forced into utilising the
space in a draconian manner, as at School A; nor is there a sense of transformed or
enhanced teaching and learning; the preoccupation is with rather a low level social
instrumentalism.
Data: School C
At School C, as at School A (less so at School B), there is divergence between

designers’ and occupants’ intentions and values, though there is not also on this
occasion in a sharp divergence between teachers and students. School C has adopted
an apparently fairly traditional approach to teaching and learning geared strongly to
the improvement of examination results. However, there is less of a sense than in
Schools A and B of the student body as a group that needs controlling. Thus relations
are conducted on a higher trust basis. Several teachers allow groups of students to
work largely unsupervised in the so-called heart space, for example, on the grounds
44
that they can be trusted to do so. This does not amount to the transformation of
teaching and learning envisaged under programmes such as Building Schools for the
Future in the early 2000s, however, as teachers reject the open plan learning areas
largely on acoustic grounds.
At School C, there is some criticality in teachers’ responses. Though (as in School
A) this relates to the functionality of the design rather than overtly to educational
ideology, there is an implied element of the latter as teachers object to the large open
plan classroom spaces that were an integral part of the original design (i). There was
also criticism of staff social space (ii). Against this, there was much praise for other
aspects of the design (iii) including the heart space, library and outside spaces, which
are seen as functioning well for student relations.
Indicative comments include:
(i) I did try and change the rooms round um but as I say it’s like the board,
where the whiteboard is, you saw it’s across the wall; you can’t even get to it.
Because of the way, the movement where the kids are, you can’t actually get to
that whiteboard so you have to use your interactive all the time.
I’d say my room, doesn’t work well for me [laughs]. It really doesn’t. It’s just
the way ‘cause I think when they planned it that was gonna be, the upstairs
have sinks, those rooms have sinks so that’s like a wasted space. We can’t
actually really utilise round, ‘cause I sort of think about moving the board but
then I’ve got to look at the disabled kids getting in and out. So I thought if I put
the board down the far end, I’ve got a little bit more spread.
(ii) I think the idea of this building was that each unit was going to have a
work, working area, you know like the maths department was gonna have a
maths workroom sort of thing but that hasn’t, or doesn’t transpire. There isn’t a
room to go in for us to, and I think it makes a big difference. In the old school
you had you know all the support staff and the teachers, whereas now it seems
a little bit more sort of segregated, which...
(iii) I actually quite like the heart space, the fact that you can walk around. It’s
not, I don’t think it’s intimidating as a secondary school, you’re not fighting
in corridors and, whereas in a lot of schools you do, and they just stuck on an
end build don’t they? I mean my little boy’s at [unclear] school, I mean it was
like it when I was there and they’ve just added. So it’s like little corridors and
then they’ve got an extra bit and, but I like the fact and the kids must feel that
because it is all open and they’re not gonna get lost and...
Um I suppose technically, now I think about it it’s quite clever because it
segregates the four houses. Okay so you’ve got your four communities. But it
does, even though that they’re separate, they are brought together by what we
call the heart space. That’s quite a nice name I suppose when you think about it
because it’s the central area where even though we all have our separate areas,
45
A. STABLES ET AL.
we have this whole community place in the middle where we come together. So
in that respect that’s quite a good centre I suppose. Um yeah so I think in that
respect I suppose it probably adds to it. It encourages individuality and being
a member of a family. But at the same time you’re a member of a bigger family
so I suppose in the real world that’s the same thing isn’t it?
The sense of School C as a flawed but benign environment is broadly supported
by students who broadly (as at School B) focus their comments on places that give
them opportunities to do what they find fulfilling ( = iv). There is no strong sense of
being at odds with the dominant culture of the school, but some criticism of aspects
of the environment ( = v). Interestingly, in contrast to School A, the objection is not
to perceived extreme control but rather to places where normal social relations are
disrupted.
Comments include:
(iv) They’ve got NASA ( = Nurture and Support Area) and that’s just a place
you can go and get support if you’re feeling down and I don’t know of anyone
who’s been bullied so.
I like the sports hall ‘cause you can do some good stuff in it.
I think the form classroom ‘cause my form classroom is really awesome and it’s
really fun. It’s fun ‘cause we all talk and have a laugh and it’s good.
If like we all have to do homework we go in the library or something.
If you get lost, basically people know where that[heart space] is so they could
try working their way round again.
if you have a problem then you can go up to them [NASA] and they could like
help you, and you can stay and play games and everything.
(v) The MUGA’s ( = Multi-Use Games Area) pretty gross because people
smoke around the MUGA
I think the poles, the big grey poles are quite annoying. I always end up, they’re
just big and in the way.
Overall, the impression is of a relatively ordered and content school community
though, ironically, this has been achieved at School C by occupants deliberately
undermining some key aspects of the design vision (such as the provision of large,
flexible classroom spaces) while embracing others (such as the heart space). This
can be understood as a conflict in relation to cultural environmental literacy. Both
designers and teachers approach the space with certain preconceptions of what
should happen within it and adapt it for use accordingly. Although the designer’s
vision inevitably affects the occupant’s patterns of use, it does not determine
them.
46
Data: School D
School D is the most expensively designed school, on the most extensive campus. It
also benefited from considerable continuity through the design, build and occupancy
stages, with several key contributors to the original plans still working at the school
at the time of writing. It is therefore not surprising to find responses among the more
positive of the sample as a whole.
In some respects, teachers’ responses echo those at School B, conveying largely
functional concerns about teaching and learning and social behaviour but more
positively overall, and aided rather than abetted by the flexibility offered by the
design ( = i). Criticisms tended to relate to poor design of certain spaces (= ii).
Indicative comments include:
(i) you can control things like the temperature, like the noise a lot easier
because you’ve got the vents at the top of the door, you’ve got the vents on
the side of the windows and things like that, that you can change that climate
in a way. And if you had all the doors and the windows shut, it can be fairly
soundproof as well. That if you want it, that your children are talking really
loudly, moving around, that you’ve got that freedom to do it. That it’s not kind
of regulated, in a way.
I like the fact you’ve got a panel in the door and you’ve got a lot of glass, like
a lot of them have the extra piece of glass. Apart from when the children have
been let out of one class beforehand, that’s the only thing, because then they’re
stood outside, they’re pulling faces or they’re waiting for their friend and their
friend is out looking for them. So I sometimes spin that on the head and go
to the back of the classroom, so then I’m not stood at the front so they’re not
looking at me at the front. So then if I’m stood at the back then they’ve all got
to look at me and turn round so that they’re not then distracted. Um whereas
I guess if you had full open you’ve kind of got no way of not being distracted
which might be...
My room’s big enough for me to move the table around which I do for some of
the groups, I have a whiteboard and a projector board which is brilliant, I like
multi media lessons as much as possible. I like the big windows, I can open
the windows
I can move the tables and I do change them for different classes. I have seating
plans, I like kids working in groups and then to be able to put them into groups
when it’s needed but essentially that space can be change when it’s needed.
If I say the window visibility in terms of light coming in, amazing, much, much
nicer to have daylight, much nicer. And, if you like, the ability to look out is nice.
Even though I’m not conscious that I look out of the window, subconsciously
you do, you have that sense of space which is good.
47
A. STABLES ET AL.
(ii) We could probably do with a little bit more space, it always looks a little bit
cramped and certainly after break, when there’s classes lined up outside mine
always come straight in ‘cause otherwise you’re almost asking for trouble
really, there’s gonna be conflict ‘cause there’s not enough space so I just bring
mine straight into the classroom.
Can I say I look around and I think there’s a massive waste of space in our
building, I really do, but it’s just money. If the money was there I think they
probably would have done a hell of a lot more. We’ve got that great big outdoor
space there and they could have done loads to that space, had undercover
areas with seating, places they could go…
As with the other schools, student responses are largely functional and relate to the
possibilities offered by certain places within the school (iii). However, compared
to the other schools, there is evidence of valuing formal curricular learning
alongside social interaction (iv), and some evidence of valuing opportunities
for privacy (iv) in what, like School C, comes over as a relatively high-trust
environment.
Comments include:
(iii) I think the canteen because it’s where people get to sit and talk and eat as
well. And you can also go upstairs to the vending machine.
(iv) Tutor rooms we need for like our classes, our beginning classes and
technology for. It’s fun.
[Technology] You get to cook and go on the computers and stuff.
[Technology] you’re not just sitting down in a classroom doing writing, you’re
actually getting up and actually doing something.
You can use the laptops in the library and the breakout area for learning things
and you can go in the Garden and feed the chickens.
Because the Science Garden is the best part of the school…. Go to see the
guinea pigs. We plant things.
Because that’s where you get to learn new things about music.
(v) [toilets] It’s like, you get your own personal space… You’ve got like, sinks
there, and you can lock the door.
Well the tutor’s important because if you get to school quite early your tutor
always lets you in and then you can just sit there and relax and play hangman
while nobody else is in there and its nice and quiet. When people get in it’s
quite noisy.
48
CONCLUSIONS AND DISCUSSION
Taken together, the data suggest that what a school effectively “is” is reliant on
how it is engaged with by its users semiotically: that is, what it means for each of
them. This ubiquity of interpretation means both that the most ambitious visions
of planners are unlikely to be realised to the full, as occupants respond to, and
sometimes modify, spaces in relation to their own dispositions. However, this effect
is likely to be least strong where there is strong continuity between the visioning
teams and occupants, as at School D, where the present headteacher had a strong say
in the original design. Indeed, as the case of School D shows perhaps most strongly,
the money and effort invested in designing more than usually spacious, adaptable
and pleasant environments can have positive effects on both students’ and teachers’
experiences of school. (Note that in this paper we have not considered the “hard
evidence” of the impact of new schools on attendance and academic achievement
which is mixed: see, for example, Tse et al, 2014.)
To understand school experience in terms of semiotic engagement – of “reading”
the environment in terms of utility, preferences and opinions, through repeated acts
of affirmation and rejection – is in effect to see the material structure of the school
as offering a series of invitations to which actors respond, somewhat collectively
but somewhat differently. An umwelt is a signifying environment, not merely a
collection of materials arranged in space. Our four schools illustrate the importance
of occupants’ interpretations in different ways. At School A, staff have tended to use
the design for surveillance and control (as a prerequisite for successful teaching and
learning) while many students have responded to this as an assault on their cultural
values. In School B, surveillance and control have also been staff objectives, though
with a more overtly pastoral emphasis. In School C, relatively happy staff-student
relations have come through somewhat of a reversal of the designers’ intentions, and
the use of an ambitious design in a largely, though not wholly, traditional way. At
School D, while again the use of innovative design to support experimental teaching
has been limited (though apparent in some areas), there appears a kind of continuity
between staff and student bodies that results in a relatively harmonious environment
in which norms and rules are generally respected without having to be spelled out as
explicitly as in, say, Schools A and B.
On the terms of our project, it is clear that “design matters”, yet how it matters
is dependent on use as well as on vision, on occupants as well as architects. While
it is certainly not necessarily the case, therefore, that the more spent on planning,
the better the school, continuity of vision and personnel (as in the case of School
D) has much to recommend it. Of the four schools studied here, School D offers
perhaps the most optimistic scenario: one in which much attention on design seems
clearly to pay dividends in terms of student and staff experience. What is particularly
noteworthy about School D, however, is the relatively high level of continuity
49
A. STABLES ET AL.
between initial visioning, design, build and occupancy, with many of the key actors
in the early stages still involved in posts of operational responsibility almost a decade
later. None of the other three schools can offer this level of continuity, and this may
have contributed to the various apparent mismatches between designer vision and
occupancy culture.
Overall, a semiotic perspective frees us from deterministic assumptions and allows
us to study schooling from the entirely valid premise that, ultimately, a school (or
any other social organisation or institution) is what it means for the people engaged
in it.
REFERENCES
Lotman, J. (2005). On the semiosphere. Sign Systems Studies, 33(1), 205–229.
Stables, A. (1998). Environmental Literacy: functional, cultural, critical. The case of the SCAA guidelines.
Environmental Education Research, 4(2), 155–164.
Stables, A. (2014). The semiotics of organisational landscape: School as design. In A. Stables &
I. Semetsky (Eds.), Edusemiotics: Semiotic philosophy as educational foundation. London, England:
Routledge.
Stables, A., & Bishop, K. (2001). Weak and strong conceptions of environmental literacy: Implications
for environmental education. Environmental Education Research, 7(1), 89–97.
Tarasti, E. (2001). Semiotics of landscapes. In Existential Semiotics (pp. 155–163). Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press.
Tse, H., Learoyd-Smith, S., Stables, A., & Daniels, H. (2015). Continuity and conflict in school design:
A case study from “Building Schools for the Future”. TIBI - Intelligent Buildings International.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17508975.2014.927349#.U9Yf0Ryclic
Andrew Stables
UK
Harry Daniels, Susannah Learoyd-Smith and Hau Ming Tse

University of Oxford
UK
50
E. JAYNE WHITE
5. INTERPRETING METAPHORIC ACTS

A Dialogic Encounter with the Very Young
INTRODUCTION
The concept of dialogism, as put forward in Bakhtinian philosophy, positions

metaphoricity as “an activity of the entire human being, from head to foot” (Bakhtin,
1990, p. 313). This theory views the act of communication as a two-way creative
exchange and meta-language, and metaphor is seen as existing in a state of constant
“becoming” within interpretive encounter. It occurs during interactions and their
interpretative aftermath rather than as a definitive and final (i.e. consummated)
judgment of assumed meaning. Hence an appreciation of metaphor is dependent
on the persons involved, the language forms employed, their shared knowledge of
the vehicle and domain utilised, and the degree of surprise/difference/contingency
the metaphor generates. Throughout this dialogic process the subjectivities of the
communicator and the communicatee influence one another and are correspondingly
altered in the process – in the same way as metaphor alters meaning.
As such, metaphor can be viewed as an intersubjective and alteric1 social act.
A “speaker” strategically orients his or her genre (that is, the form of the act,
such as voice, movement, gesture, or image) in accordance with their perceived
understanding of, and relationship with, the author, and within an aesthetic process
(Bakhtin, 1981). Bakhtin indicates that there is an aesthetic, ethical and social aspect
to any interpretation of another person. For the very young child who does not
always share the same forms of communication (genre) as the adult in the early
childhood education setting, it is likely that the extent to which alterity can occur
will be influenced by the ability of the adult to engage in interpretive processes
and being open to the wide range of forms that constitute the metaphorical act and
a commitment to relationship. Considered from a dialogic standpoint, metaphors
reside in utterances that symbolically represents ideas to convey or suggest meaning
(Lathy, 1985). This conceptualisation of metaphor introduces a strong physiognomic
element to the way very young children communicate thought – that is, their
engagement with concepts and ideas is often perception-based rather than logical
and abstract (Valsiner, 2005).
In taking this approach to metaphoricity, meaning-making is broadened to include
expression through non-verbal and embodied forms of utterance. Interpretation is
further enhanced by consideration of the wider chronotope2 in which the acts are

E. J. WHITE
located. Hence for the adult to interpret metaphoric acts that are offered by the
child, they must enter into the aesthetic experience of the child and evaluate their
discoveries in ways, which do not attempt to speak for the child. Bakhtin (1990)
describes such activity as mutually beneficial in bringing experience together so as
to share understanding whilst simultaneously bearing (and retaining) the signature
of the child. This chapter explores the insights and potentialities generated with very
young children and adults on the basis of a dialogic approach to metaphoricity as
supported by some empirical data.
METAPHORIC LIMITATIONS FOR YOUNG CHILDREN
While a full discussion of metaphor and its theoretical origins is beyond the scope
of this chapter, it is important to pinpoint some locations that have limited the
capacity for children under 3 years of age to be considered capable of generating,
understanding or working with metaphor. Metaphor has been historically interpreted
as a product of language in relation to its origins in rhetoric and linguistics that
originated in the early work of Aristotle (Elmholdt, 2003; Franke, 2000) and have
been duly explored by philosophers over subsequent centuries (Derrida & Moore,
1974). Valsiner (1998) highlights the fact that widely influential Sausurrean ideas
about metaphor were divisive by separating the notion of langue from parole – that
is, the language’s underlying structure from its contextual use – and perpetuated
a belief that metaphor could only be addressed in linguistic terms. While more
attention has recently been given to metaphor as a process, a number of studies
of very young children and metaphor typically suggest that they are incapable of
predominantly strategic, discursive engagement with language. An almost exclusive
interpretation of metaphor situated in the linguistic domain (and which emphasizes
the Sausaurrean concepts of langue and parole) has limited the capacity for research
to generate empirical data supporting children’s use of metaphor. Studies have
typically invited children to interpret adult metaphors or to describe their own
metaphors through exclusively verbal means – both points that consume much of
the scholarly debate around metaphoric capability in young children (e.g. Gibbs,
1994; Goatly, 1997; Vosniadou, 1987).
According to Shantiris (1983), however, children’s comprehension of metaphor
is constrained by the domain in which the metaphor is positioned rather than based
on any developmental deficit. In other words, metaphor comprehension relies on the
language giver and receiver’s shared experience with the concepts being employed.
This claim is reinforced by Painter (2003) who investigated the metaphors of her
two sons aged 7.5 months and 2.5 years. She found that their metaphor use was
characterized by “the creation of new meanings – ‘referential’, imaginative and
humorous – by playing with the pre-established or congruent relations between
context, meaning and expression” (p. 66). Marjanovic-Shane (1996) provides
similar examples in her encounters with her nephew, aged 2 years, and describes the
relational basis for his use of metaphor.
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INTERPRETING METAPHORIC ACTS
The limited investigation of metaphor as spoken or written word has tended to

deny the unique embodied ways in which very young children communicate (as
described by several researchers, see for example, Johansson & White, 2011 and
Gibbs, 1994). As a result very little attention has been paid to the domain of semiotics
including non-verbal metaphors. An exception is noted in the work of McNeill (2005,
see also Muller, 2007) who claims that children under 3 years of age are incapable of
generating gestural metaphor. Such reasoning is based on what he perceives to be the
developmental immaturity of the very young, which precludes them from symbolic
interpretation – a prerequisite, he argues, for metaphoricity to exist.
The influential work of Lakoff & Johnson (1999) suggests that metaphor is a
cognitive tool which is used both implicitly and explicitly across all societies to
create and communicate meaning. A large number of studies draw upon this
theory to explore the way adults conceptualise their experiences and ideas using
metaphor, reporting student shifts in thinking where metaphor is used as a strategy
for deepening the awareness of the student or strengthening communication.
But similar investigations of small children are virtually absent, apart from two
conflicting studies. Billow (1981) explored spontaneous, nascent, metaphors that
were employed by 73 children aged 2.7 to 6.0 during 30-minute observations. His
investigation revealed the visual, physical and affective nature of metaphors used.
In comparison with the older children, Billow found that the 2-years-old used more
metaphors and that they were frequently related to their experiences with food. This
finding is at odds with Winner’s (1979) study of children aged 17 to 58 months,
where children were asked to name objects based on information she already held
about each child. Her results found less metaphoric utterances with the 2-years-old
than with their older peers. These conflicting findings suggest that the methods used
to approach metaphor, and the definitions employed, influence the outcome.
When viewed through Piagetian-based cognitive approaches to development,
adult understanding of young children’s use of metaphor is once again limited.
Language that has the potential to be viewed as metaphoric is seen as nothing more
than a coincidental occurrence or an “over-extension” since children in the sensori-
motor period of development are viewed as incapable of taking on the perspectives
of others; hence are also unable to interpret or employ metaphor (Piaget, 1953). In
order for the Piagetian-based researcher to be convinced otherwise, they must have
proof that the word or phrase used is deliberately non-literal, intentionally metaphoric
and more than an extension (Sharratt, 1985; Vosniadou, 1987; Winner, 1988). As a
result, the frequent metaphorical acts that are presented in children’s symbolic play
(for example where a child substitutes one item for another or takes on an alternative
role) are discounted as unintentional, hence not worthy of categorization as metaphor.
Valsiner (2005) refers to Wegner saying that, while the ability to interpret and
generate metaphor is intrinsically linked to perception, initial apprehension of the
world is expressive – that is, physiognomic – before becoming logical-analytical.
Although Wegner did not undertake empirical work in this domain (his focus was
on autistic children), he signalled the potential for revised approaches to the study
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E. J. WHITE
of metaphoricity in young children. He suggested that they were more likely to be

found in the aesthetic act or experience rather than an encounter based on adult logic.
Despite such potential to explore metaphoricity in this way, only a small number
of studies have been conducted which apply sociocultural approaches to metaphor
use. Still, they focused on the role of metaphor in concept formation – emphasizing
linguistic aspects of metaphor generation and comprehension within social contexts.
They established a useful precedent for a consideration of metaphor and its location
within the social, cultural and historic landscape, but they still did not solve the
dilemma of how to examine metaphoric use with the very young.
TOWARDS DIALOGIC APPROACHES
When cognitive, psychological and linguistic frames of reference are broadened by

semiotic approaches that emphasize both social and physiognomic aspects of young
children’s language use, there is hope yet. From this perspective we can suggest
that the ability to interpret children’s use of metaphor is constrained by a shared
framework of experiential domain knowledge rather than by some innate inability
to generate metaphor. Lathy (1985) broadens the scope of metaphor use to suggest
that it occurs within any verbal or non-verbal utterance, and is interpreted in social
exchange through symbolic or artistic representation. His stance heralds a dialogic
orientation to the study of language as metaphoric.
The dialogic notion of the individual in a constant state of polyphonic (that is, multi-
voiced) “becoming” offers an inherent challenge to psychological, linguistic and even
contemporary sociocultural, theories that seek to name and frame language and, more
specifically, metaphor. Bakhtin’s concept of dialogism offers a way of exploring the
metaphoricity of young children by considering both their non-verbal and verbal acts
as utterances in the context of social exchange. A consideration of utterance from a
dialogic standpoint posits the language event as meaningful only when it generates
a response of some sort. As Bakhtin (1986) explains, “it can only be present through
signification, through realisation … both for itself, and for others” (p. 106).
As such genre, the language form that is used together with its interpreted
meaning in any moment, is promoted as a central means through which meaning
can be generated in dialogic research. A small number of early childhood academics
have fruitfully begun to employ dialogism in this way (see, for example Dore, 1995;
Ishiguro, 2009; Ødegaard, 2007; Rockwell, 2000; Sawyer, 1997; White, 2009a) by
locating language within the realm of genre. They argue that, through strategic use of
language and recognition of its employment by adults, the young child is able to take
their place as part of a language community with older peers and/or adults rather
than merely receiving language by other. In this locale, meanings are negotiated
rather than simply received.
Dialogism therefore supports a revision of the notion of intersubjectivity where
there is greater potential to recognise the young child as powerful and knowledgeable,
yet simultaneously in need of the other. Simultaneously, the “receiver” is also
54
altered through the dialogic exchange. Bahktin’s assertion is that alterity should
be embraced as an opportunity to look at the world from the visual perspective
of another. According to Bakhtin (1990), once any language act is finalised, the
metaphor looses its aesthetic function.
By investigating infant metaphoricity with the principle of dialogism, then, there is
potential to transcend the idea of only one fixed meaning or subjective interpretation
of the act or that metaphors are merely verbal or specific to adult domains. In doing
so it becomes possible to oscillate between reality and symbol on an aesthetic
level that considers the multiple ways, in which very young children communicate
their thoughts. As a result, the essence of understanding the metaphoric act is to
know how it is interpreted with another in the moment of exchange and to explore
“how the sign reflects [otrazhaet] and refracts [prelomliaet] being in the process of
becoming” (Voloshinov, 1973, p. 117). In other words, it is strategic impact within
the social world plus the genres that are central to recognition and appreciation.
Approaching metaphoricity in this way provides a means for exploring both
perception and knowledge in ways that are better suited to the communicative forms
employed by young children under 3, who are otherwise labeled “non-metaphoric”.
Entering dialogically into the metaphorical act offers an alternative, aesthetic, way
of engaging with the conceptual richness of young children’s metaphoricity while
enabling the adults, as interpreters and receivers, to open themselves up to alterity.
Interpreting the metaphoric act in this way, we can both intimately engage in and
independently evaluate such a dialogic exchange.
A DIALOGIC STUDY OF METAPHORICITY
The study investigating a dialogic approach took place in an Education and Care
setting in the Wellington region of New Zealand. A pilot to the larger study is reported
elsewhere (White, 2009b), and played a major role in the theoretical framework
employed for this study. The main investigation was located in a Community-based
New Zealand Education and Care Service comprising 35 children between 4 months
and 5 years but targeting an 18-month old female toddler, her parents and primary
(key) teacher. The decision to focus on one child in an early childhood centre context
was based on Bakhtin’s emphasis on the necessary outsidedness of the individual
– beyond culture or as a member of a group. In this endeavour, I considered the
individual acts of a child to be central to an aesthetic investigation which required
depth rather than breadth.
The study procedure was as follows: 11 hours of video were taken from three
separate cameras. The first, a small camera located on a strap that attached to the
toddler’s head and wirelessly connected to a video recorder, captured episodes of
one hour duration over several weeks. Episodes of no longer than one hour were
filmed at different times over the day, and spanned four months in order to establish
if there were moments, events or activities when metaphors were more easily
noticed and/or recognised than others. A second camera captured the teacher’s visual
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E. J. WHITE
experience during the same period of time, while a third camera was held by the
researcher. Each hour-long episode was subsequently published as three-way split-
screen synchronized DVD with audio of the toddler only, so as to privilege their
oral as well as visual means of communication. I called this “polyphonic footage”
(White, 2010) drawing on Bakhtin’s (1973) Dostoevskyan entreaty that “subjects
coexist as autonomous worlds with the world of the author and contend with him for
the reader’s attention” (Krasnov, 1980. p. 5).
Copies of the DVD were provided for parents and the teacher along with a
framework inviting them to code which, if any, acts they saw might be construed
as metaphoric. The researcher also completed this coding independently. Central
to the interpretive process was a shared definition of metaphoricity, a feature of
metaphor research advocated by Cameron and Low (1999). The initial definition for
metaphoricity, carefully constructed in accordance with Steen’s framework (1997),
proved to be too linguistically oriented and hence quite limited, semiotically, for the
participants during the pilot. As a consequence, an expanded definition was given to
the participants (teacher and parents) from the outset:
By metaphoric I mean any acts (verbal or non-verbal) that are symbolic in
some way, representative or that stand-in for something else. A metaphor
typically consists of a vehicle (that is, a way of expressing an idea/concept/
feeling/need etc that differs from its literal meaning) and a topic (that is, the
intended meaning that the vehicle is trying to help illuminate).
Re-probing interviews took place over the four-month period on a weekly or
bi-weekly basis. During these interviews, lasting between 1-4 hours in duration,
participants were asked to stop the footage at any moment or direct the researcher to
specific scenes they wished to discuss in relation to the definition given. They were
invited to share their coding, discuss their rationale for this, and engage in dialogues
about what could, or could not, be seen. Towards the end of the study, a separate
two-hour focus group interview took place between the researcher, the teacher, and
parents. The toddler was also invited to attend (see White, 2010; White, in Johansson
& White, 2011a for a discussion of the implications of this invitation). Participants
were asked to consider “the potential of metaphoricity to open up the world of a
toddler” as a prompt so that address the central research question: “To what extent
can and do adults notice and recognize toddler language as metaphoric?”
For the purpose of analysis, the collection of polyphonic footage was entered
into a computer software video analysis programme (Webbsoft, 2007). Transcribed
interviews (including body language as well as dialogues between children, parents,
teacher and researcher) were checked by participants. Then, for each coded act, the
transcript interview excerpts were entered and coded according to which form had
been identified. Alongside their entries in terms of the form and content of the child’s
acts, the style of dialogue that took place during the discussion of those acts was
also analysed and entered into the programme. The purpose of this second level of
analysis was to explore the dialogic nature of interpretation and to pay attention to
56
the moments of incongruence, slippage or surprise that offered important clues to

interpretation and meanings generated, as Figure 1 suggests:
Figure 1. The nature of metaphoricity within toddler genres
Where incongruity or slippage between form and content occurred in participant

analysis, often with the assistance of interpretive dialogue, acts were transformed
from everyday taken-for-granted language to symbolic meaning. I argue that,
alternatively, where form and content represented no surprise, acts were described
as “everyday” or “routine” and were interpreted literally. As Lathy (1985, p. 78)
suggests, rhetorical slippage ignites “aesthetic fire” – a phenomenon which I propose
is necessary in order for adults to notice and recognise metaphoricity in toddlers.
Thirty-seven discussions took place where there was agreement between participants
about the metaphoric genres, or where one or more of the participants embellished
their claims. An even larger number of discussions took place (44) where there was
no consensus shared, which I coded as a variety of discussion styles ranging from
non-commit to outright disagreement. Five clusters of genre, their meanings and the
ways in which they could (or could not) act as a means through which metaphoricity
could be noticed or recognised were generated out of these discussions. I argue that the
toddlers drew on these genre clusters strategically in order to orient themselves in, or
out of, relationships and that the combination of utterance criteria for each determined
the degree to which genre could be noticed and recognised by adults.
By generating a typology of genres (Table 1), I came to the understanding of the
challenges for adults trying to interpret metaphors in young children – even (perhaps
especially) for those they know well. Zinchenko (2009) describes developing voices
as fragmented, argumentative and organically generated; and this was certainly true
for the participants in this study as they attempted to interpret and interact with the
language of the very young child. Ironically, genres that were taken-for-granted,
yet easily identifiable to the participants, were less likely to hold metaphoric
significance. They were located within the realms of “inside out” (those that held
meaning at home but were less known in the centre and in the absence of dialogue
between the teacher and parent remained unknown) and “outside in” (those that held
meaning at the centre and were reified in the programme but were surprising only
to the parents). As such, their interpretations typically lay within their adult horizon
and, as a result, failed to “see” the complex and intentional communication strategies
that may have been employed by the toddlers.
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E. J. WHITE
Table 1. Genres noticed or recognised
Utterance Outside-in Inside-out Play genre Free-form Intimacy

genre genre genre genre
Forms Word Resource Resource Whole body Point

identified in Resource Point Sound movements Sound
coding Word Other Sound Word
Sound Hit Facial
Teacher Stroke gesture
Initiated Fist Upturned
Other Bite palms
Laugh
Content Mimic Request Mimic Resist Name
identified Demonstrate Please Name Trick Request
Independence Name Offer Mimic Invite
Routine Demonstrate Routine Other Unsure of
Invite Unsure of purpose
Routine purpose
Parent- Explain Surprise Explain Non-commit Non-
researcher Finalise Inquiry Surprise Block commit
communication Acquiesce
style Embellish
Teacher- Inquiry Professionalise Uncertainty Surprise Block
researcher Surprise Embellish Non- Problematise Acquiesce
communication Uncertainty commit
style Block
Field of vision No Yes Yes No Yes
shared between
teacher and
toddler on
footage
Genres that offered surprise held greater symbolic potential. For the teacher, these were
located outside of the established “curriculum” and activities in the centre, in genres of
intimacy or freedom that she had previously overlooked. For the parent, they existed
through our dialogues and her engagement with video that took place in the centre
around activities she was not previously aware of. For me, they became increasingly
apparent over time as my familiarity with the domains the toddler located became
evident. Together, our appreciation grew in understanding – ignited not only by the
footage, detailed observation, coding and the many dialogues that took place around
these but though the visual surplus offered by our polyphonic viewing. We came to see
that an appreciation of the young child’s metaphor use was not always achieved in the
moment, but over time, in accordance with Bakhtin’s notion of chronotope.
58
The following utterances highlight the way one act can be interpreted as
metaphoric or not, according to the ideology of the receiver and through dialogue.
Bakhtin didn’t separate language from ideology that he presented as a socially-
determined system of ideas in communication. As he (1986) explains, “Every word/
discourse betrays the ideology of its speaker; every speaker is thus an ideologue and
every utterance an ideologeme” (p. 101). In the excerpt below, recorded near the
beginning of the project, the toddler engages her teacher in a deeply intimate (and
personally confronting) moment:
Child has raised her arms for teacher to pick her up.
Child: Nipple [pulls teacher’s top down]
Teacher: Ohhh [adjusts her top]
Teacher: Wheeee
Child: Milk
Teacher: Milk. Oh [laughs]
Child has raised her arms for teacher to pick her up.
Child: Nipple [pulls teacher’s top down]
Teacher: Ohhh [adjusts her top]
Teacher: Wheeee
Child: Milk
Teacher: Milk. Oh [laughs]
Child: Milk [looks closely at teacher]
Teacher:/ [laughs] Milk. Oh one day there might be milk in there, one day
Child: /Milk
Teacher: Oh [Looks closely at child] Milk. Do you like milk
[looks across outdoor area] Bye H [names another child riding a bike nearby]
Byyyeeee [Both watch child on bike and wave] H is going for a drive… in his
car
Child: Bye Bye H, Byyeeee [waves]
Teacher: Bye Bye H [waves] Bye [Looks at child] Oh!
Child: [Faces teacher and places hand in mouth then touches her hat]
Teacher: Hat, hat [touches hat]
Child: [Points to teachers face below mouth] Guddle
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E. J. WHITE
Teacher: Mooouuuthhh
Child: [Points to teacher’s nose and eye]
Teacher: Nose [2] eye
Child: [Points beside teacher’s mouth]
Teacher: Mooouuutthh. Oh!That’s my mole! [touches face] Mmmmmmm
Child: [Touches mole, peering intently] Mole [Points to other side of teachers
face]
Teacher: Oh, I don’t know if I have one on that side. Maybe a little one.
Mooollllle
Child: [Touches earring on teachers ear lobe]
Teacher: Ear, ear
Child: [Touches mole on teacher face again]
Teacher: Mole
Child: Mole [Touches teachers face further around cheek]
Teacher: What’s that? Ah [smiles]
Child: [Touches teachers earring on other ear then returns to point at mole]
Mole
Teachers: Mole
Child: [Touches teachers mouth] Mouth
Teacher: What’s that? Mouth. Cheek. Cheek [Touches her own cheek, then
rubs child’s cheek]
Child: [Points to mole on teachers face again] Mole
Teacher: Mole.
In this excerpt an infant is pointing at her teacher’s body parts in ways much of the
psychological literature would suggest to be a “normal” part of human development.
Yet when seen from a dialogic standpoint, considering its impact on others and
its strategic orientation, a different story emerges. I coded this act as potentially
metaphoric based on the combination of such forms as i) oral language I could
recognise (e.g. “nipple”, “milk” and “mole”) and ii) gesture (e.g. hands up in the air,
pointing and touch) – both recognised and unrecognised – and its impact on others,
and iii) the distinction the child seemed to be making between nipple as a vehicle and
milk as a topic. I further speculated that perhaps the naming of body parts was also a
larger vehicle for intersubjectivity through the employment of such intimate genres.
60
However, my speculations required further investigation with those who knew the
child better than I, since I was keenly aware of the criteria applied by other metaphor
theorists who claim that unless there is an active use of an alternative to the literal
meaning, use of metaphor cannot be claimed (as discussed earlier). The child’s mother
did not record this episode as metaphoric. When I asked her about its potential and
the child’s previous encounters with breastfeeding, the following dialogue ensued:
Researcher: I wondered if and for how long she was breastfed?
Parent: No, she was only breastfed for 4 weeks.
Researcher: Well how did she know?
Parent: Um …a friend of ours has had a newborn and …she’s been very
interested in that.
Researcher: …did you notice that?
Parent: Yes we did, and [teacher] said something funny in response (laughs).
Researcher: …I wondered if it was just, if you think of a metaphor as standing
in place of something like breast-milk, was she using it deliberately to query
or was she using it to explain? Or was she using it to create a spark of meaning
between her and [teacher] that I don’t understand? I’m interested in your take
on that… Like …for it to be a metaphor it would have to be “I know that
it’s a nipple but I deliberately use the word milk because it represents a new
idea” whereas “I call it milk because I don’t know any words to explain the
association” is not a metaphor. What do you think?
Parent: Yeah, that’s interesting she definitely knew the word for both.
[Parent 1 Interview 1:107-114]
When I raised this idea with the teacher during interviews, she implied that she
had certainly noticed the language forms employed but had not recognised them
as significant (like the parent, she had not coded them at all). I was fascinated by
this distinction since it seemed to me that teacher’s desire to “see” metaphorically
was not only influenced by the knowledge she had of the domains the child was
drawing from, but also the emotional impact the act or its interpretation had on her
personally. I was reminded of her vulnerability as a teacher where her own body has
become a source of inquiry and, arguably, a central part of the curriculum. It was
a theme that consistently appeared throughout the research process. Following the
focus group interview – where the child threw her arms around her teacher – the
teacher explained her response during a subsequent interview:
It really was a lovely feeling, but that I kept thinking “what are mum and dad
thinking?”... If I was a parent and I saw…um my child reacting to someone
like that…in a way I would be happy but…in a way I would be a bit jealous.
[Teacher Interview 6: 910-916]
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Such challenges for teachers have also been discussed by Kennedy (2005) who
found that teachers dismissed language acts of students when they embarrassed and
confronted the teacher. For the teacher in the present study it seems that she was
unable to see the potential of this language form as metaphoric because it represented
a level of intimacy that she was uncomfortable with and which she actively avoided:
Teacher: Here she wants to be picked up again…“Milk” I wasn’t sure if I
had initiated my top to pull it up or she had. Now that I can hear it… yes.
Researcher: So I put “pulls teacher’s top down and says “milk” and you say
“one day there might be milk in there, one day” which suggests that you saw it
as a query though I wondered if it was a naming. “Zoe repeats “milk” and you
say “do you like milk?” and shift the focus”/
Teacher: /shift the focus somewhere else/ (laughs)
Researcher: /To change the subject?/
Teacher: /to change the subject/ (both laugh) Away from my cleavage
(laughter).
Researcher: Did you get that one?
Teacher: No I didn’t. I did see it but I wasn’t able to focus on what she had
said but I knew we had had a bit of a giggle in there somewhere but no I didn’t.
I’ve got one at 16:58 (scrolls on but sees above episode and covers mouth
with hand laughing) Oh sorry! Oh it’s so funny (laughs). OK maybe I’m a few
seconds out, oh points and words naming my features/
Researcher: Mole/ I had request, maybe that she was asking you to provide
the names for her, particularly the mole?
Teacher: “Mole”.
CONCLUSION
Cohen (1979) and Marjanovic-Shane (1996) suggest that metaphor can be seen as
an invitation to intimacy, though often concealed. Unlike the intimate affordance
offered to Marjanovic-Shane studying her nephew’s metaphor use, the teacher in
this study found it difficult to respond to the invitation because of the closeness it
generated. In the example above it seemed that the emphasis placed on her teacher’s
mole by the toddler represented such an invitation. This was later realised in an
assessment narrative the teacher wrote where she recognised the toddler’s return
to the “moolllee” as a significant act of intimacy (White, 2011b). The recognition
of intimacy required by the teacher in authorial response to such overtures exposed
the teacher physically, emotionally and pedagogically, challenging her desire
to maintain what Leavitt (1994) describes as optimal distance in early childhood
62
education practice. Distance, of any kind, did not appear to be an option for this
teacher since she was confronted with the recognition of the toddler’s language at
the cost of self-exposure, an issue Goodman (2008) represents as an inseparable
division for those who work with very young children.
I came to recognise this positioning as a profound tension for this teacher and her
ability to appreciate her role as dialogic partner (White, 2013a). Without implicating
herself in the exchange, the teacher seemed unable to recognise the creative use
of language and its symbolic potential. As a result such acts were not considered
relevant in the official pedagogical landscape of the centre. In the New Zealand
assessment framework that oriented her work, such recognition is central to the
ways in which learning can be valued. The absence of metaphoric acts from teacher
interpretation in these socially sanctioned assessment processes overlook important
aspects of “becoming” and, as such, significantly limit the pedagogical potential of
those acts as a source of great insight.
Bakhtin addresses this tension, suggesting that authorship must traverse
both intimacy and outsidedness, lest either is consumed by the other. Bakhtin’s
imperative is bound within the notion of aesthetic love which demands “sympathetic
co-experiencing” (1990, p. 81) and “comes to meet the co-experienced life from
the outside” (p. 82). Here it seemed that recognition of intimate genres located the
teacher far from her comfortable stance; yet without them she could not respond to
the toddler’s metaphoric imperatives. Perhaps for this reason she chose to avoid the
issue altogether in her initial analysis (and, indeed, within the act itself by employing
distracting tactics) since she could not reconcile this insider-outsider dialectic. As a
consequence I contend that the teacher was unable to gain a full appreciation of the
potential metaphoric meaning behind the child’s acts.
There were many similar examples echoed throughout the study, located within
genres of intimacy, free-flow and play that typically resided outside of the control of
adults. These were often aligned to humor that was equally unable to be recognized
or appreciated by the teacher. Taken together these discoveries support toddler
metaphoricity as a semiotic act that takes place outside of the official curriculum
– in moments of joyfulness, freedom and intimacy that are chronotopic, not merely
fleeting moments as they might appear. Perhaps it is for this reason metaphoricity
has escaped the analytic eye of researchers who seek to match their adult metaphors
to those of the child, as Vosniadou (1987) suggests.
The results of this study highlight the tentative, subjective and aesthetic nature of
metaphor comprehension in dialogic exchange. The multiple dialogues, such as the
sample above, illuminate the slippery nature of metaphor study in very young children
and supports plural metaphoricity while resisting a reduction to any univocal trope.
If existing privileged linguistic or cognitive theories are applied, it seems impossible
to make any claim that children of this age employ metaphoricity as a semiotic
modality since there can be no knowledge about the meaning behind their language
acts outside of speculation. Yet when seen dialogically, infant expressions can be
viewed as potentially metaphoric because they create alterity. This study suggests
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E. J. WHITE
it is necessary for adults to understand the child’s previous knowledge about the
topic and domain, the chronotopic nature of interactions, and their own ideological
stance in order to appreciate the strategic intentions of metaphoric acts as dialogic
and aesthetic encounters.
In drawing on Bakhtinian perspective, it would therefore seem that any
interpretation of metaphoricity by other (and especially by adults who may not share
the same physiognomic experience as young children) must include a subjective
awareness that metaphors will be communicated and processed differently (and
discursively) in dialogic spaces. Further, the same target-domain matching may not
be significant to both the child and adult (as in the case of the teacher) or conversely
the match may be so implicit that its symbolic potential is unrealized (as in the
case of the parent). Yet, when both are in dialogue together, it becomes possible to
widen the interpretive horizon of each provided the adult is able to suspend their
personal orientation. If, as this study suggests, metaphoricity is evident for young
children when it offers some sort of provocation or creates discomfort, confusion or
wonderment on the part of the adult, it becomes possible to re-envision metaphor as
a highly persuasive device as Pramling (2006), Sharratt (1985), Bruner (1986) and
others suggest; and, for infants in particular, as an invitation to intimacy. This finding
not only refutes Piagetian claims that young children are not able to take on the
perspectives of others but goes further to position infants as being highly strategic
in their own right.
If metaphoricity is to be appreciated in young children, then adults must be
prepared to explore their response to language acts dialogically and, in doing so,
accept their own role as partners who are implicated in the act itself as well as in
associated interpretation. It is therefore the task of the young child to generate surprise
or uncertainty by invoking symbolic potential in adults who seek to interpret their
metaphor by entering into the domains that are meaningful to the child in relation to
others rather than relying exclusively on their own (a point Shantiris, 1983 has also
made). Hence it is impossible to separate metaphoricity from its interpretive use, nor
its impact on those involved. As Sullivan (2007) explains: “examinations of language
and social processes take root in a person’s sense of his or her self” (p. 125). The
potential for adult engagement with infant metaphors can therefore be seen as an
important pedagogical strategy to enhance children’s identity, agency and esteem.
Through dialogic investigation, this chapter concludes with the assertion that it is
indeed possible to consider the very young child as metaphoric. Their language acts
and gestures are soaked in the voices of others and motivated by their orientation
towards intersubjectivity through the genres at their disposal (and which they are
able to symbolically adapt accordingly). This finding significantly expands on
previous theories about very young children and their intersubjective quest (see,
for example, Akhtar, 1998; Braten, 1998; Gratier & Trevarthen, 2007; Meltzoff &
M. Moore, 1998; Muller, 2007; Rommetveit, 1998; Trevarthen, 1998) and supports
the view that children of this age, or even younger, are deeply social, able to take
on perspectives of others, and are semiotically competent well before using words.
64
However, this chapter goes further to suggest that very young children can also be
seen as metaphoric when adults are able to engage in their language acts dialogically
and with aesthetic appreciation.
Paying attention to young children’s metaphoric potential in this way gives rise
to an expression of voice as orientation as well as function; and implicates adults
as dialogic partners accordingly. As Lensmire (1997) explains, the task then is to
engage with the child so that “take up new, supportive relations in order to encourage,
amplify, intuit the beginning, whispered, unuttered future words of the next
generation” (p. 381). In this domain, there are metaphoric riches to be discovered!
NOTES
1
Bakhtin (1986) uses the term alterity to describe the dynamics between self and other that can be
understood as heterogeneity of perspectives and voices.
2
The term chronotope was coined by Bakhtin (1986) to describe time, space and axiological
coordinates that establish the place where meaning is created.
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62–78. doi.org/10.1080/10749039.2012.692107
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Harvard University Press.
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E. J. WHITE
E. Jayne White
University of Waikato
New Zealand
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MARIANA BOCKAROVA
6. ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TECHNOLOGY

IN EDUCATION
When I went to school, I had this bad feeling that the others would see me and
be afraid to talk to me or want to be my friends. I thought they would laugh at
me. It was a real bad feeling. I was afraid to see the others because I thought
if I would get upset and cry they would see and call me names…I told [my
parents] I wanted to stay home because of I had the stomach flu. I didn’t really
have it, I wasn’t really sick, it was really the bad feeling and I didn’t want to go
to school anymore because someone would see me so I stayed home a lot…. I
went to class one day and Mr. B taught us about making movies in media. We
used ‘Director’s Cut’ on the computer. It’s different now. I don’t have to be so
afraid anymore. We made a whole movie together and it was my idea and no
one laughed. They liked it. They want to be my friends. I can go to school now.
– Nathan, 9-year old boy with clinical anxiety

The rise of mass communications technology has made accessibility to all kinds of
information available to virtually everyone in the developed world today. As is well
known, the late Marshall McLuhan referred to this world already in the late 1950s
as the Global Village (McLuhan, 1962). This has created a veritable dependency
on electronic technologies in every sphere of life, including the educational one.
In schools across most of the developed world today, one finds not only desktop
computers reserved for individual classes, as was common in select public schools
in the late 1990s, but also sophisticated digital devices designed to enhance learning
and to replace traditional pedagogies based on teacher-pupil contact. Devices such
as the interactive whiteboard, which projects a computer’s screen onto a specialized
board as the material presented is manipulated using a stylus, have clearly replaced
the now antiquated blackboard and chalk scenario of the classroom. In addition to
such extensive technologies, one can now also find transformative ones that are
changing the pedagogical process, acting to transmute the traditional classroom
radically instead of simply extending it. Personalized laptops, iPads, tablets, and
other customized learning devices are transforming the structure of classrooms,
the nature of the teacher-student relationship, and the ways in which learning is
delivered and acquired. The psychosocial ramifications of such technologies,
particularly within the classroom, still remain largely unknown, despite their spread

M. BOCKAROVA
throughout the global village. Those who support them claim that they have brought
about benefits such as the following:
– They allow schools to address the different cognitive styles that students bring
to the classroom, thus allowing teacher to address diversity of learning more
directly;
– They allow the classroom to mirror the technological situation of workplaces today;
– They allow for the efficient sharing of information and resources, which can
enhance the essentially interactive nature of learning;
– They are synchronized with the student’s use of such technologies in their daily lives.
While the benefits of “classroom technologization” are certainly self-evident in
the global village, there exists a strong opposition to this transformation of the
educational process away from the its traditional dialogical nature based on bodily
semiosis between teacher and student, warning us that there are “de-humanizing”
consequences to be faced for the following reasons:
– Socialization is integral to learning, and the technologized classroom may foster a
heightened sense of individualization in students, separating them from the basic
sociosemiotic aspects of the learning process.
– Online instruction can impact negatively on a student’s creativity and limit the
absorption of knowledge as the student often cannot interrupt instruction to ask
for clarification directly as was the case in dialogical contexts.
– The overall learning experience may become more and more virtual and perhaps
superficial, as the sense of contact with the teacher becomes less and less critical
and almost irrelevant in some situations.
In Peircean terms, it can be said that the classroom should revolve initially around
Firstness, or the emotional and cognitive need to relate directly (physically and
sensorially) to the subject matter. As is well known, Socrates saw this as the essence
of learning — the back and forth repartees between magister and alumnus that
activate abductive processes in the learner. The screen provides information and
guidance; it does not assign meaning and sense to it. A Peircean view of the learning
technologies would likely be as ancillary, rather than fundamental, devices. But it
would also allow for a new dialogical scenario, namely between student and the
information itself. It is this aspect that clearly needs to be investigated further.
Within the edusemiotic sphere, essentially, little work has been done to assess the
viability of the technologized classroom (henceforward TC). Cook (1998) argued
that a semiotic approach to this classroom would reveal its structural and semiosic
implications. The purpose of this chapter is to look more specifically at Cook’s
argument, exploring the semiotics of TCs, including the impact to learning of the
devices themselves and their effects on learning from the standpoint of the student,
the teacher, and pedagogical traditions. I will base my observations and hypotheses
on a case study — a fourth-grade student named Nathan facing unique challenges
which, I believe, has wide-ranging implications for education in general.
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ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF TECHNOLOGY IN EDUCATION
Peirce characterized semiosis as the process of creating and interpreting signs

in terms of: (1) the sign itself (the representamen); (2) the object encompassed by
the representamen; and (3) the interpretant, the meaning generated (personally,
socially, and so on) when the representamen and the object are processed in tandem.
Semiosis can be understood, then, as a chaining of interpretants, in which new signs
collide with new objects to form new interpretants eventually converging to a belief.
This chapter will primarily seek to understand Nathan’s experience with TC via the
interpretants he describes.
CASE STUDY
Nathan is an atypical 9-year old student in the sense that he suffered from severe
generalized anxiety with intrusive thoughts and extreme separation anxiety, which
were triggered when he found his ill mother unconscious and had to dial 911 for
help at 8 years of age. Thereafter, he exhibited a poor level of functioning at school
and began to alienate himself from schoolmates. Prior to this episode, his parents
described him as an “open, friendly child” who took part in numerous after-school
activities, including karate and swimming. His former teachers similarly indicated
that he was a bright, sociable student who “was excited to take part in every activity
imaginable.” After undergoing the traumatic event, Nathan found it increasingly
difficult to interact with others, became restless and irritable, and started being
socially aloof due to his behavioral disorder since he worried constantly over how he
was perceived by others. He would frequently excuse himself from human company
to cry because of intrusive thoughts, which he termed a “bad feeling”, both at home
and in social settings. He would cry, intermittently, for periods of three hours at a
time. During these outbursts, he would ask that both of his parents stay with him,
and if there were any children in the room, he would ask them to leave. Nathan
would later ask his parents if any children saw him in his state of unrest. If another
child were to see him upset, he would insist on avoiding that child subsequently,
consciously alienating himself in the process. Over time, he developed poor peer
relations and experienced growing difficulty in participating in group activities. This
state of affairs continued for a period of six months, until he began complaining of
frequent aches and pains, asking to be sent home from school. This was diagnosed as
mild hypochondriasis. However, prior to seeing a cognitive behavioral psychologist,
Nathan began to re-socialize himself in the classroom as his classroom became
increasingly transformed into a technologized one. In discussing his experiences
with the TC, Nathan seems to have been able to integrate himself into the classroom
more advantageously, resulting in increased learning and higher grades, since the
challenges he had faced in the traditional classroom were mitigated.
Data for this chapter was gathered by examining Nathan’s medical records (to
which I was given access), interviewing Nathan’s teachers, parents and Nathan
himself vis-à-vis his progress in the fourth grade classroom. Nathan was also observed
completing one individual and one group in-class assignment using technology.
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M. BOCKAROVA
Through this case study, three aspects of learning with technology became saliently
obvious: (a) technology seems indeed to encourage collaboration and socialization,
which aids learning; (b) using certain technologies in the classroom allows students
to feel empowered, encouraging positive identity; and (c) technology shifts the
power dynamic in the classroom from teacher-centered to student-centered.
Socialization
The TC classroom has, as mentioned, initiated a general education debate on how

children learn best. One of the main criticisms against TC is that it has impacted
negatively on one of the most critical skills needed for learning—social skills.
Vygotsky’s social development theory and social constructivism theory generally
are enlisted in this debate. Called generally a socio-cultural approach to learning, it
posits that cognitive processes are socially mediated, since they are affected by the
beliefs, values and material artifacts of a culture. For instance, reading and writing,
both culturally-based textual processes, are in theory developed by children first as a
means to function socially, that is, to communicate needs. It is these tools, embedded
and mediated within social environments, lead to higher thinking. Vygotsky (1978)
saw the role of social interaction fundamental to such cognitive development,
preceding learning: “Every function in the child’s cultural development appears
twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between
people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological)” (p. 57).
Central to this hypothesis is the constructivist concept of the More Knowledgeable
Other (MKO), that is, of the individual who has a better understanding of the material
in question than the child and who, through dialogue with the child, allows him or her
to grasp ideas more tangibly. The MKO approach to learning, according to Vygotsky,
is the key factor in promoting cognitive development. An example of this, as given
by Shaffer (1996), is that of a young girl attempting to solve a jigsaw puzzle. As her
father (the MKO in this case) demonstrates and describes strategies used in solving
the puzzle, she starts to work collaboratively, and eventually independently, as she
acquires the cognitive means to solve the jigsaw. But the TC does not exclude the
importance of the MKO. The role of the MKO has traditionally been assumed by
a parent or teacher; however, there is no reason to believe it could not be assumed
by a peer, a younger student, or even a computer, as Nathan’s case makes obvious.
Also central to Vygotsky’s theory is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD),
which is made up of the cognitive distance between a student’s ability to perform
a task with an MKO and the student’s ability to work independently. It is in this
“distance zone” where learning occurs. The ZPD concept has had many important
consequences in contemporary education. One of these is known as “scaffolding”,
as termed by Jerome Bruner, and later termed “semiotic scaffolding” by Hoffmeyer.
This concept suggests a teacher tailors material such that the information transmitted
is incrementally digestible by students, eventually leading to their learning of more
complex material in bits and pieces.
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Vygotsky’s social development theory has been corroborated by a vast empirical

educational literature. Opponents of the TC, argue that using technology goes
against the core of Vygotskian theory because it fosters individualism in learning
and de-socializing. Nevertheless, studies are beginning to suggest that a dialogical
situation (through simulation) occurs nonetheless, even if it is between learners and
screens, which have become MKOs (Wartella & Jennings, 2000). For instance, in
a study of 14 preschool children, Heft and Swaminathan (2002) found that the use
of technology in the classroom offers alternative means of active peer interaction
which include: children observing and acknowledging each other, sharing time on
the computer, and commenting on each other’s outcomes. Conflict was also reported,
particularly with regards to sharing of the computer, but overall the researchers also
noted numerous opportunities for teacher-child interaction, wherein teachers would
ask the children about their work on the computer, or children would ask for help,
activating an unconscious ZPD. Muller and Perlmutter (1985) explored how social
interaction may differ depending on whether children were playing with the computer
or on a puzzle. In their study of 27 children, aged 3-5-years, the researchers found
that 70% of the interactions were comprised of children sharing the computer, and the
remaining time was spent completing, explaining, and showing activities to others on
the computer. Conversely, when children completed puzzles, they spent significantly
less time engaging in peer interactions. Similarly, the authors found that peer interaction
was present only 7% of the time in when completing puzzles, in comparison to 63%
of the time when general learning occurred through computers. Further, 11% of the
time was spent in solitary activity at the computer and 55% of the time was spent in
solitary activity with the puzzle. Exploring how video game use might affect students,
van Schie and Wiegman (1997) examined the relations between the amount of video
game play and social isolation, loneliness, popularity, general school performance,
language skills and arithmetic skills on 346 7th and 8th grade children. They found no
negative correlations between the traits, and, in fact, found a positive one between time
spent on videogames and a child’s intelligence (van Schie & Wiegman, 1997). Lastly,
two studies exploring computers introduced into the kindergarten classroom (Fein
et al., 1987; Anderson, 1998) found that introducing a computer into the classroom
did not increase the frequency of solitary play; it actually fostered social interaction.
Thus, as concluded by McCarrick and Li (2007), “initial fears of social isolation were
unfounded and, overall, the social environment of the classroom did not appear to
change substantially with the introduction of computers” (p. 81).
Identity
While the above research suggests that the TC does not take away from socialization,
one may infer by extension that one’s sense of identity, which, according to Vygotsky,
is personally experienced but is established through societal relations and functions
though these relations, is similarly unaffected. Though identity can be defined in
many ways, tit can be characterized for the present purposes as an individual’s sense
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M. BOCKAROVA
of self, determined by ongoing life-long interactions with others and society (Erikson,
1963). This psychosocial perspective sees identity as constructed in social contexts.
According to Vygotsky, in order for an individual to gain this sense of self, he or
she must be recognized as “someone” by both himself or herself and by someone
else. In Nathan’s case, he had ostracized himself from his social surroundings, and
had reciprocally been ostracized by others because of his social awkwardness. Like
many other students with similar experiences, Nathan had come to view himself
negatively, and this had negatively impacted on his school performance and peer
socialization. As his teacher, Mr. B, describes:
I noticed [Nathan] was really a student who kept to himself. He was very much
a loner inside the classroom. It’s quite sad to me. I had spoken about him to
others teachers who had not formed the same impression in earlier years. Once
I was told of Nathan’s conditions, it seemed to really fit in terms of why he
might be performing poorly… I never allow myself to put a student’s personal
issues before the work that’s produced. Instead, I’ve always treated Nathan as
an equal to his peers in the classroom. He certainly seems to keep to himself,
and I’m attentive to the fact that he has a behavioral disorder, but I treat him
just as I would any student…. I have, at times, asked him how he is feeling
considering he has sometimes excused himself to cry…. I have directly asked
him to control his behavior and work well with others and have addressed his
behavioral disorder with him at parent-teacher interviews. However, within the
classroom, I always treat him as I would any other student.
According to Norton (2010), the learner’s sense of self has a major impact on his or
her learning outcomes. When teachers label others, as Nathan’s teacher had clearly
labeled him, negative feelings are bound to surface. Asking Nathan to “control
his behavior” after having had his behavior medicated by trained professionals
may evoke negative feelings in Nathan, leading to a sense of shame and a poor
self image, which is reinforced within the classroom. Labeling Nathan with a
“behavioral disorder” broadcasts Nathan’s problems to the rest of the class and ends
up subordinating him and thus negatively affecting his learning efforts.
As this instance demonstrates, if someone’s persona is devalued in specific social
settings, such as the classroom (Cummins, 1996), that person becomes vulnerable
to his or her own destructive tendencies. This is particularly true in students with
special needs, since they face particular challenges and develop an increasing
sense of frustration leading to lack of effort in learning (Cummins et al., 2005).
The diagnosis of a learning disability in itself is simply a tool for understanding
a particular case. But the potential of a diagnosis to do harm is very high, given
that it lowers the teacher’s expectation of his or her student and raises the teacher’s
tendency to treat the student as an “exception.” This, in turn, can cause the student
to lose faith in himself or herself and thus lose the interest in school. Views such as
Mr. B’s “it’s quite sad to me” may indicate that he is committed to helping Nathan,
but in the end it may actually impede him from learning because he may lose the
74
sense of challenge required in a scaffolding scenario, thus impeding the progress of

the ZPD. In this way, special considerations of special students within the traditional
classroom act as a hindrance. In the TC, this situation might certainly be attenuated
as the MKO becomes a screen with little or no negative emotional interaction.
Moreover, someone like Nathan would feel much more at ease in not having to
interact in a negative emotional way with the teacher or the students.
In Nathan’s classroom, the first technology implemented consisted of
individualized laptops, where students were asked to complete an “all about me”
assignment using Voki, an interactive online tool which allows students to create
customized speaking avatars. Voki acts to engage students by enhancing language
skills, as seen in Figure 1. Students devised their avatar individually, being asked to
create their “Voki” as an extension of themselves. Students were also told that their
Voki would be shown to other students in the class, and thus that their individual
Voki should resemble their appearance in reality. They were then prompted, through
the Voki program, to record information about themselves vocally, which would be
transmitted through their Voki.
The Voki could be simulated as an animal (a snail, fish, horse, etc.), a festive
figure (the Easter bunny, a leprechaun), a political figure (a president of the United
States), or a realistic three-dimensional character. The latter possibility was chosen
by nearly everyone in the class. Nathan chose to identify (or more technically
“iconize”) himself instead as an animal. Specifically, he chose a bird icon. From the
available options, he found only a turkey, which he chose as his avatar. When Mr. B
prompted him to create an avatar resembling him in real life, Nathan maintained his
choice of the turkey figure. By choosing to represent himself in a unique, individual
way, not only did Nathan seek to reaffirm his own identity, but he took a stance of
resistance against Mr. B’s suggestion, who recalls the episode as follows:
“All About Me” is an easy assignment to get them used to the interface and
the concepts of Voki. Most students will search through the built in images
to find an avatar that closely resembles themselves. As they progress and
get more familiar with the different tools they can use, the avatars get more
complex, trying to build an identity, create themselves within the confines of
the program. What I find most interesting is the students, like Nathan, who go
the other way - who will use a cat, or a unicorn, or a seemingly random avatar.
I still haven’t figured out if it’s a reflection of their world view, or if something
else is going on. For Nathan, I don’t know.
Once the avatar was chosen, students recorded information about themselves, either
through voice recording through their laptops’ built-in microphones, or by typing
text into a text box with the capacity to transmit sound outputs. The choices for
output language included speech with a different accent. Nathan selected “English”
as his output language, and scrolled through the list of possible accents, choosing
the Romanian accent, maintaining that “it sounds just like my dad”. When asked
whether he believed he actually sounded like his father, Nathan said, “I can’t hear
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M. BOCKAROVA
myself, but if my dad sounds like that, I probably do too. We’re supposed to choose
an avatar that’s like us, right?”
Figure 1. Voki
76
After changing the settings and recording information about himself, whereby
Nathan explained that he enjoyed living in Toronto and spending time at the beach,
the final stage in the creation of his Voki was to customize his background. Various
options for background included city views, outdoors, nature, nightlife, etc. Nathan
chose the city view option which he pointed out was close to his sense of living
in Toronto: “It’s where I live, so it makes the most sense.” By creating his Voki,
Nathan created an imaginary (or projected) icon of himself. When asked directly
why he chose to create an avatar based on a bird, Nathan described his perspective:
“I like birds, I’m not a bird, but I really like them. I put the bird in Toronto, because
I wanted it to look like it was right there, like walking on the street so I chose a
background picture where it looks like that.”
Power
In Mr. B’s statements above, we can easily see the power dynamic that is assumed
in the traditional classroom. Hawkins (2004) notes that power relations which
characterize different social contexts influence an individual’s awareness of
how his or her identity is to be positioned within them, which identity roles are
accessible, which opportunities are available for negotiation of self-presentation,
which can be expanded to Goffman’s (1967) work on the microsociology of identity,
and what kind of learning opportunities are realizable. With Voki technology, this
dynamic is transformed, as Nathan was able to promote his identity persona in a
non-compromising way that was accessible to others and available for negotiation
in a vicarious fashion. In choosing a Romanian accent for his Voki, Nathan was
imparting his identity as a child of immigrant parents, which he could present proudly,
considering that he was one of few immigrant children in the school. The availability
to showcase his personal linguistic difference through Voki legitimized his accent
as an acceptable option within the classroom context, encouraging students interact
meaningfully. Semiotically, representations of the self are more apt to be accepted
uncritically than the actual self because they shift the focus from Firstness (direct
contact) to Secondness (reference to other possibilities) and Thirdness (negotiation
of all possibilities in a symbolic way). If all students are given equal power through
this type of semiosis, they will likely lessen their sense of anxiety about themselves
and negotiate their identities through the avatar representation. Thus, regardless as
to whether teachers may consciously or otherwise give priority to certain student
identities within the classroom due to different social perceptions, the TC may
provide an equitable situation whereby identity negotiation is fostered, thereby
enhancing learning outcomes in turn. Khatib, Sarem, and Hamidi (2012) suggest
that teachers should provide students the opportunity to showcase their talents in
academically challenging tasks, so as to create a positive learning environment
through a sense of belonging. The Voki assignment certainly seemed to corroborate
this principle of classroom pedagogy.
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M. BOCKAROVA
Reeves (2006) suggests that the presuppositions that teachers bring to the
classroom about certain types of students can detrimental to the sense of wellbeing
that students require to carry out academic tasks. Positioning students with special
needs, as Mr. B had hoped to do, impacts on this sense of wellbeing. Inherent in this
type of pedagogy is the implicit principle that teachers should treat students like
Nathan as different. By so doing, as Reeves (2006) argues, the achievement gap
between Nathan and the others is widened, as expectations are lowered in his case.
As Cummins (1994) posits, teacher-student power relations are not neutral, arguing
that the classroom should be a place not only where intellectual feats are appraised
and rewarded, but also where individual creative efforts are to be given value and
academic worth. The image that teachers have of specific children will inevitably
affect learning outcomes, for better or for worse. It is in this domain of pedagogy
that the TC may alter this dynamic. Undoubtedly, Nathan had become aware of Mr.
B’s seemingly negative perception of him, which had affected his learning outcomes
prior to the use of the Voki.
In a collaborative assignment in Nathan’s class, students were asked to create a
film in groups, using digital technologies. This assignment had all the ingredients for
promoting successful social learning outcomes. Scaffolding, or learning through an
MKO, was done through the computer program, “A Director’s Cut”, which featured
instructional videos to help guide students through the process of creating a film.
Prior to using the program to create their own films, students were taken on a field
trip to watch the newly released Warner Bros. Picture, “The LEGO® Movie”. The
subsequent day, students spent the whole time creating their own movies. Mr. B and
the media teacher first spoke about the importance of film and what elements were
needed to create a film, such as storyline, character development, etc. While sitting at
their desks, students were then instructed to independently write down (on paper) their
own ideas for a script. Once complete, students were put into groups. As Mr. B explains:
I will sometimes allow [the students] to pick their own group, usually for smaller
assignments or quick pieces of work. When it comes to larger tasks, especially
in using Director’s Cut, which might span a number of classes, I will usually
choose the groups, looking for a balance of leaders, stronger students who are
more comfortable with the tasks, and students how might have more needs.
I find that technology can be the great leveller in many cases. I have found it
to be similar to the arts, where a student who might struggle with grammar/
spelling/conventions of written work, or have difficulty with math concepts,
will be able to produce exceptional creative work if given some freedom on the
computer. I wanted Nathan in a group with level-headed students who would
encourage him to participate, considering his difficulties. Once they had the
basic concepts, and were able to get involved with the multimedia task, they
really surprised me!
Students were then encouraged to share their script idea with each other, and
instructed to choose one. From there, each group of students was given access to
78
one computer with a detached camera, and were instructed to follow the program’s
instructional material to build their own film while Mr. B hovered between groups,
and asked students to explain their activities. Overall, however, student-teacher
interaction was sporadic, not regular.
After reviewing the material, Nathan’s group, which consisted of two female
students, and two male students, including Nathan himself, explained their movie
as follows:
Nathan: There was this evil bird that comes to Toronto and kills people and he
pushes some guy off the CN Tower and then something kills the bird.
Student 1: It’s like Star Wars with the black hood guy.
Nathan: Yeah.
Student 2: And the bird is evil so it has to be killed.
Student 3: But why does it have to be evil? It’s a bird.
Nathan: I don’t know. I guess it doesn’t have to.
Student 3: But birds aren’t evil, they are friendly.
Student 2: I like it evil.
Nathan: We can change it. It doesn’t have to be evil.
It is obvious that Nathan’s bird Voki character had become an interpretant for
guiding the movie script, thus indirectly validating Nathan’s portrayal of himself.
The group members were in obvious conflict over the moral meanings of the bird,
when Student 3 suggested that there was no necessity for the bird to “be” evil. But
the fact remain that the bird symbol became a directive one in the activity—and this
symbols was Nathan’s icon. While Students 2 and 3 debated the notion that the bird
was not inherently evil, Nathan suggested that the evilness of the bird is a state, and
in this sense can be changed. Through further negotiation and collaboration, the
students choose Nathan’s script:
Student 3: So then it can be evil but something helps it.
Student 2: Like what?
Student 3: A princess like in the Wizard of Oz.
Nathan: An angel.
Student 1: Yeah, I like the angel.
Student 2: An angel will save it?
Student 3: Ok, yeah.
Nathan then described the plot, while looking at his page, as follows:
It was an evil bird because it would make sense – who would have a good bird
attacking a person? So it would just be weird if the bird wasn’t evil. So, this
person on a spaceship came down and pushed the bird off the CN Tower. But
now it’s different. At the beginning this spaceship like a flying saucer of the
bird comes down in the city, and he comes and cuts this guy’s neck off. We
want to make the bird look more freaky like he was from another planet or
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something. Then this guy was climbing up the CN tower then the bird comes
flying and pushes him off, too. Then he says “I’ve reached the bottom”, and
he stops right in front of the bottom. He just stops. Then he lands in a door and
the door walks off. There was this awkward door, if you fall in it, it will sort of
close and will make you go off somewhere else. Then, the bird keeps staying
on the CN Tower. Then, the person in the spaceship comes and saves the bird
from falling off the CN tower. It’s actually an angel.
In the idea that the bird must “change”, as Nathan explicitly suggests, the students
immediately interpreted that change as being collaborative. Student 3 suggested that
it must receive “help” while Student 2 later indicated that it must be “saved”. While
exploring the possibilities of a change event, the students agreed on a female figure
to act as the agent of change.
As Nathan independently made the necessary written changes to the script, the
group began to gather the materials for creating it. They found in a bin of items
various figurines to represent characters in the script. They also drew the background,
a picture of the CN tower. Interestingly, the group turned to Nathan in order to
proceed.
Student 1: Okay, we’re done.
Student 2: I don’t get it. So we take pictures with this? (lifts camera).
Nathan: So the way you make it is you push it into the scene (moves figurines
onto the background photo), then you take two pictures, then you push it a little
more, two pictures again, until your movie is done.
Student 2: Ohhhh, okay. Thanks, Nathan.
Nathan: Then you add in some sound effects and music and put the backgrounds
in. Then you record your voices to make your characters talk. There’s the
place (points to computer screen) where you put on the music. You need a
mini camera with legs sort of to make it stand up attached with a wire to the
computer. Then the sound effects is a whole different idea.
When Mr. B interrupted the group to ask about progress, Nathan was the first to
explain:
I came up with the bird, the other people came up with the background. I came
up with the idea of the story. So I came up with the whole plot, like the problem
and solution. It took me like 10 minutes to come up with it. I mean like with
no story all you have is walking around characters. I’m playing the bird. I like
birds, obviously, and then it was an idea to make it an old city like in the 1800s
but then I said maybe we should make it at this time, then everyone agreed.
Yeah. And then I said evil bird and everyone disagreed but then they actually
agreed back.
Interestingly enough, Nathan took rightful credit for the creation of the plot in front
of the other students. He thus presented himself as a leader and the impetus and
80
unifying brains behind the story, saying specifically that “with no story all you have
is walking around characters.” He then further took credit for making the decision
of changing the background to modern-day Toronto, and explained the group conflict
over the meaning of the bird in his own way. The act of explaining this to his teacher
and confronting his classmates acts to affirm his leading role, was a turning point in
Nathan’s school life. He wanted clearly to project himself into the classroom activity
and take charge of it, not withdraw from it as he had previously.
When I asked about his reaction to Nathan’s explanation, Mr. B elaborated as
follows:
When I select the groups there is often some initial reticence with some
students, not being with their friends, being in mixed gender groupings
which can sometimes be difficult at the age I teach and occasionally showing
frustration or dissatisfaction if they are with a student with higher needs. There
is usually more work initially in working through the group dynamics, but we
have developed a vocabulary for finding commonalities and communicating
respectfully. Oftentimes the work produced in the groups I select is higher
quality overall as they are not just hanging out with their friends, and they are
able to more effectively take on roles to get the work done. I would say this
is really what’s happened here, it seems. Nathan seems to really feel valued.
Once all of the student groups, including Nathan’s, finished creating their respective
films, the class was brought to the auditorium to watch each individual film. This
communal act of sharing each other’s work in a public way created a comforting
and stimulating environment, as each group interacted with each other fostering a
congenial and collaborative relationship between the members. Presenting the films
at the school auditorium, which is generally reserved for special occasions, acted as
a sign that their creative work had special meaning and value above and beyond its
value as a classroom activity.
This is evident a group’s film is first projected, generating general excitement
among its creators. In Nathan’s film elements from The LEGO® Movie are evident
throughout being adopted and adapted to the specific script at hand. For instance,
some of the characters were created out of Lego, and the film score was taken
from the movie. The LEGO® Movie was an ersatz MKO in this case passing on to
the students through osmosis some of a movie’s minute intricacies, such as score
changes.
As seen in Figure 2, the movie begins with a film scroll rolling across the screen
while the words, “A Director’s Cut Presentation…” appear. Dramatic music is
playing in the background, acting to create a thunderous beginning. This first scene
is, itself, a built-in feature of the program, which acts to standardize all films. Upon
further reflection, however, it could be suggested that this “structural limitation”
could actually foster a sentiment of collaboration and unification, allowing all
students to enter into the structural system as a way into the creative world that
eventually unfolds.
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M. BOCKAROVA
Figure 2. Director’s Cut
Figure 3. From Hollywood to Toronto
The next scene cuts to a spinning globe, which stops at California, with a red line
drawn from Hollywood to Toronto. Overlaying this, is the caption “From Hollywood
to Toronto”. While this feature is also built into the “A Director’s Cut” program,
it can be seen to have various learning aspects to it, including geographical and
82
linguistic elements, thus providing students with verbal and visual systems of
creativity that encompass the real world and historically relevant reference points,
such as Hollywood. By placing dots on Hollywood and Toronto, the students
connected the meanings of the two spaces through their own creative act—in effect,
the turned Toronto into a Hollywood. This virtualization of Hollywood is a powerful
symbolic act that was part of the subtext of Nathan’s movie. By indexing Hollywood
to Toronto via verbal and nonverbal semiosis, the fictional sphere of Hollywood,
as a beacon of the movie industry, is transported and becomes as real as Toronto
is for the students. This activity constitutes both a metaphorical and literal form of
representation for the children and their interpretation of Hollywood. The children
were thus affirming their roles as potential filmmakers through a Baudrillardian
simulacrum (Baudrillard, 2007). Further, using a hyperreal technique to connect
Hollywood and Toronto in the representamen of the film itself.
The following scene cuts to a pale blue screen with the words, “The Birdie
Productions Presents…”. This expression is mimetic of film scrolls in typical
Hollywood films. Not only does this index the children’s identities as real film
producers, having created their own production company and labeling their movie
with “productions”, it also validates their efforts in the film text itself as part of an
interplay with the others in the class. It produces a strong sense of creative semiosis.
The next scene, which presents the movie title, The Evil Bird, as seen in Figure 4,
is iconic of the Star Wars opening crawl, which reveals a galaxy of open stars, as the
words roll vertically across the screen. This not only suggests a scroll being read,
but conveys the notion of the vastness of meaning, as the words disappear into an
outstretched galaxy. By such intertexuality the intent was to identify the movie to a
blockbuster film series that has become culturally iconic.
Within the students’ film, the theme of the galaxy permeates into the script itself,
when a spaceship carrying the evil bird descends from the galaxy into Toronto.
In this way, the students created continuity from the opening scenes of the film,
including the initial scene. Interestingly, the opening scene contains a hand-drawn
depiction of the CN Tower, which is an iconic symbol of Toronto. Herein, meaning
is again grounded in real space as the students strive to create an external depiction
of themselves which is a hyper-realized simulacrum of their daily lives, again
reaffirming their identities as both Torontonians and movie producers.
In interviewing Nathan about the background scene in detail, he explained it as
follows: “We wanted it to be a piece of us. Maybe it can win the prize [of being
shown across North America] and how else would [the audience] know who we
are?”
In the following scene, the spaceship carrying the main character of the evil bird
lands on a man, killing him, thus enforcing the notion of the bird being evil. The
next scene shows an old man who has climbed to the top of the CN Tower. When the
character proclaims “victory”, the evil bird pushes him off the tower to his death, as
shown in Figure 5. At this point, there is a drastic change in music, which Nathan
notes is intentional:
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M. BOCKAROVA
We wanted freaky music because the bird was evil and doing evil things to
people in Toronto, but when the angel comes down from heaven, it didn’t make
sense to have evil music. Because people would think the angel was evil, but
she’s saving the bird from evil so we changed the music.
The change adds a rather sophisticated subtext to the plot, as it conveys strong
emotionality which could not previously be added in the simple audio reading of
Nathan’s script. The intentional shift in music makes it clear to the audience that the
story plot will change in a positive fashion.
Figure 4. Title scroll
Figure 5. Evil bird
84
In this scene, a spaceship descends onto the screen, with an angel on top of it.
The angel welcomes the bird onto her spaceship. The angel is denoted with blond
hair and a crown, and specifically takes the center podium to denote that she, the
maternal figure, is in charge. While the original script Nathan devised concludes
with her chastising the evil bird, plunging it off the ship to his death, the final script
negotiated by Nathan and his group alters the ending such that the maternal figure
welcomes the evil bird onto the ship, as all of the characters proclaim victory. This
acts both literally and symbolically as Nathan, who plays the character of the evil
bird, awakens to his newfound position within a social context. This is particularly
telling as the change in script only occurred after having started to collaborate and
negotiate the script within a social context.
The film concludes with the credits, listing each character and child. In the context
of using Director’s cut, one can conclude that even though Nathan’s group work
was not carried out in a conventional fashion, it was nevertheless respected by the
teacher and peers, altering the power dynamics of the classroom in Nathan’s mind
and as witnessed by his remarkably powerful and proud commentaries. This was
“surprising” to Mr. B since Nathan had rarely interacted well with his classmates
previously. Mr. B had also not seen him as a student capable of becoming a leader.
In using technology, Nathan not only developed interpersonal and communication
skills with his classmates, but felt welcomed and encouraged to share his ideas.
This existed beyond the point of the assignment, mitigating his anxiety, and leading
subsequently to improved learning outcomes.
CONCLUSIONS
In exploring Nathan’s use of technology in the classroom, various aspects stand

out, Above al else, this case study shows that technology encourages socialization,
helping foster a positive sense of self by leveling the power dynamics within the
classroom. Thus, in creating multi-modal projects in a virtual system, students are
not only able to showcase their talents in a group setting regardless, but are able to
project and negotiate their identities in an external, tangible fashion. As identity,
socialization, and power struggles within the classroom are so closely intertwined
yet integral to student success, the implications of Nathan’s case are self-evident. His
case clearly points out that creative semiosis is a critical feature of learning—a fact
that Vygotsky himself often pointed out, calling children “little poets.” Generally,
technologies allow for an environment where iconicity (simulation and resemblance
to other referents can be included. The film brought this out conspicuously, as
students engaged in a truly iconic enterprise of representing themselves through
the medium of narrative. The film project also showed that the use of technologies
within the classroom allows for the establishment of a collaborative and thus socially-
dynamic classroom which gives students a space to “be themselves.” So long as the
common goal is learning, and certain elements are in place to foster collaborative
learning, such as positive interdependence as well as individual accountability. In
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M. BOCKAROVA
implementing various programs, teachers should allow students to work with prior
knowledge, such as writing a script, scaffold instruction, as was done through the
computer program, and practice specific and constructive feedback in order to highly
develop intellectual capacity and practical competency.
Technology has actually always been part of educational semiosis as an ancillary
tool, but the TC has changed the rules of the pedagogical game. It may or may not
prove to enhance learning at all levels and for all students, but the case of Nathan
shows that it mitigates the power dynamics that the traditional classroom presents,
allowing students to share their meanings of the world through iconic semiosis
(avatar creation through Voki in this case). Clearly, more research is needed, heeding
Cook’s suggestion, and the field of edusemiotics is leading the way in gathering
relevant documentations of the semiotic basis of all learning. After all, Vygotsky
himself saw semiosis as the basis of all learning and was the first to ever document
its manifestations in childhood development.
REFERENCES
Anderson, G. T. (1998). Comparison of the types of cooperative problem solving behaviors in four
learning centers: Computer, dramaticplay, block, and manipulative. Paper presented at the National
HeadStart Research Conference, Washington, DC. (ERIC Reproduction Service No. ED422122).
Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and Simulations. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Cook, R. G. (1998). Semiotics in technology, learning, and culture. Bulletin of Science, Technology &
Society, 18(3), 174–179.
Cummins, J. (1994). Knowledge, power, and identity in teaching english as a second language. In
Educating second language children: The whole child, the whole curriculum, the whole community
(pp. 33–58).
Cummins, J. (1996). Negotiating identities: Education for empowerment in a diverse society. Los
Angeles, CA: Association for Bilingual Education.
Cummins, J., Bismilla, V., Chow, P., Cohen, S., Giampapa, F., Leoni, L. … Sastri, P. (2005). Affirming
identity in multilingual classrooms. Educational Leadership, 63(1), 38–43.
Erikson, E. H. (1993). Childhood and society. New York, NY: WW Norton & Company.
Fein, G. G., Campbell, P. F., & Schwartz, S. S. (1987). Microcomputers in the preschool: Effects on social
participation and cognitive play. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 8(2), 197–208.
Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. Garden City, NY: Doubleday
Hawkins, M. R. (2004). Researching English language and literacy development in schools. Educational
Researcher, 33(3), 14–25.
Heft, T. M., & Swaminathan, S. (2002). The effects of computers on the social behavior of preschoolers.
Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 16(2), 162–174.
Khatib, M., Sarem, S. N., & Hamidi, H. (2012). A critical look at the effect of teachers’ self-efficacy on
students’ academic success. The Iranian EFL Journal, 295–306.
McCarrick, K., & Li, X. (2007). Buried treasure: The impact of computer use on young children’s social,
cognitive, language development and motivation. AACE Journal, 15(1), 73–95.
McLuhan, M. (2011). The gutenberg galaxy: The making of typographic man. Toronto, ON: University
of Toronto Press.
Muller, A. A., & Perlmutter, M. (1985). Preschool children’s problem-solving interactions at computers
and jigsaw puzzles. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 6(2), 173–186.
Norton, B. (2010). Identity, literacy, and english-language teaching. TESL Canada Journal, 28(1).
Peirce, C. S. (1997). Pragmatism as a principle and method of right thinking: The 1903 Harvard lectures
on pragmatism. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
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Reeves, J. R. (2006). Secondary teacher attitudes toward including English-language learners in

mainstream classrooms. The Journal of Educational Research, 99(3), 131–143.
Schaffer, R. (1996). Social development. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Schie, E. G., & Wiegman, O. (1997). Children and videogames: Leisure activities, aggression, social
integration, and school Performance1. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27(13), 1175–1194.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind and society: The development of higher mental processes, M. Cold,
S. Scribner, V. John-Steiner & E. Souberman (Eds.). Cambridge, England: Harvard University Press
Wartella, E. A., & Jennings, N. (2000). Children and computers: New technology-old concerns. Future
of Children, 10(2), 31–43.
Mariana Bockarova
University of Toronto
Canada
87
JESSICA L. WILKINSON
7. TWO POEMS
HOW THE EYES
(1) find birds——hundreds of them——no speed

limit, or——as fast as the frame can see.
Here is a bird in a cage. He or she is
one of the lucky ones; (2) let sleeping dogs
lie——or beat the truth out of them——the end
is always the same——a boat in a lake with no
(3) water. Yet still it passes by——a cloud
without rain. And his face is embedded in it.
I (4) know it. Sometimes it helps to observe
a model posing as if told ‘pose like x’;
we all (5) fumble around in the dark, trying
to define our selves. A dead fox on a rug is
(6) still a rug, and soon enough the photos
(7) develop from the camera with a dirty lens.
BRIGHT SPARK
To write a poem
is to launch one’s child to the sun
the risk will burn at the throat

the loss breathing in, out
would that I were a fuse

to sing your merry fire down the clouds
light flash heat

swiftly changeable
and the water will engulf you

J. L. WILKINSON
the poet is a figure on the shore

waiting for the final piece to drift
into view; the worst is not over
To begin a poem is to kneel on sand

before the dark, measuring
the space ahead
with an outstretched arm
Jessica L. Wilkinson
RMIT
Australia
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EETU PIKKARAINEN
8. EDUCATION, VALUES AND AUTHORITY

A Semiotic View
INTRODUCTION
What is the relationship between values, authority and education? I believe one
very probable first thought could be some kind of idea of moral education. Others
might be sceptical, or hold critical views that education and teachers have now
lost the authority they used to have in the schooldays of the elders of today, or that
neoliberalism and commodification have wiped all old values out of education.
Instead of these plausible suspicions, I will here argue that there is (still) a strong
internal connection between all these three areas and it is not restricted to any
special area of moral education. My main argument is that, on the one hand,
we need the concepts of values and authority to understand what education is,
and, on the other hand, we need the concept of education to explain why these
especially human areas of values and authority exist at all. This theoretical
consideration will not, of course, offer any practical guide to values and authority
in education, but I hope this kind of analysis could also have some applicable
practical consequences.
I will develop my argument in a framework of action theoretical semiotics
which I have been building mainly on the theoretical heritage of A. J. Greimas.
My application of Greimassian semiotics is, however, quite unorthodox and I have
mixed in some central influences from Peircean semiotics and biosemiotics. This
whole theory project is situated in the research of education, so it is educational
semiotics or edusemiotics throughout. The most peculiar feature of this theory in
comparison with other semiotic theories is that its basic concept is meaning instead
of sign, which is seen as rather derivative. Education in this theory is viewed of quite
traditionally as a transformation from animal to human, from the plainly biosemiotic
to anthroposemiotic sphere. In this respect, it shares and leans on the ideas of
classical continental traditions of pedagogy to which the idea of Bildung1 is central.
One aim of the project is to make this cryptic concept more accessible by translating
it into semiotic vocabulary. In addition to the above mentioned roots, in this study
I will utilise also Robert Brandom’s notion of conceptual as a special characteristic
of human rationality.

E. PIKKARAINEN
THE FRAMEWORK: MEANING AND ACTION
The basic concept of action theoretical semiotics is not the sign, as in semiotics
usually, but rather the meaning.2 Sign is a more derivative concept which can be
defined as anything which has (or evokes) a meaning. Meanings are always of or
about something and to or for someone.3 We shall call that someone the subject
and that something respectively the object. These names must not be understood
here as any ontological categories, but just names for the termini of a temporary
relationship of meaning. When meaning exists or happens, it takes place between
two poles whose roles may be different so that this relationship is not symmetrical.
Just to tell the poles apart, they have these more or less descriptive names so that the
object is the one of which or about what this meaning is, and the subject is the one to
whom the meaning is. In other words, we can say that the object is meaningful and it
means something or rather somehow to the subject. The basic question of semiotics
is how an object can be meaningful to a subject.
The relations of any entity are part of its being, the way it is. Without taking
sides in the ontological dispute as to whether relations are primary over their termini
or other way round, I hope we can safely state that the relationship can affect the
being of its termini, but also the entities can affect their relationships and via them
also other entities. So, for example, the being of a subject can change so that at one
moment it is in one way and at the next moment it can be in another way. Of course,
its being must all the time remain somewhat, or in some sense, similar and stable in
order that we have a reason to call it the same subject at all. Whatever change takes
place in the being of the subject, we probably cannot easily and evidently say what
caused that change. The change could be caused spontaneously by the entity itself or
it could be caused by some other entity via a certain relationship between them, or
thirdly it could be changed just by pure chance – or perhaps it is caused by the joint
effect of all of these (Pikkarainen, 2013).
Further, we could assume that the way of being of all possible entities which can
take part in a meaning relationship is active in such a way that they can at least in some
circumstances cause changes to the ways of being of both themselves and others. The
other side of the coin is a passive being, which etymologically does not mean inert
stableness either, but rather is changing as a consequence of some effect, it suffers
changes. So every relationship between a subject and an object is at least potentially
interactive where both poles can affect and undergo changes to and from each other.
Dewey (1985, p. 113) famously called this active and passive interaction as experience,
but if we add to this his principle of continuity, we can call it action or interaction. This
simplified basic framework for experience of meaning is depicted in Figure 1.
Now the reader may protest that this is not at all about meaning but just about
causality. However, this model differs from the received view of causality because
this is two-way interaction between entities, and causality is often seen as a one-
way effect or determination between events. Nevertheless, we could situate in the
scheme of Figure 1 in the place of subject for example some mechanical device
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EDUCATION, VALUES AND AUTHORITY
Figure 1. The circle of interaction
like a thermostat, or a simple entity like an atom, and then we could discuss the
question whether they experience meanings and what kind of meanings. I see no
serious problem in this kind of discussion, but rather I would say that interactions
between these kinds of mechanical or purely physical beings should be called causal,
and it would be better to restrict them out of proper semiotics. But it is invaluably
important to announce that probably all meaning effects and meaning experiences
necessitate purely causal relations, even though it must be possible to make some
clear difference between causal and meaningful.
The proper area of meanings and semiotics can be provisionally delimited with the
concepts of action, life and competence. This delimitation is unavoidably somewhat
circular, because we should not use any concepts from outside semiotics. For this
reason, we must be cautious with the concept of life as a biological concept. It would be
easy to say that only living creatures can experience meanings, but it seems too difficult
to draw clear limits to living beings. Action is better because no other science can define
it better than semiotics. When we study action as a meaningful object (i.e. “sign”), we
discover that we can call action only those events and processes which seem to have a
competent subject. Competence is the presumed or inferred feature of the subject, which
makes it possible for her to act that way, to be the subject of that action (Greimas, 1987,
pp. 44-46). So, when we discover that something is happening, we can understand it as
some subject’s action if we can presuppose that the subject has the competences needed
for that action. This means that we regard that subject as responsible for that happening.
Life then can be seen as a whole of the actions of a subject.
There is thus something not empirical in action, because competences are not
perceivable, but they can only be presupposed or inferred from a subject’s perceivable
action. Here we have a necessarily circular definition: we decide that the perceived
happening is that subject’s action, and then we infer what competences she has. But we
must first presuppose that someone has the needed competences before we can regard
her as a subject of that action. So we can never be absolutely sure, because competences
are something internal to the subject. But there is also something else which is internal
to the subject. We cannot perceive whether the subject is secretly plotting something,
what kind of alternative actions she is planning, and especially what kind of meanings
she is experiencing. It is just this internal side which differentiates proper semiotic
action, as depicted in Figure 2, from plain physical interaction.
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E. PIKKARAINEN
Figure 2. Action of a competent subject
Now at last we are ready to define meaning as an effect of an object in the environment
of the subject’s action which affects the course of her action. So this is quite a simple
and straightforward definition with a somewhat biosemiotic tone. Some points
must be stressed. The competent subject acts spontaneously and autonomously
directing the course of her action within the limits and possibilities afforded by
the environment. Although any and all of the objects in the environment can affect
the subject and her action, it is always the subject herself who steers the course of
the action – at least partly and at least the internal part of it. As biosemiotics has
stressed, the environment of the subject consists only of the meaningful objects – or
perhaps only of the meanings of the objects. This does not mean that the meanings
were all conscious. That requirement would exclude most of biosemiotics and also
most of the normal actions of humans out of semiotics. It is only required that the
subject actively, and according to her competences, takes in to account in her action
the “passive” effect of some object or objects. Typically, this takes place when
the subject perceives something, but it can also be that she knows or presupposes
something about her environment, perhaps completely tacitly and unconsciously,
and, as often happens, erroneously or fictively.
GOAL OF ACTION AND LEARNING
It is a deep common sense assumption that a competent subject i.e. a proper subject
of some action has always some goal or intention behind her actions that determines
why she acts and what she is striving for as a result. Juridical and often pedagogical
discourse talks about motives. This will be discussed more later, but at the moment
we can say that the goal is an essential part of the subject’s competence. While
action is always in some way goal directed and the environment of the action sets
uncontrollable restrictions to the possibilities of what can happen, it follows that the
goal will not always be achieved. Sometimes the action will be unsuccessful. One
central or perhaps the most important initial function of meanings is that it can tell us
whether we are going to succeed or not, and should we go on with our action, or should
94
we change or stop it. This requires only that the subject can initially differentiate two
meanings: good and bad.4 The good or positive means that for example a particular
perceived object is something useful, and either the action towards it should be
continued or perhaps action should be steered more towards it. Respectively, bad or
negative meaning suggests that action should be changed to some other direction,
and the object should be avoided. This simple meaning structure can be depicted
geometrically as two dimensional co-ordinates where the vertical axis is the amount
and the horizontal axis is the contents of meaning. Here the different possibilities
will be situated in a triangle shaped area according to Figure 3. If meaning is low
then it will be neither good nor bad, but if meaning becomes higher there can be a
contradictory and tensioned situation where meaning can be either good or bad.
Figure 3. The simplest meaning possibilities as “semiotic triangle”
Learning as a competence change (Pikkarainen, in print) seems to be an essential

and organic part of all competent and more or less successful action. The successful
action in a certain kind of environment requires a certain kind of course of action and
that requires certain kinds of competences. The subject can only act in those ways
for which she has competences. If she cannot change the environment, then she is
in need of a change of competences. As long as an action continues successfully, we
may say that the subject can do that. Nevertheless, all the time learning is going on
as the competence of the subject strengthens. As soon as the environment changes
so much that the action does not success any more, we say that now she can no
longer do it. At this time, the need for learning of course intensifies remarkably. If
the competence of the subject changes so that she can again start to act successfully,
we say that she learned (again) to do that. This kind of pragmatic learning can be
depicted with the scheme of Figure 4. We can utilise here the inference alternatives
of Peirce so that the strengthening phase is called induction, the problem phase is the
falsification of the inductive conclusion, and the search for new ways of action is an
abductive phase (Douven, 2011).
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E. PIKKARAINEN
Figure 4. The model of pragmatic learning
When the subject’s action becomes more complex, containing separate action
alternatives like eating, resting, nesting, reproduction and escaping, there will of course
arise a need for more versatile meanings than just good or bad (cf. Stjernfelt, 2007,
Ch. 9). Depending on what action alternative is ranked highest for the subject, the same
object can have a different meaning, but it can still be recognised as same object. A piece
of food can have no or minimal positive meaning when the subject is not hungry, but it
can still be recognised as something special – perhaps for future possible needs. Thus
the object means food even though its meaning can be more or less neutral in the good
vs. bad dimension. This causes the multiplication of qualitative meaning possibilities.
When more qualitative meaning possibilities arise, the previous model of the
semiotic triangle will grow to a semiotic square (Greimas and Courtés, 1982, p. 309).
In a semiotic square (see Figure 5), high meaning creates similarly a tensional axis
between some opposite meanings like food vs. poison, friend vs. enemy or generally
good vs. bad. However, now also in the more neutral situation there are respectively
two possibilities: not-food and not-poison, not-friend and not-enemy, or not-good
and not-bad (see Floch, 2001, pp. 20-23). Something which is not-food may have
a lesser meaning, but it still can be poison, and on this occasion it will again have
more meaning. Anyway it is important to know also what some object is not – and
what else it thus can be.
This multiplication of meaning possibilities and their organisation in internecine
relationships, which is depicted in the semiotic square, makes possible the specifically
Figure 5. Greimassian semiotic square
96
human conceptual learning and internal action based on concepts. However, this
transition will not take place via simple pragmatic learning, but requires education
proper.
EDUCATION AS BECOMING A HUMAN
There is some difference between action and meanings of plainly biosemiotic subjects
like animals and those of human subjects. Before we go to the disputed question
about what is the difference and how deep it is, it is better to stress the similarities
first. Actually, we have here three levels: first, the physical or “physiosemiotic”5
level of plain causal relationships, secondly the biosemiotic or biological level
of living and action based meanings, and thirdly the anthroposemiotic or human
level. All these levels have strictly the same ontological basis. We do not need any
ontological dualities or trialities and not even any ontologically loaded ideas of
emergence. So the differences are only structural and functional, which means that
entities of the lower6 level have a more simple internal and external structure, and
their interaction with their environment is different. They are different and they act
differently. Secondly, the levels are nested so that every entity in the higher level
is also an entity of the lower level and it has all the basic features, possibilities and
restrictions of the entities of the lower level (Heil, 2003; Pikkarainen, 2013).
There are some generally held views about the differences between humans
and animals. Perhaps the most important are following four features: humans have
ethics and moral responsibility; they have a hugely greater ability to mould their
environment; they have an ability use concepts for abstract reasoning and yet a special
kind of self-consciousness. These four features are connected together and form one
whole. The moulding ability is possible because of abstract reasoning, or alternatively,
the changing of the environment requires the development of more abstract concepts.
The ability to affect other people requires ethical control which again, with the use of
abstract concepts, makes self-consciousness possible – and necessary.
All these characteristics can be quite easily understood as features of a human
way of action – not as fixed properties of human beings as substances. However,
as ways of action, these require certain competences which are probably missing
from animals, and perhaps also missing from humans as biological creatures. This
is the critical starting point of classical conceptions of education and Bildung: The
competences for human action must and can be created in action because they are
not innate and they do not develop automatically. Their development, the process of
Bildung, requires educational care, guidance and control – both formal and informal.
HUMANISATION AND USE OF CONCEPTS
We can evaluate those previously mentioned characteristics of the human way of action
differently. The ability to mould the environment so that it will transform radically to
be unrecognisable, or even to destroy it as a living environment is perhaps not such
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E. PIKKARAINEN
a special ability after all, regardless of its possibly fatal consequences. Also animals
and all living beings do it but only on a smaller scale. All action is then affecting the
environment, changing it somehow. Rather the abstract reasoning has made it just
possible to use unforeseeably effective tools for it. So perhaps the use of abstract
concepts and reasoning which makes this possible is the most peculiar and critical
difference between humans and animals. It seems quite clear that this ability has
become possible by the use of human languages. Only language-using humans can
infer logically, monitor their own belief formation, reflect their desires and attribute
thoughts to other beings (Bermúdez, 2003, p. 188). These skills require the ability to
“hold a thought in mind” i.e. to think about a thought and this is possible only through
human language which codifies thoughts as explicit signs (Bermúdez, 2003, p. 172).
Here we must not think of human language as a communication system
consisting of symbols which are just arbitrary signs referring to some objects,
like the simplified language games described by Wittgenstein in the beginning of
Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein, 1981). It is true that the invention of
symbolic or arbitrary reference is an enormous innovation affording a flexible and
effective tool to communicate meanings, but more important is the possibility to use
this tool in thinking. Coarsely this means that by mentioning in inner speech or in
auto-communication the name of some phenomenon a human can evoke internally
the same meanings which would rise if she encountered that phenomenon really in
her environment. In a similar fashion, Wittgenstein’s builder causes his assistant to
bring a brick just by shouting the name. Actually Pavlov created this kind of arbitrary
symbol for his dogs in his laboratory, but only in human use have the linguistic
symbols made it possible that “[Hu]Man is freed from the enthrallment of things by
giving them names” (Thom, 1985, p. 289).
A very important point is that human language is not primarily a communication
system but a modelling system. This together with syntax makes it possible to frame
an indefinite number of non-existent possible worlds (Sebeok, 1991, pp. 56-58).
Yet even this possible articulated reference to non-existent objects does not unveil
the essence of conceptual thinking, but we must in addition to inter-word syntax
take into account the intra-word structures. This means firstly that most, if not all,
concepts are analysable into content components, and in this analysis we must use
other concepts. Secondly, this means that the words of language form an inter-
conceptual network where every concept is definable by other concepts. This is the
core of Saussurean notion of language (Saussure, 1983) and the Greimassian notion
semiotic system (Greimas & Courtés, 1982, p. 295).
Here, however, as Wittgensteinians stress, the language as a reservoir of concepts
is not as important as the use of these concepts. A typical or possible use of language
is the articulation of the models of existing or non-existent parts of our environment
as we saw above, but there is still another use which may be the most important
characteristic feature of a human being and human action. This use is reasoning in
the form of inferring from one model to another. Robert Brandom has propagated an
incisive name for this action as “a game of giving and asking for reasons” (Brandom,
98
2000, 2009). What is peculiar here is that the relations between the sentences or
claims as minimal parts or forms of the models are much more essential than the
relationships between these expressions and their possible objects or referents.
The inferential relationships between the expressions are neither determined by
the objects they refer to, nor by the fixed network of language solely, but rather
they are formed just in this rule based action of giving and asking for reasons.
Their basis is the commitment of the language users to logical rules like “if A and
B then A” and–what is still more important–to rules of material inference like “if
A is red then A is coloured”. Our understanding of the contents or meanings of a
concept is directly dependent on the material inferences we can make from and to
the expressions where that concept is used (Brandom, 2000, p. 61). These rules of
inference and contents of concepts are all the time questionable, and it is just because
of this that we must submit ourselves to that continuous game of giving and asking
for reasons – reasons for our beliefs, our actions, our linguistic expressions and our
inferences. This is the metasemiotic function of human language, and the basis for
our reflective self-consciousness.
WHAT ARE VALUES AND WHERE DO THEY COME FROM?
Ethics is one of the central characteristics of a human being and human action.
Human moral behaviour has much in common with other social animals and it seems
to be deeply rooted in our biological setup developed by evolution (Gazzaniga,
2009), but here I do not mean this basic heritage but rather the moral action and
responsibility in connection with ethics as moral reflection and reasoning. Ethics
as moral reasoning is of course based on the conceptual and inferential reasoning
described above. But it is also the other way around, that conceptual reasoning is
based on a certain kind of moral responsibility and normative commitment to the
inferential rules and linguistic expressions. I will return this idea of Brandom a little
bit later.
The concept of value is quite central to almost all kinds of ethics – and yet is
important in many areas outside ethics, especially in aesthetics. So let’s start from
values. There are some two or three basic ontological assumptions about what values
are. One is the objectivist stance which says that values are something existing
objectively and independently of any subjects’ ideas about them. An objectivist
can be either an idealist like Plato, who thinks that values are objective ideas, or
more naturalist like Aristotle, who thinks that values exist in nature as essences. The
other pole is subjectivism according to which values may be just some subject’s
preferences.7 Both or all of these views have serious problems, especially about
the learnability and knowability of values. In addition to those problems, there is a
conceptual problem about the meaning of the concept of value. Value is something
that is or should be pursued, increased or sheltered. So it is something which is
missing or it is in danger of vanishing. Essential to it is not its existence, but rather
its non-existence.
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E. PIKKARAINEN
As something non-existent or a vanishing object or state of affairs, value is

similar to a goal of action. So it seems to be something subjective in a similar way
as action is necessarily subjective. It must have a subject. But is subjectivism then
right? No, at least from the point of view of pedagogy this would be a problematic
stance because if all subjective goals were equally values then there could not arise
any ethical problems with them. All my doings would then be always valuable and
right, no matter what others think. There could raise social problems but not ethical
ones. So there must be a possibility to ask if this or that goal of my or your action
is really a value or according to a value. A social or intersubjective solution cannot
do either because one should be able to ask this same question about commonly
shared goals.
The solution could be some kind of not-objectivist rationalism in the form of a
Brandomian game of giving and asking for reasons. This solution in a way reduces
ethics to conceptual reasoning, but it does not reduce the contents of ethics i.e.
morality and moral problems to reasoning. Brandom (e.g. 2000, p. 33) stresses the
Kantian roots of his thinking, and the idea that a human being is free to commit
herself to rational rules of both action and thinking. Here we can follow Martin
Kusch’s interpretation of Kantian ethics that a human being must first have learned
and inherited the natural and conventional morals before she can apply her reason
to these probably one sided and controversial principles and conventions of moral
action and evaluation (1983). Actually, I suppose that the adequate learning of
conventional morals – an ability to commit oneself normatively to any rules –
is a prerequisite for rational commitment to all reasoning, both theoretical and
practical.
AUTHORITY AND PEDAGOGY
As stated above, every subject learns all the time as long as it lives and acts. No
special educational authorities are needed for that. Yet we can say that actually the
environment has that authority. It allows some actions and prevents others, and
it requires certain kinds of competences from the subject for successful action.
In pedagogy, this situation changes so that some other people, as individuals and
collectives, take the authority and start to manipulate the learning environments and
to require certain new competences. This taking of authority is not always necessarily
conscious and wilful. For example, parents may just find themselves in that situation
and start acting the way they remember their own parents have acted. But on the
other hand, an educator’s situation typically stirs more or less rational reflection
about the reasons for different alternatives of educational action.
Educating, like all action, has some goals and pursues some values. According
to Greimas there can be two fundamental values or rather value pairs. One is
Life vs. Death and the other is Culture vs. Nature. (These pairs should be situated
to the semiotic square to get the proper value structure.) The first is the basis
for all individual meaning horizons and the second is for all collective or social
100
ones (Greimas & Courtés, 1982, pp. 175, 361). He does not relate to each other
these two pairs which form the high meaning axis of the most basic semiotic
square, respectively in either idiolectal or sociolectal meaningful expression.
My view, however, is that they are developmentally nested so that Life vs. Death
is more original and it is the main value structure on the biosemiotic level. On
the anthroposemiotic level there emerges the new value pair which is partly in
dissonance with the earlier and in principle and at least in some situations start to
control it. With this I mean that biosemiotically Life vs. Death is always identical
with Good vs. Bad, but in social settings it is possible that Death or Not-Life (e.g.
suffering) can be better than Life or Not-Death (e.g. escape) if it happens to be
the prize of promoting or sheltering the value of Culture. This hierarchical value
structure is depicted in Figure 6.8
While all learning and action initially takes place in the biosemiotic sphere,
pursuing Life - whatever it consists of for that subject – and avoiding Death is raised
to the cultural and thus anthroposemiotic level by education. Thus an educator must
be seen of as a special source of authority, not unconditionally compelling and
restricting like the environment of action, but rather as a moral authority which has
an effect through the subject’s own commitments. With the famous Greimassian
(1980, p. 206) actantial analysis this means that an educator is not a Helper but rather
a Sender. However, the situation is not of course so simple, because the educator as
an educating subject must have a Sender herself and she is acting by the mandate
of the Culture. But if we regard Culture as a value rather than an actant, then we
could suppose that the society which gives the statutory authority to the educator is
the final Sender. Nevertheless, this is a problematic view because we earlier stated
that values cannot be reduced to preferences and the laws and perceptions of society
are just more or less shared and collective preferences. So a better candidate for the
final Sender would be a tradition understood as a continuous conceptual research
programme (MacIntyre, 1988). Nevertheless, an educator is a mediating Sender who
can often be seen also as a Helper, or rather an advocate of the educated in her
relationship to society as the hermeneutic tradition of pedagogy has stressed with the
concept of pedagogical relationship (Wulf, 2003, pp. 31-33).
Figure 6. Structure of basic values
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E. PIKKARAINEN
PARADOX OF PEDAGOGY
Values of education, and generally all action are thus either Life values or Culture
values. The former are based on the being of subjects as subjects of action. They
are means-end rational values of any action, but the most basic of them are those
values which make it possible to continue to exist as subjects. Thus they are, of
course, important and necessary, also in the anthroposemiotic sphere. The latter values
could be any aims and contents of existing cultures and traditions, but the special
anthroposemiotic core of these values is the ability to use concepts inferentially. This
is literally a critical ability, because it makes it possible to rationally criticise any ideas,
actions and situations. This is the basis for human freedom but it is itself based on
freedom. As Brandom (2009, p. 117) stresses, it was Kant’s greatest invention that
human beings are free just because they can commit themselves to self-imposed norms
and rules. By following self-made rules, human beings commit themselves to moral
responsibility of what they do and what they should do. Only this commitment makes
the inferential use of concepts and thus any rational deliberation of action possible.
This invention caused for Kant the famous paradoxical core problem of the theory
of education: how can we reconcile freedom as an aim of education and coercion as
its necessary means (Kant, 1992, p. 20). Partly this problem can be now reinterpreted
so that the aim of education is to lift the educated – usually a less experienced person
– to the anthroposemiotic level, and develop her anthroposemiotic competences, but
the means of education (usually used by a more experienced person) must largely
be biosemiotic. A possible direction for a solution to this problem could be the
analysis of a modal structure of human competences. It is important to note that the
question of moral responsibility and rational deliberation is connected to all action,
not just some especially moral action. According to Greimas’s theory, there are four
types of modal competences connected in every special competence of some doing
(Greimas, 1987, pp. 121-). These modal competences are respectively related to the
modal auxiliary verbs: Want, Can, Know and Must.9
Finally, I will briefly draft a model of modal learning which could lead from the
biosemiotic to the anthroposemiotic sphere, and thus realise the Bildung process.
This learning will take place in three stages. The first stage is purely biosemiotic (and
pragmatic). In it, the subject first wants to do something to achieve some state of affairs.
Then the subject tries to do that in some manner. Depending on the environment the
subject can or cannot do it and achieve its goal. Now, and at least after some trials,
the subject will know how it can and how it cannot achieve its goal. This know-how
will take a virtual form of a technical norm: if I want to get X in an environment Y
I must do Z. This recurrent circular process is depicted in Figure 7. In the second
stage, the situation is social and the subject must take into account other subjects
who have their own goals. Now there is, in addition to the physical environment, also
the actantial environment with useful Helpers and dangerous Opponents and mighty
Senders and Receivers. The subject must negotiate and accommodate its goals with the
goals of others. The most important change on this level is through the new medium
102
Figure 7. Model of modal learning
of negotiation: human language which combines the modelling and communication

functions. This makes it possible to transfer to the third stage where the subject can
explicitly discuss its aims and beliefs both with it itself as well as with others. This
starts the game of giving and asking for the reasons, where the reciprocal commitment
to the commonly understandable rules of reasoning is essential. Now the subject can
rationally articulate and form its own desires, ideals and identity (Stojanov, 2007).
CONCLUSIONS
I have attempted here to outline the relationships of the concepts of education,

values and authority. They seem to have multiple and circular connections. Values,
as rationally deliberated and conceptually explicated ideals and goals of action, are
the special characteristic of human rationality. The rationality of values requires on
the one hand their authority over human action, and on the other hand conceptual
reasoning as to why just this or these values must have more authority than others.
The development of competence for conceptual deliberation requires special
pedagogical action and a certain kind of education. That education must on one
hand take the form of biosemiotic influence to the educated via reorganisation of
the environment, but on the other hand it must take a form of just that rational
game of giving and asking for reasons i.e. reciprocal serious dialogue. Our double
problem as educators is at the same time to bear the authority of the mighty Sender
and the authority of pure argument. A helpful aid to avoid the schizophrenia of this
paradoxical situation may be to remember to rationally reflect on the final value of
pedagogy, and order the means according to it and the situation.10
NOTES
1
For an English introduction to the concept of Bildung see Kivelä, Siljander and Sutinen (2012).
2
For Greimas, meaning is the absolute precondition and starting point for semiotic research, but as a
basic concept it is itself undefinable (Greimas, 1987).
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E. PIKKARAINEN
3
See the Peircean triadic concept of sign in which the sign vehicle or representamen conveys something
about the object to the interpretant (Peirce & Marty, 2012).
4
Thom (1985, p. 284) speaks about attractor and repelling signs and Deely (2004) uses symbols + and -,
and also differentiates a neutral alternative 0 with no meaning.
5
Deely (2001) has suggested the term physiosemiosis referring to Peirce’s pansemiotic views. Although
I like this term, I disagree with him to some extent about the nature of that phenomenon.
6
“Lower” is not a pejorative term here but it means only the earlier mentioned items in the list, and
“higher” respectively means later mentioned ones.
7
See Kristjánsson’s (2010) quite similar analysis of alternative ontologies behind ethical emotion
education as rationalism and sentimentalism.
8
A natural conclusion is that there are no values in physiosemiotic level.
9
See a more detailed analysis in Pikkarainen (in print) and Tarasti (2012).
10
This reflective activity is traditionally referred to as a concept of pedagogical tact (Van Manen, 1991).
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Brandom, R. (2000). Articulating reasons: An introduction to inferentialism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
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Brandom, R. (2009). Reason in philosophy: Animating ideas. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press.
Deely, J. (2001). Physioemiosis in the semiotic spiral: A play of musement 1. Sign Systems Studies, 29(1),
27.
Deely, J. (2004). Semiotics and Jakob von Uexkull’s concept of Umwelt. Sign Systems Studies, 32(1),
11–34.
Dewey, J. (1985). Democracy and education. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey:
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Douven, I. (2011). Peirce on abduction (supplement). In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia
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abduction/peirce.html
Floch, J. (2001). Semiotics, marketing and communication: Beneath the signs, the strategies. Basingstoke,
England: Palgrave.
Gazzaniga, M. S. (2009). Inhimillinen: Ainutlaatuisuutemme tiede [Human: the science behind what
makes us unique], K. Pietiläinen (Trans.). Helsinki, Finland: Terra Cognita.
Greimas, A. J., & Courtés, J. (1982). Semiotics and language: An analytical dictionary. Bloomington, IN:
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E. Tarasti (Trans.). Helsinki, Finland: Gaudeamus.
Greimas, A. J. (1987). On meaning: Selected writings in semiotic theory. London, England: Pinter.
Heil, J. (2003). From an ontological point of view. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
Kant, I. (1992). Kant on education [Ueber Pädagogik], A. Churton (Trans.). Bristol, England: Thoemmes
Press.
Kivelä, A., Siljander, P., & Sutinen, A. (2012). Between Bildung and growth–connections and
controversies. In P. Siljander, A. Kivelä & A. Sutinen (Eds.), Theories of Bildung and growth:
Connections and controversies between continental educational thinking and American pragmatism
(pp. 303–312). Rotterdam, the Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Kristjánsson, K. (2010). Emotion education without ontological commitment? Studies in Philosophy &
Education, 29(3), 259–274. doi:10.1007/s11217-009-9165-z
Kusch, M. (1983). Kantin oppi kategorisesta imperatiivista. luonnollinen siveellisyys ja kategorinen
imperatiivi. [Kant’s doctrine of categorical imperative: Natural morality and categorical imperative].
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MacIntyre, A. (1988). Whose justice? Which rationality? London, England: Duckworth.

Peirce, C. S., & Marty, R. (2012). Peirce’s arisbe: 76 definitions of the sign by C.S. Peirce. Retrieved
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Eetu Pikkarainen
University of Oulu
Finland
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MAREK TESAR
9. THE PEDAGOGY AND POLITICS OF GOVERNING

CHILDHOODS THROUGH IMAGES
INTRODUCTION
This chapter analyses the power and pedagogical importance of images and stories
in children's literature. The construction of childhood, and the production of child
subjects are problematised by theorising the pedagogical importance of images in
educational settings. The politically and ideologically charged context of communist
Czechoslovakia in the 1950s provides a backdrop against which the power of images
is analysed as a theoretical lens, to complicate understandings of the production
of child-subjects. This chapter utilises the work of essayist and philosopher Vaclav
Havel, who in the 1970s introduced the story of a Greengrocer. The Greengrocer
uses a sign to depict and analyse the complexities and meanings of the production of
subjects in an ideologically charged society.
In this chapter, the signs and images of totalitarian stories, viewed through a
Havelian lens, contribute to the wider field of edusemiotics in line with Semetsky’s
(2013) and Stables’ (2008) work, and their forthcoming outputs. As Semetsky (2013)
argues: “A sign not only represents but also causes other signs to come to mind as
a consequence of itself: this relation is expressed in the medieval formula aliquid
stat pro aliquo, which is translated as something standing for something else”
(p. 1). And, she claims further, “[i]mages belong to a category of signs, and from
a semiotic point of view [an] image is an icon, or representation, of the real world”
(p. 2). In a Havelian (1985) sense the sign becomes the creative and productive
force that shapes each citizen and child in the ideological setting. The Greengrocer
is a powerful metaphor that represents child-subject positions and constructions of
childhoods resisting the stories, images and signs of childhoods in terms of simple
indoctrinations. Stables (2008) argues that, in relation to childhood, “living is
semiotic engagement” (p. 4), and that the study of childhood is justified as a study
in its own right; thus children, just as adults, are “semiotic engagers” (p. 4). In this
chapter, the binaries of good and bad, happy and unhappy, communist and capitalist
childhoods, serve as a construct for analysing the complexities of the power and
politics of childhood and the production of child subjects through images and texts.
The established binaries of childhoods are problematised, beyond the concern of
indoctrination of children, to a point where the signs in this study of childhood point
to interesting and unexpected solutions. The signs and images of texts and stories
represent ideologically charged childhoods. The Czechoslovak totalitarian lesson of

M. TESAR
childhoods is that they exemplify and position the way we think about childhoods in
any global or ideological contexts.
THE GREENGROCER’S STORY
The focus on Havel’s (1985) story of a Greengrocer is a performance of edusemiotics.

The work with the Greengrocer’s signs has very strong pedagogical connotations in
the construction of childhoods and the production of childhood subjectivities (Tesar,
2013; 2014). The examination of power relations and the theorisation of childhood
subjectivities lead the analysis to the subjectivities of a victim, supporter and rebel.
The story of the Greengrocer is central to Havel’s analysis of power relations. It
tells a tale of the ordinary, everyday life experience of a shopkeeper, who runs a
fruit and vegetable store, which Havel uses to demonstrate the complex nature of
power relations in the totalitarian communist society, which can be seen as any
ideologically charged society. Havel also analyses the discursive difference between
the public and private domains, and the notions of living within the truth and living
within a lie, which are central to where he locates, and how he understands, power.
The Greengrocer represents the Czechoslovak citizen of the 1970s and 1980s, and
Havel (1985) questions his “irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his
ideals” (p. 27).
The Greengrocer in the totalitarian society publicly behaves as is expected of
him; he does not do anything extraordinary, and lives his life expecting that the
system will take no notice of him. He participates in the public domain, attends all
required meetings, displays the proper flags in his windows, and uses ideologically
correct language. He does all of this to remain untouchable by the system. He
knows and understands it is only a game, and he accepts its rules and plays his
part well. Havel focuses on one particular moment of the Greengrocer’s life, when
he receives a sign with a slogan on it from the headquarters of his shop, as he has
done each year before that. The sign comes with a very simple request: to place it
into the window of his store. The sign states: “Workers of the world unite!” The
slogan does not say anything surprising or new; this information, this request, was
expressed the year before and the year before that. He knows it well, as he sees
the same signs in other shop windows. So the Greengrocer places this sign into the
window of his shop, right between the onions and carrots, as he has been doing
every year.
Havel is interested in why the Greengrocer places the sign in his shop window.
The Greengrocer has always done so, because he is aware of the consequences of
not displaying it: he would most likely be punished and considered a disturbance to
the system. He could also be labelled a traitor and be accused of disloyalty to the
system. So if the Greengrocer wants to live life as he has lived it in the past years, he
needs to display this sign. The sign means that he officially, publicly declares that he
accepts the totalitarian system, and that he is ready to live in harmony with it and its
structures. Havel (1985) argues that this is the message that the greengrocer conveys
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THE PEDAGOGY AND POLITICS OF GOVERNING CHILDHOODS THROUGH IMAGES
as he displays the sign: “I, the greengrocer XY, live here, and I know what I must
do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond
reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace” (p. 28).
When the Greengrocer displays the sign, he acts as if he accepts the meaning of
the slogan “Workers of the world, unite”. For Havel, the meaning of his actions lies
not in the slogan but in the performative aspect of responding to the request and
placing the slogan into the window of his fruit and vegetable shop. This act carries
a different message than the semantics of the slogan itself. As the Greengrocer
displays the sign, the message conveyed to all citizens and children walking past
his store is: “I am just like you, I play my part in the system, I displayed the sign in
my shop just as all of you have done your little parts. You cannot badmouth me, you
cannot tell on me, and informers have nothing on me. I am supporting the system,
and my public record is clean. My managers know that I have fulfilled my part and
that I have obeyed the order.”
Havel (1985) imagined what the Greengrocer would think of himself, if the sign
he was asked to display stated: “I am afraid and therefore unquestionably obedient”
(p. 28). The Greengrocer would then most likely be embarrassed by it, and he would
care about what the sign says. The semantics of the slogan would immediately
become essential to the story, as it would produce a response and reveal the personal
feelings in the Greengrocer. He would probably feel undignified, he would be
wary of anyone looking at him and measuring him against this sign. However, the
semantics of the slogan that he was actually asked to display allow him to think:
“there is nothing bad, unusual or wrong with the workers from all around the world
getting together and uniting”. So as Havel (1985) states, the slogan supports the
Greengrocer in
concealing from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same
time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade
of something high. And that something is ideology … [i]t offers human beings
the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for
them to part with them. (p. 28)
Havel means to show that citizens and children living their everyday, ordinary lives
are central to power relations. Everyone is part of the system, even if they are on the
fringes of society and are often seen and portrayed by the traditional model of power
as powerless (Havel, 1985). In the totalitarian society, all citizens are the victims
and the pillars of the system, as they struggle with and at the same time support
the totalitarian developments. The role ideology plays is to ensure that the system
is working, as Havel claims, in accordance with the natural laws of life and the
universe; and the system is desperately trying to maintain this illusion. However, the
totalitarian system does not publicly reveal this struggle, and instead presents itself
with a public façade of care, support and democracy. The next sections of this chapter
will analyse these images and texts of childhoods and children’s literature, that have
deep pedagogical implications for the construction and production of childhoods.
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M. TESAR
VOICES OF CHILDHOODS IN POLITICAL TRIALS
The totalitarian era of the 1950s is remembered as a dark and cruel time in the
history of Czechoslovakia. It is considered to have been an era of monstrous deeds,
in which puppet trials were conducted to deal with political opposition, businessmen
and others who resisted or just did not fit the profile of the Communist Party (Ivanov,
1991). The allegations they faced were for crimes such as espionage, plotting a coup
against the country and supporting the Western imperialists. Governing agencies
conducted public trials to broadcast them on the radio. In perhaps the largest trial,
and the one most comprehensively covered by the media, thirteen accused were
collectively judged. Four of them were executed and the rest received long sentences
that sent them to prison for decades. Much has been written about this trial, and what
it represented in the totalitarian political environment (Formánková & Koura, 2008;
Ivanov, 1991; Kaplan, 1995). The literature analysed trials as a demonstration of
political power, to ascertain the Communist Party as a leading force in the country,
and to attempt to follow the example of the Stalinist Soviet Union in establishing its
ideology. It also sent a clear message to the citizens about what could happen if they
disagreed, privately or publicly, with the establishment. The accused were regularly
beaten, tortured and kept in inhumane conditions before the trial, while they were
threatened with abuse to their families in order to make them sign an agreement with
often absurd charges.
There was a clear focus on childhoods and education during these trials.
Government agencies instructed teachers to talk to children about the “grand-
betrayal behaviour of the marauders” (Formánková, 2007b, p. 28) that faced trial.
Teachers in schools were also advised to “organize essay writing classes on the
topic of Betrayers of our country”, and to guide children to focus on the “rotten
character of the accused” (p. 28). The trials were broadcast on school radio, and
teachers then gave lectures to explain and emphasize their importance, describing
the accused as warmongering, bloodthirsty monsters who wanted to destroy
peaceful childhoods. Teachers also checked with children how their parents
were talking about the trials at home. Children then cut and pasted newspaper
articles and pictures about the trials on school boards, and the feeling of the era
was summarized in a short film shown in cinemas, which sent a clear message
of how the working class including children dealt with traitors to the country
(see Ceskoslovenský filmový týdeník, 2008; Formánková, 2006, 2007a, 2007b;
Formánková & Koura, 2008, Tesar, 2013).
Children were also targeted through children’s magazines, where articles
told stories about the accused, about why they were tried, and emphasised their
deviant values, as opposed to those of the working class. These stories were
published alongside texts, images and articles about notions of peace and fairy tales.
Formánková (2007) reproduced the following excerpt from the children’s magazine
Pioneer, which illustrates how childhoods were produced through texts, using
colourful, imaginative, metaphoric language. Childhood itself was under threat,
110
as the accused were represented as able to contaminate the ideas that constituted
totalitarian childhoods – peace, work, progress:
[The accused] worked their whole life against the people, and therefore now
they have been kicked out to the rubbish bin, labelled history. From the mud of
this bin they attempted to come back to power and fame through acts of treason
against our country, murder and nuclear war. Only with the strongest disgust is
it possible to look at their faces, inscribed with a deep hatred of our democratic
country and its people. As some kind of a sneaky, treacherous octopus, that fears
the light, afraid of seeing its own repulsiveness, these wrecks attempted to attack
our progress and our structures. (Pionýr, cited in Formánková, 2007b, p. 28)
Children were not only the recipients of these texts, but according to the governing
agencies children’s voices actively participated in the trials and called for capital
punishment of the accused. In a Havelian sense, the children were both the victims
and supporters of this system. The court received many resolutions from the public,
demanding that the accused be sentenced, some of them signed by entire factories and
businesses and others were collective letters written by school classes (see Figure 1).
Figure 1. Children’s signatures on the collective letter arguing for the strictest punishment
for the accused. In return children promise to be more vigilant as guardians of their
homeland (the letter cited in Formánková, 2007b, p. 29, my photograph of an archival
document)
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M. TESAR
It is, however, important to note that other letters were also received by the court,
some even from abroad, calling for mercy for the accused (Formánková, 2008).
This chapter is not concerned whether the children’s letters were really written by
children, or whether children in fact believed in the accused’s guilt, or even how much
teachers or other agencies are represented in these letters. The authenticity of these
archival documents is no longer relevant if these children’s voices are considered as
a discursive construct. These letters are as signs an important part of the totalitarian
discourse, as they were published and used as representative of “true” and “real”
childhoods, and therefore produced a reality of how children were encouraged to
think about themselves as citizens within their own childhoods. For example, in one
such letter children were outraged and used revolutionary language in their request
for action. The children demanded the strictest punishment for the accused, and in
return, just like workers in the factories, they made a promise: “The children of the
accused will be crying for sure, that they have parents who are digging graves for
them, and for us all. But we, children, pledge that we will not let our country be
overthrown and we will report every suspicious person” (Formánková, 2007b, p. 28).
Some of these letters were publicly read at the trial. Children listened to these stories
about how their childhoods should look and how they should behave on the school
radios. In another letter children expressed their thanks to the state police for their
vigilance and protection. The children then made a pledge that in their childhoods they
would raise their vigilance as they become young guardians of the country (Formánková,
2007b). All children signed these letters as individuals. However, there was no space for
an individual voice in totalitarian Czechoslovakia, and in these letters all children had
only one, collective voice. This voice called for the protection of their childhoods by the
state police and militia, and it demanded that childhoods be peaceful, full of progress
and happy futures. These letters demanded that this image of childhood be maintained
and protected. Childhoods were allegedly threatened by the accused, and produced
vocal, actively protesting children, who requested strict punishment for the accused.
CHILDREN’S MAGAZINES AND THE CONCEPT OF “WORK”
Another story from 1950s addresses the concept of work. The importance of work
was strongly emphasized in the totalitarian schooling system. Instead of “Hello” or
“Good day”, the phrase “Honour the work” was used in work places and schools. It
meant that a child was honouring the work of the comrade teacher; and the comrade
teacher was then honouring the work, the learning, of a child. Work was an individual
necessity and a public requirement, as every citizen was employed. However, this
greeting was not supposed to be used in situations that would give the notion of work
negative connotations – for example in the pub or in public bathrooms (Macura,
2008). In addition, work was also celebrated as a concept, every year on May Day.
Slogans utilised the concept of “work” and were promoted by government agencies,
as they supported government policies while nurturing a hatred of Western countries.
One of the slogans was “he who stands on the pavement supports America”, which
112
meant that in order to be considered “good” everyone should be busy working to

support the country, whether in a factory or in a school.
In totalitarian Czechoslovakia, children and their childhoods were celebrated
through the notion of work. Every school, factory, every business had a plan that
was not only supposed to be met, but to be exceeded with extra production and
profit. Education operated on the same principles as factories, and as is documented
in the letter below, these sites shared a collective style of goal planning. Childhoods
in totalitarian Czechoslovakia were produced through a promise, as portrayed in
the children’s collective letter addressed to the President of Czechoslovakia in 1953
(collected with many other letters and speeches by a researcher Kodym):
Dear Mr. President, we often talk and remember your work for our dear country
with our comrade school principal. We want you to like our classroom, so we
have arranged it with flowers. Watering of flowers and keeping the classroom
in order and clean is the job of selected children. We have started our pupil
organisation. We are learning based on plans that we have established. We
like going to school and are very excited about learning. Before Your birthday
we had a week of “excellent work”. However, it did not end up as good as we
were expecting. Therefore we, schoolchildren, decided that we will repeat the
week of “excellent work”. All of us are trying hard so our results will be better
than last time. We were competing in the following categories: More time
spent learning 97%; Obedience of school rules 97%; Changing shoes at school
100%; Coming to school early 92%; Cleanliness of the classroom 100%; And
overall fulfilment of our plan 97,5%. Dear Mr. President, we hope that you will
like our sincere attempt to improve. We wish you, Mr. President, that you will
be healthy for a long time and that you can further work for the benefit of all
of us (Kodym, 1999, pp. 57-58).
These voices produced childhood subjectivities representing a unified power in their
promise to the governing agencies of better learning and greater obedience. As for
the adults in the factories and businesses, the celebrated goal in childhoods is not
just to meet the work plan, but also to exceed it. Teachers played a critical role in
this incorporation of work into totalitarian childhoods, educated and guided by the
pedagogy of Soviet educator Makarenko (1953). Makarenko established working
colonies in the Soviet Union before World War II to re-educate young children and
delinquents. He developed the concepts of productive labour that led to the formation
of the self and of an understanding of the importance of the collective and its power
over the individual, including through peer pressure. These were the philosophical
underpinnings of the educational system in Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, which
schools invited parents to learn about through lectures on Makarenko’s techniques
of teaching and nurturing children.
In my archival work children’s magazines were also a critical disseminator of the
concept of “work” in childhoods. Wild Thyme published the graphic story about Ferda
the Ant, where he was “disgusted by laziness” (Sekora, 1948, p. 46). Ferda made
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M. TESAR
statements such as “every sleeper is a crook” (p. 46) as animals and bugs hibernated
for the winter. Ferda informs children about the purpose of work, as he narrates that
it “will bring us happiness; to that, children, I want to lead you” (p. 46). Ferda also
explored work in another story published as Ferda the Ant works for the five year plan.
In this story Ferda reads the newspaper, which outlines a Five-year building plan, and
he thrillingly yells: “New life is calling us” (Sekora, 1949a, p. 80). Inspired by what he
has read about, Ferda gathers fellow ants and excitedly tells them: “Ants, what are you
doing? Do you want to be ashamed?” (p. 80). And all ants join in with the construction
of a building with the statement “We will work hard, we are not just for having fun”
(p. 80). Ferda reveals the plan that ‘’we will work all together, we will build a new
school” (p. 80). And soon well dressed, bourgeois-looking bugs and beetles, smoking
and fat, that represent the non-working class citizens, enter the building titled: “School
of work”. Ferda claims that in the “School of Work” “we change, re-educate and re-
train everyone” (p. 80). And, in the last panel of the story the same bugs that entered
the school as”rebellious” individuals, leave wearing working class uniforms, carrying
shovels and picks, ready to work. Ferda states with satisfaction that “then they will be
proud like us, and united as us, ants” (p. 80, see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Ferda the Ant builds the “School of Work” (Sekora, 1949a, p. 80, my photograph
of an archival document)
114
In the stories published in the children’s magazines, work was truly esteemed above
all else. Ferda the Ant also emphasized the importance of meeting and planning for
work, before the work itself commenced (Sekora, 1950f). In another graphic novel
bugs and beetles come to see their teacher with souvenirs of their holiday break:
one carries a flower, another a strawberry, another a painting. Ferda the Ant brings
just a simple note stating that he has volunteered as a worker for 35 days, and the
teacher writes his name on the blackboard as the winner (Sekora, 1949b). In another
issue of Wild Thyme children were asked to be the editorial board. Throughout the
journal, comments appeared about how the children’s editorial board had enjoyed
individual articles and why they thought they should be published. For example,
children approved the story in which a father told his daughter when she wanted
to go to work with her mother: “Your work - is your kindergarten … Listen and
obey your teacher Zinajda Fjodorovna, to eat well and play – that is your work”
(Baruzdin, 1951, p. 127). Underneath the story is a statement from the children’s
editorial board saying that they approved this story as it tells a tale about children’s
understanding of work.
The concept of work was also the subject of poems. One of them was published
in Wild Thyme, about a young boy in an accompanying picture sitting on a hill
and admiring the factory in the valley below. The boy wishes that he was in the
factory, producing the best goods. He dreams about leaving work after his shift,
and others telling him “Honour the work” (Vrátilová, 1950g). In another poem
the child makes a promise to be like his dad, and to work as hard as three men,
to make his dad and the country proud (Blažej, 1950). Wild Thyme also states
what constitutes a good childhood, by featuring a poem on its front page: “If a
boy likes to work, if he likes to learn, then I can write that he is a very good boy”
(Majakovskij, 1950, p. 67).
The government agencies were concerned with children, not only with adults,
and with the way they were positioned towards ideas that constructed the totalitarian
reality. The constructs of childhoods in totalitarian Czechoslovakia were tightly
bound with the concept of work. Childhoods were produced based on the unifying
notions of making “them” into “us”, as portrayed in the stories above. Perhaps the
most pertinent illustration and image of childhoods was Ferda the Ant, as he sent all
“ununiformed” bugs and beetles to the School of Work. It was education that had the
power to reform everyone, no matter where they came from, to work for the common
goal of benefitting the country, government agencies and the working class, both in
the public and private spheres of life. The images, signs and performances of notion
of work were shaping and moulding childhoods.
HAPPINESS IN CHILDHOODS
Childhoods in totalitarian Czechoslovakia were also produced by contrasting

stories with those of the allegedly not so happy and fortunate childhoods of Western
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M. TESAR
countries. In the texts and stories, childhoods in Czechoslovakia were portrayed as

happy, peaceful, full of admiration and love for work, while childhoods in capitalist
countries were portrayed as exposed to forced, hard labour and suffering. The stories
taught children a divided, black and white, view of the world. The following letter,
with the introduction by the editors, was published in Wild Thyme in 1950, and with
its strong emotional appeal it made clear who should be blamed for the production
of unhappy childhoods in Italy:
Not yet do all children celebrate Christmas and New Year the way we, Soviet
children, or children from the countries with a people democracy do. There are
still some countries, where workers and farmers do not rule, but where “sirs”
rule. In Italy, American “sirs” rule. They are making a lot of money – and
Italian workers and their children live in despair and hunger. This is a picture
of Christmas for 14-year-old Diminico Masari, who has written to us:
... last year I finished 5th grade at school. My father is a poor worker, and
has been unemployed for two years. Therefore I went to work to support the
family. In our country “sirs” employ a child rather than an adult worker because
they can pay them less. I work in the joinery and I earn 1000 lires per week.
However I fell the other day and I broke my arm. Then a car, full of drunken
American soldiers, hit me and they broke my leg. I have to pay for the medical
treatment myself. I lost my mum when I was 4 years old. She had tuberculosis.
In our land there is huge hunger, because capitalists rule it. They believe that
only they are allowed to eat. I wish they would stop slaving and using the
workers. When I grow up, I will be fighting for this. (Masari & Materídouška,
1950, p. 109, see Figure 3)
Figure 3. Portrait of Western childhood in the children’s magazine (Masari & Materídouška,
1950, p. 109, my photograph of an archival document)
116
Figure 4. Comparison of Western and Czechoslovak childhoods as portrayed in Wild Thyme

(Wild Thyme, 1950k, p. 84, my photograph of an archival document)
CONCLUDING COMMENTS
This powerful letter was not the only text about other childhoods that children were
subjected to. Similar stories and poems were published, that emphasised unhappy
working class childhoods in capitalist countries where the warmongering masters
govern childhoods, and praised the Soviet Union and Stalin, as childhoods in
Czechoslovakia are not subjected to manual work (Kohoutek, 1950; Materídouška,
1950; Janczarski, 1951; see also Figure 4). How happiness is produced in totalitarian
childhoods is the topic of the poem They and Us, published on the cover of Wild
Thyme: “About new war they speak, they threaten the world with nuclear bomb – we
grow in peace, build homes, under the blue sky, to the future years” (Michalkov,
1951c, p. 125). Childhoods in totalitarian Czechoslovakia were produced through
the strict indoctrination of the top-down model that disregarded boundaries between
public and private. Children understood that childhoods were about the values of
honouring work, peace and sacrifice. Their childhoods were constructed through
the stories and images of ideal childhoods in ideological settings, in literature about
them and for them, and through their own stories that they shared. “Good” children
loved and protected the country, became good workers; were not afraid, and did not
hesitate to pass the strictest judgment about, or report, suspicious people, even if it
concerned their own family. Childhoods were produced in both public and private
spaces, where the country and collective good became more pertinent than individual
desires. Happy childhoods were a part of the notion of building a paradise on earth
(Macura, 2008). For totalitarian Czechoslovakia, this paradise already existed in
the Soviet Union, and through construction, hard work, and by incorporating Soviet
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M. TESAR
customs, totalitarian Czechoslovakian childhoods were seen as also having this ideal
future within reach some day. These constructed childhoods were interconnected
and united by common goals, as the public sphere penetrated the private one, and
work time fused with free time. The stories disseminated to children are “often
indicators of the dominant values in the society” (Moynihan, 1973, p. 166) that
shape children’s lives.
The totalitarian system operated in a mode of a top down notion of power, where
teachers executed clear guidance of government agency directives, with a strong
tension between the public and private domains, where the public arena attempted
to overtake private lives. Totalitarian childhoods were filled with propaganda, and I
have analysed some of the stories of this work in light of constructions of Stalinist
childhoods and the childhood subjectivities produced. The Havelian argument of
moving beyond the binaries, and beyond the top-down notions of power becomes
clear in the analysis of his argument about victims and supporters of these stories.
The analysis of this era, the images, the signs, the stories and texts highlights a
striking resemblance with other ideological systems. In a toned down form, child
subjects and childhoods are produced, and childhoods are governed, through the
power of images in complex ways in any ideological contexts.
REFERENCES
Baruzdin, S. (1951). Matčina práce. Wild Thyme, 7(9), 127.
Blažej, J. (1950). Jako táta. Wild Thyme, 7(1), 9.
Československý filmový týdeník. (2008). American bug (English subtitles): Communist propaganda
terror (Archival film). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28N6TSaKQ-g
Formánková, P. (2006). Propaganda pro nejmenší. Detská literatura ve službách komunistické propagandy
(1948-1956). In I. Budil & T. Zíková (Eds.), Totalitarizmus II. – Zkušenost Střední a Východní Evropy
(pp. 43–49). Plzeň, Czech Republic: Filozofická fakulta Západočeská Univerzita.
Formánková, P. (2007a). Propaganda pro nejmenší. Dějiny a Současnost, 29(1), 17–20.
Formánková, P. (2007b). “Vypořádali jsme se s Horákovou, vypořádáme se i s americkým broukem!”
Kampaň provázející proces s JUDr. Miladou Horákovou. Paměť a Dějiny, 2007(1), 20–41.
Formánková, P. (2008). Kampaň proti ‘americkému brouku’ a její politické souvislosti. Paměť a Dějiny,
2008(1), 22–38.
Formánková, P., & Koura, P. (2008). Žádáme trest smrti: Propagandistická kampaň provázející proces s
Miladou Horákovou a spol. Praha, Czech Republic: Ústav pro stadium totalitných režimů.
Havel, V. (1985). The power of the powerless. In J. Keane (Ed.), The power of the powerless: Citizens
against the state in central - eastern Europe (pp. 23–96). London, UK: Hutchinson.
Ivanov, M. (1991). Justiční vražda aneb Smrt Milady Horákové. Praha, Czechoslovakia: Betty.
Janczarski, C. (1951). Chceme se učit. Wild Thyme, 7(11), 164–165.
Kaplan, K. (1995). Největší politický proces: “M. Horáková a spol.. Praha, Czech Republic: Ústav pro
Soudobé Dějiny AV ČR.
Kodym, O. (1999). Pod pokličkou: Malá čítanka zajímavostí až kuriozit z archivů ÚV KSČ a kanceláře
Prezidenta republiky. Praha, Czech Republic: O.K.
Kohoutek. (1950). Štedrý večer před třiceti lety. Wild Thyme, 7(7–8), 111–112.
Macura, V. (2008). Šťastný věk: Symboly, emblémy a mýty 1948–1989. Praha, Czech Republic: Academia.
Majakovskij, V. (1950). Jaký jsi? Wild Thyme, 7(5), 1.
Makarenko, A. S. (1953). Metodika organizace výchovného procesu. Praha, Czechoslovakia: SPN.
Masari, D., & Mateřídouška. (1950). Vánoce v Zemi Bídy. Wild Thyme, VII(7–8), 109–110.
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Mateřídouška. (1950). Ruská revoluce. Wild Thyme, 7(3), 37–38.

Michalkov, S. (1951). Oni a my. Wild Thyme, 7(9), 125.
Moynihan, R. B. (1973). Ideologies in children’s literature: Some preliminary notes. Children’s Literature,
2, 166–172.
Sekora, O. (1948). Kousky mládence Ferdy Mravence. Wild Thyme, 5(3), 48.
Sekora, O. (1949a). Ferda mravenec pracuje pro Pětiletku. Wild Thyme, 5(5), 80.
Sekora, O. (1949b). Kousky mládence Ferdy Mravence. Wild Thyme, 6(1), 16.
Sekora, O. (1950). Kousky mládence Ferdy Mravence. Wild Thyme, 6(14), 224.
Semetsky, I. (2013). The edusemiotics of images: Essays on the art~science of tarot. Rotterdam, the
Netherlands: Sense Publishers.
Stables, A. (2008). Childhood and the philosophy of education: An anti-Aristotelian perspective. London,
UK: Continuum.
Tesar, M. (2013). My Feelings: Power, politics and childhood subjectivities. Educational Philosophy and
Theory. doi:10.1080/00131857.2013.781496
Tesar, M. (2014). Reconceptualising the child: Power and resistance within early childhood settings.
Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 15(4).
Vrátilová, M. (1950). Úderník. Wild Thyme, 7(17), 1.
Marek Tesar
University of Auckland
New Zealand
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INNA SEMETSKY
10. LEARNING EXISTENTIAL LESSONS

The Edusemiotics of Images
This chapter presents education in its broader informal or cultural aspect in terms
of learning existential lessons in life, in experience. John Dewey considered all
education to be necessarily moral. He noticed that if “education … is identical
with the operation of living a life which is fruitful and … significant, the …
ultimate value which can be set up is just the process of living itself” (Dewey,
1916/1924, p. 248). The ancient Stoics developed the idea that virtue is a kind of
technê or craft of life based on the proper understanding of the structure of the
universe. A semiotic perspective, in the framework of Charles Sanders Peirce’s
philosophy, posits the whole universe as composed of signs that as such permeate
nature, culture and the human mind. Learning, for Peirce, is achieved by synthetic
consciousness that constitutes an expanded field of meanings in the process of
learning from experience, which is always already perfused with signs. Logic as
semiotics defies the classical tertium non datur principle representing the law
of the excluded middle, which is the very basis of the language of propositions
and the principle of non-contradiction established long ago by Aristotle: either a
proposition is true or its negation is true. There is nothing in-between the two parts
of the contradiction. Signs however are relational entities that defy the logic of
either-or. The relation is ensured by the included third of interpretants, in this or
that guise. As John Deely has argued, human experience per se has an interpretive
structure: “in the heart of semiotics is the realization that the whole of human
experience, without exception, is an interpretive structure mediated and sustained
by signs” (Deely, 1990, p. 5).
Signs cannot be reduced to their linguistic representations but encompass also
images and pictures. Importantly, and according to Chinese wisdom, a picture
may be worth thousands of words. Semiotics considers pictures as well as stories
consisting of pictures to belong to the category of signs: not only do “pictures have
a continuous structure … it induces the reader to … read the picture as if it were a
written text” (Posner, 1989, p. 276). This chapter focuses on the edusemiotics of
Tarot images (Semetsky, 2013a) arguing that the interpretive structure of experience
expresses itself via the pictorial language of Tarot symbolism. Tarot images are
interpretable signs that symbolically represent typical existential life-lessons that

I. SEMETSKY
are to be learned. Such a perspective is not entirely new – even if it is novel in

the context of educational philosophy and pedagogy. Russian philosopher Valentin
Tomberg (1900-1973) in his monumental volume devoted to the meditations on the
22 images of the so-called Major Arcana of Tarot (Anonymous, 2002) equated each
Arcanum with a specific moral lesson. Etymologically, Arcana as a noun refers to
the Latin arca as a chest; arcere as a verb means to shut or to close; symbolically,
Arcanum (singular) is a tightly shut treasure chest holding a secret: the meaning and
sense of such a lesson.
The word Arcanum refers to an often missing or obscured element in our
experience, which is necessary to know, to discover in practical life so as to
become fruitful and creative in our approach to multiple life-tasks situated in the
midst of experiential situations, events and our complex relationships with others
when we face decisions and choices or encounter moral dilemmas. Therefore by
its very definition each Arcanum – each Tarot image – implies existential and
moral dimensions of experience pertaining to what Dewey (1922/1988) called
human conduct. If and when discovered, it becomes a powerful motivational force
to facilitate a transformation in our consciousness and way of life alike and thus
to accomplish an important ethical and educational objective. Antoine Faivre, a
Sorbonne scholar in Hermetic philosophy, described “Tarot [as] a specific art [that]
through a hermeneutic of situations and characters… opens out upon a gnosis”
(Faivre, 1994, p. 96). Gnosis is deep inner knowledge that involves both “intuition
and the certainty of possessing a method permitting access to such knowledge”
(Faivre, 1994, p. 19) – this method is the edusemiotics of Tarot images constituting
what may be called an existential, informal, pedagogy. Faivre emphasized that
our understanding of Tarot symbolism requires “a personal effort of progressive
elucidation through several successive levels [as] a form of hermeneutics” (Faivre,
1994, p. 5) that ensures an unorthodox epistemic access to the deep, hidden in the
unconscious, level of tacit knowledge.
Every sign has something enfolded within it – something “other” than itself
which will have been explicated when a given sign is interpreted. In the process of
narrating meanings hiding in the Arcana, “the im-plicit is made ex-plicit; what was
unconsciously assumed is exposed to the light of conscious day” (Dewey, 1991, p.
214) leading to the emergence of themes in the course of Tarot educational semiotics
that illuminate the multiplicity of moral problems and dilemmas embedded in human
experience with its abundance of ambiguous situations and events. In the context
of feminist moral philosophy and care theory in education, Nel Noddings pointed
to such globally common human experiences as birth, marriage, motherhood,
death, or separation, even while denying abstract moral universals when they are
understood solely as some predestined rules for our actions. Importantly, the abstract
universal principles as a theoretical construct acquire embodied reality as concrete,
particular, real-life human experiences while expressed, symbolically, in the
material form in the layout of images, thereby overcoming in practice the Cartesian
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LEARNING EXISTENTIAL LESSONS
mind-body dualism in accordance with the major postulate of edusemiotics. Noddings

comments on the Neoplatonic “principle of plentitude, espoused by many thinkers”
(1993, p. 9) not unlike the plentitude of experiences awaiting the Fool – portrayed in
the very first Arcanum among the 22 Major cards (Figure 1) – in its experiential and
learning journey through each of the pictures that reflect, symbolically, the universal
experiences of humankind.
Figure 1. Major Arcana1
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I. SEMETSKY
A Tarot layout of pictures forms a particular pattern (Semetsky, 2011a) with images
reflecting collective human experiences across times, places and cultures; it is on the
basis of evaluating this experience that we can learn our existential lessons. These
basics include “the commonalities of birth, death, physical and emotional needs,
and the longing to be cared for” (Noddings, 1998, p. 188). But signs are never the
transparent media that communicate messages directly. They partake of hieroglyphs
and enigmas – Arcana, in short – that always already portend and point beyond
themselves to something obviously hidden yet implicated by virtue of their genuinely
semiotic, triadic, structure. Contemporary Finnish semiotician Eero Tarasti (2001)
founded existential semiotics as a branch of theoretical semiotics oriented specifically
to phenomenology, experience and corporeal (embodied) signs in a process
comprising the states of personal becoming. As has been demonstrated elsewhere
(e.g., Semetsky, 2006), the dynamics of signs is a process of becoming or semiosis
when signs (that include us, human beings) evolve and always already become other.
Tarasti referred to anxiety as a persistent problem of the semiotic subject who may
face, according to the tradition of existentialism, either being or nothingness. What
many people bring to their readings is in fact a number of existential problems even
if more often than not they lack the words to express their concern with a particular
situation or a significant other. Not being existential philosophers or semioticians,
they may remain in denial about the real state of affairs. The signs of anxiety may be
well hidden, while deep inside they tend to create an affective, symptomatic, world.
It is when people as the subjects of reading acquire the opportunity to self-reflect,
to recursively become the semiotic objects of their own signs via their symbolic
representation in Tarot Arcana that a novel meaning can be created: the meaning for
existence amidst the often challenging life-events. Tarot edusemiotics is consistent
with Peirce’s pragmatic maxim by means of creating an expanded field of meanings
– or making sense – for a variety of experiences via a series of interpretants that,
importantly, have practical bearings: “Consider what effects, that might conceivably
have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our
conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object” (Peirce, CP
5.402). The creation of novel meaning for experience – and in experience – is surely
a lesson learned; an existential lesson in becoming as the included middle between
the two opposite extremes of being or nothingness.
A person can learn from their experience when it is being unfolded in front of
their eyes in the array of images. Accordingly, the latent meanings of experience
become available to human consciousness, and a person can discover in practice
a deeper dimension of experience. Thus Tarot, in terms of its semiotic dynamics
and despite being traditionally considered irrational and illogical, helps us achieve
an intense scope of awareness as Gnostic knowledge that encompasses subtle
unconscious contents of the mind, exceeding the narrow rationality of Cartesian
Cogito. To read and understand the non-verbal language of pictorial images we need
a developed intuition; reciprocally, to develop our intuitive capacities we need to
immerse ourselves in the symbolic world of Tarot images that would trigger our
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imagination, insight and intuition as the unorthodox three I’s of semiotic pedagogy
(Semetsky, 2011b), in contrast to three R’s of conventional education. As noted by
Irish philosopher Mark Patrick Hederman, Tarot provides us with an ingenuous
system to fill the gaps produced by the area “where education and trained sensibility
are in short supply” (Hederman, 2003, p. 86). Hederman is convinced that
each of us should be given at least the rudiments of one of the most elusive
and important symbolic systems if we are even to begin to understand
human relationships. This would require tapping into a wavelength and a
communications system other than the cerebral, reaching what has been called
the “sympathetic system” as opposed to the cerebro-spinal one which covers
the three Rs of traditional education. (Hederman, 2003, p. 87)
Hederman (2003) notices the Tarot pictures provide a “route to the unconscious.
This alternative route uses some of the materials, shapes, signs, and symbols used by
artists and our dreams… The major arcana … are visual aids to the unconscious. They
are vivid shorthand portraits … akin to the Chinese ideograph” (p. 27). An important
educational function of Tarot consists in our becoming aware of the unconscious.
Tarot edusemiotics enables us to exercise “an unconscious psychic mechanism
that engenders the perceived in consciousness” (Deleuze, 1993, p. 95). It is the
unconscious that “gives spontaneity and freshness; [but] consciousness, conviction
and control” (Dewey, 1991, p. 217). As Dewey reminded us, the ultimate task of
education consists in nurturing a particular “type of mind competent to maintain an
economical balance of the unconscious and the conscious” (pp. 215-216). It is this
task that becomes fully realized in Tarot edusemiotics. With the help of imagination,
insight, and intuition – the three significant factors comprising informal education
as a semiotic pedagogy – we can narrate the pictorial text that embodies universal
human experiences. It is not only that “intuition contributes to learning, creating,
expressing, and problem solving” (Noddings & Shore, 1984, p. 44) but that using
a Tarot semiotic system as a form of practical pedagogy reinforces and enhances
the development of human intuitive abilities in addition to cognitive, rational,
functioning. Through the unconscious expressed in the language of images we can
discover the means for self-expression, therefore becoming capable of revealing
something that sometimes we are unable, subconsciously – or are unwilling,
consciously – even to put into words. As a genuine sign, Tarot establishes a relation
between consciousness and the unconscious, between self and other, between body
and mind.
The educational function of Tarot semiotics is oriented to the emergence of novel
meanings and values as a function of learning from experience. Traditionally, within
the boundaries of analytic reason and a priori signifier-signified identity, any new
knowledge appears to be “inaccessible to sense” (Dewey, 1934/1980, p. 32). But the
conditions enabling the possibility of accessing the otherwise inaccessible may be
realized in practice via the edusemiotic process, and it is a Tarot layout that literally
represents the included middle, an interface between a reader and a person seeking the
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I. SEMETSKY
reading. Tarot empowers us with the ability to make sense out of the chaotic flux of
experiences as we become capable of learning from and within this experience when
it is being unfolded in front of our very eyes in the semiotic structures represented
by the constellations of pictures. An obscure or problematic situation embodied in
the pattern of images can become converted, in the course of semiotic interpretation,
“into the clear and luminous” (Dewey, 1934/1980, p. 266). Significantly, semiotic
pedagogy comprising intuition, imagination and insight and utilizing the pictorial
language of Tarot images involves sympathetic understanding which partakes of the
reader’s ability of “feeling with” (Noddings, 2010, p. 73). Jim Garrison refers to
sympathetic data as describing intuitions and perceptions that would make possible
our understanding of others; he is aware nonetheless that “our culture has not evolved
highly refined methods of collecting [those] data …researchers do not perform
careful interpersonal experiments, [and] the theories of human thought, feeling,
and action remain …remarkably underdeveloped” (Garrison, 1997, p. 35). Yet, it
is precisely sympathetic, inter-subjective, data that are maximally “relevant to the
topic of teaching” (p. 36) and learning, to pedagogy as a whole. Sympathy is directly
connected with the developed capacity of “learning to read the other” (Noddings,
2010, p. 73) within the practice of Tarot existential pedagogy that includes also a
self-reflective and critical “reevaluation of what is read” (Noddings, 2010, p. 73)
when the unconscious becomes available to consciousness.
The event of reading and interpretation employs at once both interpersonal and
intra-psychic inferential modes. Noddings (1991) lists several important components
as characterizing what she refers to as interpersonal reasoning. They are an attitude of
care, attention, flexibility and effort aimed at cultivating the relation, together with a
search for an appropriate response and also accompanied by a kind of metacognition.
Such a meta-level of knowledge is enabled by self-reflection. Within the Tarot
hermeneutic, all of these characteristics are present with the addition of the intuitively
present intra-psychic element. As such, a singular Tarot reading represents an occasion
of caring as a significant component of Noddings’ relational ethics of care in education,
which was inspired by Martin Buber’s philosophy. Buber notices that a dialogical
relation may continue even when self and other are separated in space and time due to
“continual potential presence of the one to the other, as an unexpressed intercourse”
(1971, p. 97) and comments on the important role of imagining the real, as though by
grace, and on the limitations of us, human beings, the creatures, as compared to the
creator, God. Still, “each man…can expose himself to the creative Spirit” (p. 103).
Such intangible spiritual presence becomes tangible when embodied in the edusemiotic
process of interpreting Tarot images. The triadic logic of signs – with the Tarot layout
per se performing the role of the included middle, a Peircean interpretant – manifests
an element of inclusion and enriches the scope of education as one where educator “is
set in the midst of the service” (Buber, 1971, p. 103) to others.
Tarot edusemiotics embodies egalitarian, democratic, inclusive education and,
while still being located at the level of cultural, informal, practice, should also be
included in formal curriculum as its legitimate, and not bastard, offspring. Noddings
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(1993) is adamant that existential questions are the central issues in life and “should
form the organizing backbone” (p. 8) of education, contrary to the traditional
academic curriculum with its “rigid boundaries between subject matters [that] makes
learning fragmentary” (p. 8). The semiotics of Tarot, as grounded in the explicitly
anti-Cartesian philosophy and process metaphysics (Rescher, 1996), defies the
rigid boundaries between any of the dual categories and transforms learning into a
holistic, embodied practice. Tarot readings confirm the acting principle of continuity
defined by Dewey as the “interdependence of all organic structures and processes
with one another” (Dewey, 1925/1958, p. 295); in other words, affirming their
relational nature as signs. Peirce’s philosophy of objective idealism (not unlike Carl
Jung’s concept of objective psyche) considers matter to be just a special, partially
deadened, mind, in defiance of the mind-body dualism that has haunted us since the
time of Descartes and which still represents the unfortunate model at the foreground
of educational research. Tarot brings to our awareness many initially unperceived
meanings, thereby contributing to human learning and development based on both
actual and potential experiences. Such a process is defined by Jung in terms of
individuation (Semetsky, 2013b). The aim of individuation is the achievement of
a greater personality, the Self, equipped with the sense of value and identity. The
Self is never given a priori in the form of a Cartesian subject; rather the search for
meanings embedded in experience leads to human development and the construction
of identity as a function of our continuous learning from experience. In this respect,
the subject or Self becomes constituted within the edusemiotic process per se; rather
than being an a priori constituting subject forever isolated from the world of objects.
This nuance is significant, and the process of the constitution of the Self – self-
formation – via the explication of the very meaning of its existence as symbolically
represented in Tarot images is what makes Tarot a kind of existential pedagogy.
It is when new meanings are constructed and become available to consciousness
that “the old self is put off and the new self is…forming” (Dewey, 1925/1958,
p. 245). Tarot readings grounded in insight, intuition and imagination can create
a vision of realities “that cannot be exhibited under existing conditions of sense-
perception” (Dewey, 1991, p. 224): the meanings hiding in the unconscious are as
yet incorporeal – yet they acquire corporeality when embodied in the medium of
the pictures. Experience is embodied in the creative and artistic expressive medium
of Tarot, and “the connection between a medium and the act of expression is
intrinsic. …On the side of the self, elements that issue from prior experience are
stirred into action in fresh desires, impulsions and images. These proceed from the
subconscious” (Dewey, 1934/1980, pp. 64-65). It is due to the process of reading and
interpretation that “we are carried out beyond ourselves to find ourselves” (p. 195)
– to find, or rather, to create, our authentic Selves in the course of learning multiple
existential lessons via the semiotics of images. We achieve a better understanding
of what may seem to be irresolvable moral dilemmas that subsequently leads to the
choice of right action and a better-informed decision-making ability involving human
intelligence grounded in semiotic (and not just analytic) reason. We thus acquire a
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I. SEMETSKY
better ability for self-reflection, self-knowledge, and a sense of value, purpose and
meaningfulness of our experiences. The pictorial images create a meaningful story
of the journey through the school of life, each new life experience representing a
stage in human development. As a lesson to be learned, it is our stopovers along
the symbolic journey that contribute to our learning, self-understanding and
understanding significant others in our real lives. In the context of educating youth,
Crawford and Rossiter (2006) equate the search for meaning and identity with the
ultimate reasons for living. As they point out in their monumental study, “meaning
and identity are the same psychological reality looked at from different perspectives.
From the viewpoint of meaning, it is an explanation of individual intentionality.
From the viewpoint of identity, it is the individual’s distinctive self-understanding
and self-expression” (Crawford & Rossiter, 2006, p. 33).
Tarot not only speaks in a different voice, therefore bringing forth the subtleties
of Carol Gilligan and Nel Noddings’ feminine relational ethics, but also enables a
process of critical self-reflection analogous to the ancient Socratic “Know thyself”
principle in the heart of an examined – thus potentially meaningful – life. Tarot
functions as a genuine, Peircean, sign that has a triadic structure in which it is an
interpretant that creates a meaning for the sign, thereby making it another – and
“more fully developed” (Peirce, CP 5.594) – sign indeed. Signs’ development,
growth and evolution imply a “sense of learning” (Peirce, CP 1.377) when these
very signs are being read and interpreted as in the case of Tarot readings. Can we
understand the language of signs, the language of images? Shakespeare singled out
poets whose imagination bodies forth the forms of things unknown and turns them
into shapes, thus giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name; and Peirce has
logically extended the province to the interpreters of signs. Signs may be just airy
nothings but still those to which, as Peirce said paraphrasing Shakespeare, the mind
of a poet, pure mathematician, or another might give local habitation and a name!
Poets and mathematicians, for Peirce, share the same logic embodied in semiotics
as the science of signs. While “scientific” knowledge comes to us in the form of
facts about the external, objective, “real” world, the internal world of our subjective
experiences is no less real. Such subjective, inner, Gnostic knowledge is habitually
posited outside science and delegated to mystics and poets. But semiotics as the
science of signs is inseparable from the art of creative interpretation, thus defying the
strict border between humanities and sciences, between Logos and Mythos, between
consciousness and the unconscious, between ourselves and the world, between the
generic self and the generic other. The semiotic reason de-valorizes facts in favor of
interpretations that function as a semiotic bridge connecting a sign with its referent.
Tarot signs embody Peircean habits that he defined as deep unconscious dispositions
to act in a certain way under specific circumstances. Learning is achieved, for
Peirce, only by synthetic consciousness in which the unconscious dimension is fully
integrated. Even if we usually “think of…learning as a conscious mental process
[there is also] chiefly bodymind learning” (Merrell, 2002, p. 15): the unconscious, as
yet unseen, habits acquire material body in the form of the layout of visible images
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that as such literally represents “the drawing of a ground-plan of human experience”

(Dewey, 1934/1980, p. 22). Sure enough, “beneath the generalities of habit… we
rediscover singular processes of learning” (Deleuze, 1994, p. 25) when we become
aware of our unconscious habits that may have been counterproductive to our moral
and intellectual growth. All signs demand the “corresponding apprenticeship”
(Deleuze, 2000, p. 92) in terms of the interpretive process that as such creates,
within this very process, the meanings for human experiences. Gilles Deleuze’s
a-signifying semiotics and his philosophy of becoming-other (Semetsky, 2006) is
exemplary in the context of Tarot as a means for existential, informal, pedagogy. The
extralinguistic semiotic categories, such as memories, images or artistic signs, can
be apprehended, according to Deleuze, in terms of neither objective nor subjective
criteria but rather learned in practice in the form of immanent problematic instances
and their practical effects. For Deleuze, as for Foucault, language and the world form
a single semiotic fabric permeated with signs or multiplicities conceptualized as
relational, and not substantial, entities. The dynamics of becoming, when any given
multiplicity “changes in nature as it expands its connections” (Deleuze & Parnet,
1987, p. 8) – hence participates in the process of signs-becoming-other-signs – is a
distinctive feature of Deleuze’s logic of sense (Deleuze, 1990). Such semiotic logic
remains however “underground or marginal in relation to the great classifications”
(Deleuze & Parnet, 1987, p. 15), being either the reductive empiricism oriented to a
priori given sense-data or the narrow Cartesian rationality alike.
Meanings are not given but depend on signs entering “into the surface organization
which ensures the resonance of two series” (Deleuze, 1990, p. 104) – corporeal and
incorporeal, body and mind – which converge on Tarot that as such functions as
“both word and object at once” (Deleuze, 1990, p. 51). Indeed in the course of Tarot
readings it is the interpretation of images due to which pictorial objects are articulated
and narrated, that is, translated into words. As a genuine sign, Tarot is “a being-
multiple” (Deleuze & Parnet, 1987, p. viii) having a triadic, a-signifying, structure
grounded in the dynamic of interpretation rather than any a priori given dyadic,
static, signification. It is when our thinking “accedes to the infinite movement that
frees it from truth as supposed paradigm [that it] reconquers an immanent power
of creation” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1994, p. 140): the creation of novel meanings
enfolded in the symbolism of Tarot pictures that we unfold and thus (re)create in
our very praxis. Tarot images “imply ways of living, possibilities of existence, [they
are] the symptoms of life gushing forth or draining away… There is a profound link
between signs, events, life and vitalism” (Deleuze, 1995, p. 143). The edusemiotics
of Tarot and the Deleuze-inspired “methodology of the fold” (St. Pierre, 1997) lead to
multiple empirical “data” irreducible to rigid facts but encompassing interpretations.
The relational approach encompasses both subject and object, consciousness and
the unconscious in the process of producing “folded subjectivity” (St. Pierre, 1997,
p. 178) as the individuated Self that accomplished a series of creative becomings
amidst ambiguous, transgressive, “corrosive, painful emotional data” (p. 181) that
showcase themselves in Tarot images.
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I. SEMETSKY
Among the 56 images of Tarot Minor Arcana there are those carrying messages
of insecurity, anger, depression, frustration, anxiety, confusion, “pain in the
neck”, exhaustion, being overwhelmed, experiencing inability to carry on, or
indecisiveness, etc.; and Tarot hermeneutic brings those life-issues and affects into
sharp focus and leads to the expression of the experiential problem areas, thereby
presenting the mode of existential semiotics as a specific technology or care of the
self. For example, the image of the Five of Cups (Figure 2) with its sad figure in
a black cloak presents us with the feeling of loss, sorrow, or mourning. The three
cups in front of the central figure are obviously empty, carrying the message of
futility and wasted efforts. Yet, should the person turn around, they would see two
full cups standing erect and representing new knowledge, new fulfillment, a new
point of view or perspective. The Three of Swords is one of the most dramatic
pictures, literally portraying a crying and broken heart, as a result of being pierced
by three swords. It depicts separation, severance, divorce, and similar experiences.
It may also indicate a surgical intervention, quite often open-heart surgery. In
either case, the experience is painful. The imagery of the Ten of Wands brings
human endurance to the brink: the figure is struggling under the heavy load on his
shoulders.
The pictures express the commonality of meanings similar to those that Noddings,
for example, finds “at the bottom of each suffering event [such as] pain that cries
for relief, a threat of separation that triggers an increased need for connection, and
a dread of helplessness that begs for empowerment” (Noddings, 1989, p. 129). The
56 images of Minor Arcana tell us multiple stories about feeling happy or being
sad, making plans or breaking promises, winning or losing, experiencing financial
difficulties or laying foundations for a marriage, falling in love or getting out of an
abusive relationship, starting a new venture or experiencing separation anxiety. The
list is endless, and our real-life situations always present new contexts and encounters
that call for new evaluations, new meanings, and more education in practice. There
is no doubt that while human existence is
Figure 2. Three images of Minor Arcana
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locally conditioned by a multitude of concrete biographical, cultural, and

historical factors, subsuming all these at a deeper level appeared to be certain
universal patterns or modes of experience, archetypal forms that constantly
arranged the elements of human experience into typical configurations and
gave to collective human psychology a dynamic continuity. These archetypes
endured as basic a priori symbolic forms while taking on the costume of
the moment in each individual life and each cultural era, permeating each
experience, each cognition, and each world view. (Tarnas, 1991, p. 385)
These dynamic patterns are signs that we can read, interpret and learn from in the
symbolic school of life via the progressive integration of the unconscious into
consciousness in the semiotic, evolutionary, process embodied in the Tarot pictures.
Considering that each layout would have combined the images in a different
constellation, each time reflecting novel circumstances and presenting the perplexity
of a novel problematic situation, the process of learning our existential lessons
continues throughout a life span. The role of semiotic pedagogy, irreducible to formal
instruction, the value of learning from experiences, both individual and collective,
both conscious and unconscious, should not be underestimated: Tarot transgresses
the boundaries of a formal classroom or the borders of solely cognitive knowledge
alike. It expands the learning space beyond individuals and toward the semiosphere
(Lotman, 1990) encompassing the whole of culture when the re-symbolization of
the Self via Tarot becomes a means for overcoming the alienation at the social level
and transgressing cultural and national differences amidst the folds of what Jung
dubbed the collective unconscious. Have the existential lessons been learned at
the level of society? It was in 1942, when Europe was immersed in war, that Jung
presented his introductory address at the Zurich meeting of the Swiss Society of
Psychology (Jung, 1947). Jung thought that not only the leading psychopaths in
Germany were dragging the whole nation and countless millions in other nations
into a slaughterhouse but also that at the time Germany was representative of “the
first outbreak of mental alienation” (Jung, 1947, p. 66), or a “peculiar psychological
disturbance” (p. ix), the outcome of which was what Jung called the indescribable
events of 20th-century Europe. The equally indescribable events of September 11
at the start of the 21st century demonstrate that the significant existential lessons
inscribed in the process of collective, global, individuation still haven’t been learned
by humankind.
For the reason that individuation means becoming “one with oneself, and at the
same time with mankind, since after all one is a human being” (Jung, 1947, p. 33)
it is clear that global individuation in terms of unity, integration and wholeness as
symbolized by the final card of the Major Arcana called the World (Figure 1) has not
been achieved. Trying to understand what was happening with Germany in regard to
its National Socialism movement, Jung invoked the mythology of the Nordic God
Odin or Wotan, the master of storm and frenzy, and commented that Wotan was
changed into devil by Christendom. The symbolic Wotan usually awakes to a new
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I. SEMETSKY
activity as “he releases…the lust of war” (Jung, 1947, p. 4) while going underground
now and then and remaining an invisible but still dormant factor in the collective
unconscious, thus affecting human psyche and human actions on the greater political
scene and demonstrating that human development cannot be defined solely by its
personal dimension in terms of the individual growth. The ruling Wotan, like the
image of the Devil (Figure 1) in the Tarot deck, did not disappear; it is still buried
deep in the collective unconscious while being continuously mobile, having shifted
its presence on the geopolitical map. The image of the Devil embodies the Jungian
archetype of the Shadow, the demonic presence of which is to be recognized. At the
collective level, the Shadow encompasses those outside the norm of the established
order or social system, such as “criminals, psychotics, misfits, scapegoats” (Samuels,
1985, p. 66). It is not only that they appear to stand outside given culture, but
importantly culture itself fails to assimilate its own Shadow. Jung commented that
this whole rationally organized crowd, called a state or a nation, is run
by…terrific power… This ghastly power is mostly explained by fear of
the neighboring nation, which is supposed to be possessed by a malevolent
devil. As nobody is capable of recognizing where and how much he himself
is possessed and unconscious, one simply projects one’s own condition upon
the neighbor, and thus it becomes a sacred duty to have the biggest guns and
the most poisonous gas. The worst of it is that one is quite right. All one’s
neighbors are ruled by an uncontrolled and uncontrollable fear just like oneself.
(Jung, 1947, p. 78)
The venomous quality of the Devil is to be recognized. It represents a moment of
psychological denial and the implementation of a scapegoat policy by the dominant
culture or nation, in the meantime projecting its own shadowy qualities to the culture
habitually perceived as “other”. The recent confrontation of Russia and Ukraine and
the rhetoric of neo-fascism is but one example. Hederman (2003) warns of a danger
to ourselves and others if and when we remain unconscious of the Shadow. If history
and culture have taught us anything, it is that in the last century the Devil fully
manifested as “a hell on earth and that this hell was a human creation. It was a hell
of cruelty and mayhem resulting from the incapacity of powerful people to decipher
their unconscious motivation” (Hederman, 2003, p. 21). The Devil in the deck is
immediately followed by the Tower (Figure 1), the imagery of which has an uncanny
resemblance to the destroyed towers on September 11. Jung pointed out that it is the
excess of pride and passion that “raises a man not only above himself, but also above
the bounds of his mortality and earthliness, and by the very act of raising him, it
destroys him. This ‘rising above himself’ is expressed mythologically in the building
of the heaven-high tower of Babel that brought confusion to mankind” (Jung, CW
5, 171). Thunder and lightning in the imagery of the Tower convey the mythological
wrath of the gods that brings forth transformation at the level of collective
consciousness as the existential lesson learned in the aftermath of its destruction. It
is precisely because the transformation into other signs is involuntarily, not by our
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volition and conscious will, but by virtue of the confrontation with the unconscious
during reading and interpreting the meanings “hiding” in the pictures, that the
creative becoming-other as the evolution of signs takes place. For Deleuze, “once
one steps outside what’s been thought before, once one ventures outside what’s
familiar and reassuring, once one has to invent new concepts for unknown lands,
then methods and moral systems break down and thinking becomes…a ‘perilous
act’, a violence, whose first victim is oneself” (Deleuze, 1995, p. 103).
Yet, the breakdown in existing order simultaneously creates the conditions for
the potential production of a new order. The Tower image is a sign of not just a
breakdown but the important breakthrough towards a new mode of existence. The
next picture in the Major Arcana (Figure 1) is the Star, portraying the image of the
naked female figure stripped of her clothes as if from outlived habits and old values.
It connotes the field of meanings that include hope, healing, inspiration, creativity,
and the realization of the meaning of existence. In the current global climate
permeated by diverse beliefs, disparate values and cultural conflicts, when different
ideologies compete with each other leading to destruction on the scale of the Tower,
learning the existential lesson of hope is paramount. In fact, this Arcanum is often
called the Star of hope, the hope for new human awareness. The imagery of the Star
is filled with symbols of nature; indeed, we are “educated by the elements, by air
and light, and the life of plants” (Buber, 1971, p. 90). It is the task of the cultural
pedagogy of Tarot edusemiotics to provide us with an empirical method to learn
from signs that cross over the boundaries between nature and culture, to learn from
life experiences by means of accessing the deep Gnostic knowledge as humankind’s
collective memory that encompasses also the paradoxical memory of the future. As
Peirce said, an “interpretant is the future memory of [man’s] cognition, his future
self, or another person he addresses” (Peirce, CP 7.591).
Signs cross the boundaries between ourselves and others, between consciousness
and the unconscious, between past and future, in short between all dualistic categories
of analytic discourse. With regard to the future dimension of experience, we can
recall Dewey who, stressing the ethical task of the reconstruction, or revaluation,
of experience, pointed to the necessity of both diagnosis and prognosis as related to
a particular situation. While diagnosis refers to assessing symptoms as signs of the
present, a problematic situation demands also “a look into the future… anticipation,
or a prediction …of some possible future experiences” (Dewey, 1933/1998, Vol. 2, p.
143). Dewey compared reflective, critical, thinking with the task of a physician who
has to make “a prognosis, a forecast of the probable future course of the disease. And
not only is his treatment a verification – or the reverse – of the idea … but the result
also affects his treatment of future patients” (Ibid.). Such self-reflective thinking is a
feature of Tarot edusemiotics that also includes an evaluation of future options in the
evolution of signs. When the past, present and potential future are combined together
in the same layout of pictures, we not only observe but, significantly, consciously
participate in the instance of our own evolution – the evolution of meanings by learning
the existential lessons embodied in Tarot signs. The practice of Tarot edusemiotics
133
I. SEMETSKY
relates to a process addressed by Dewey in the context of ethical principles underlying

education as “imaginative rehearsal of various courses of conduct. We give way in our
mind, to some impulse; we try, in our mind, some plan. Following its career through
various steps, we find ourselves in imagination in the presence of the consequences
that would follow” (Dewey, 1932/1998, p. 335). The imaginative rehearsal acquires
material reality in the form of Tarot pictures, the layout of which allows us to explore
some potential consequences of our own actions – and not only in relation to merely
ourselves. As a genuine sign, Tarot actually creates the connection between ourselves
and the outside world, partaking of both, and represents an exemplary edusemiotic
system that can teach us about ourselves and the world at large.
NOTE
1
All images are from the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck. © 1971 US Games Systems Inc., Stamford, CT,
USA. Reproduced by permission. Further reproduction prohibited.
REFERENCES
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Company.
Crawford, M. L., & Rossiter, G. (2006). Reasons for living: Education and young people’s search for
meaning, identity and spirituality. Camberwell, VIC: Australian Council for Educational Research.
Deely, J. (1990). Basics of Semiotics. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Deleuze, G. (1990). The logic of sense, M. Lester & C. J. Stivale (Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia
University Press.
Deleuze, G. (1993). The fold: Leibniz and the baroque, T. Conley (Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University
of Minnesota Press.
Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and repetition, P. Patton (Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University
Press.
Deleuze, G. (1995). Negotiations, 1972-1990, M. Joughin (Trans.). New York, NY: Columbia University
Press.
Deleuze, G. (2000). Proust and signs, R. Howard (Trans.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota
Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1994). What is philosophy? H. Tomlinson & G. Burchell (Trans.). New York,
NY: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G., & Parnet, C. (1987). Dialogues, H. Tomlinson & B. Habberjam (Trans.). New York, NY:
Columbia University Press.
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York, NY: Macmillan Company.
Dewey, J. (1922/1988). Human nature and conduct. In J. A. Boydston (Ed.), The middle works of John
Dewey, 1899-1924 (Vol. 14). Carbondale & Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.
Dewey, J. (1925/1958). Experience and nature. New York, NY: Dover Publications.
Dewey, J. (1932/1998). Moral judgment and knowledge. From Ethics. In L. A. Hickman & T. M. Alexander
(Eds.), The essential Dewey (Vol. 2: Ethics, Logic, Psychology, pp. 328–340). Bloomington, IN:
Dewey, J. (1933/1998). Analysis of reflective thinking. From How We Think. In L. A. Hickman & T. M.
Alexander (Eds.), The essential Dewey (Vol. 2: Ethics, Logic, Psychology, pp. 137–144). Bloomington,
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Dewey, J. (1934/1980). Art as experience. New York, NY: Perigee Books.

Dewey, J. (1991). How we think. New York, NY: Prometheus Books.
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Garrison, J. W. (1997). Dewey and eros: Wisdom and desire in the art of teaching. New York & London:
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Hederman, M. P. (2003). Tarot: Talisman or taboo? Reading the world as symbol. Dublin, Ireland:
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Jung, C. G. (1947). Essays on contemporary events, E. Welsh, B. Hannah & M. Briner (Trans.). London,
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Inna Semetsky
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CAIR CRAWFORD
11. ’SKIRTS: THINKING THOUGHTS AND

UNTHOUGHTS
’SKIRTS 2993
Acrylic/Canvas/Wood, Triptych – 60” x 108”, 2013-14
(Photo credits: 315 Photo)
Confucius said that where disorder develops, words are the first steps in preparing
the way for things to come. (The Book of Changes, 1950, p. 232). Disorder may
be the nature of beginnings but before there are words, there is an in-between state
characterized by sensation, emotion, volition, and thought that allows for a shift from
an intimate perspective to a more distant one. Distancing, which extends beyond a
perceptual relationship, elicits a prolonged reverberation that resonates between the
interiority of one thing and the exteriority of another. In contemporary art practice,
it is impossible to know where this will lead but it is possible to take a step back –
without reason – to inscribe images that could be comprehended and contemplated,
in a way that would otherwise be unlikely.

C. CRAWFORD
Semiotics is a theory of signs and symbols that deals with their functions in both
artificially constructed and natural languages. Drawing from Plato’s description of
chora as the image making matrix between being and becoming and Julia Kristeva’s
appropriation of the semiotic chora as the pre-verbal relation between mother and
child in preparation for entry into the symbolic order, this chapter investigates the
theoretical framework for a series of paintings titled ’SKIRTS. It will focus on the
legacy of the between and how chora has been used to grapple with the problem of
how to conceive of and to produce works of art that have not been too organized
by thought or limited by the individual character of form. This calls for a strategy
for avoiding knowledge conditioned by a personal mental state and entering into a
“disposition that is definitively heterogeneous to meaning but always in sight of it or
either a negative or a surplus relationship to it” (Kristeva, 1980, p. 133). In order to
become aware of this disposition as space, chora has to be understood as an idea of
a physical limit that refers to things perceptible by the senses. Although “limits and
finitude are at the heart of our history,” the limit that is beyond the limit, “makes us
take into account that the environment is much more than geographical or physical,
but is a philosophical environment as well” (Virilio, 2009, p. 52).1
Semiotics opens the way to apply different meanings to terms “when taken out
of the conceptual field in which the respective terms were conceived” (Moi, 1986,
p. 79). Cutting and pasting, and borrowing from philosophy, alter relationships with
words and place a visual emphasis on imagery that evoke aesthetic appreciation
and a psychological response. ’SKIRTS describe a procedure that deviates from a
usual course and reference a site that marks the distance between the social and
the individual. Mediating between the body and the circumstances, conditions, or
objects that surround it, the word skirt (which is also slang word for woman), alludes
to various coverings, rims, peripheries, environs, outlying parts, and attachments
that constitute the complexity of forming connections in the world. Apostrophized
and capitalized, ’SKIRTS, is a graphic depiction of the omission of letters or figures
and signifies a methodology for scoping out what can be observed in a landscape
where the chora of the process is articulated. This process, which is driven by the
desire to experience things that go beyond the limits of visual perception, reference
everything that is marginal or that run along a border.
’SKIRTS sets out to describe and to illustrate entering into a dialogue with the
legacy of chora in a roundabout way. Chora is an arcane word that refers to an
indefinite expanse of land, homeland or place of residence. It is rural territory as
opposed to an urban area and for Plato this distinction is the difference between a
natural and a constructed place. Both are dwelling places organized spatially but the
implication is that there is a centerline or a division between them that belongs to
them both and pertains to the question of where something is and where it is not.
Derived from the Greek, choros or chorion, which refers to shades of emotion that
reveal the differences between what is seen and what is already there, chora provides
Plato with a medium to regain possession of background material that contains traces
of an ideal environment that has been lost or forgotten. Its placement between being
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’SKIRTS: THINKING THOUGHTS AND UNTHOUGHTS
(father) and becoming (phenomenon) is the mechanical necessity for the structure
of his creative process and constitutes a territorial relation to the maternal (Timaeus
50d). In this triadic ontology, chora is the commonality that accounts for the passage
of non-being into being through doing and making.
Chora is a matrix from which something else originates. Philosophically, it
represents a material receptacle in which something is inscribed, enclosed or embedded
that calls forth an emotional attachment and refers to more than a location. Containing
probable discrepancies that are touched upon “in a kind of inauthentic thought,” it is
the center (and what surrounds it) of what is built upon the distinction between the
“sensible” (the visible, changing copy) and the “intelligible” (the unchanging model)
(Timaeus 27d-28b). Although chora is neither, sensible or intelligible, at times it
can appear to be both. Derrida (1995, p. 92), explains its functions and describes
its operations by analogies in relation to “a mother, nurse, a receptacle and a bearer
of imprints or gold” to illustrate how chora appears in the logic of space and in the
spirit of being related to a larger whole. For example, as a “nurse of becoming and
change,” (Timaeus 52e) it receives images it does not produce to move things around
and calm things down. As a concept of space, chora is the mother of what becomes
visible but it does not impose its feminine characteristics on things that are generated,
other than in terms of kinds. These kinds are nourished and put into the right relation
to themselves and to each other to be recollected by a craftsman to produce something
good. As a so-called nurse, chora alters various elements to keep them alive and as a
mother, in terms of reproduction, chora contains its offspring until its basic needs are
met. Although chora receives and provides room to move around in (Zeyl, 2000), it
cannot easily be assigned to a thing being done because it does not belong to the two
recognized types of being and its name announces something other than what it is
(Timaeus 28 a-c, 49a, 50b-53b, 50 d-e, 31c).
Aesthetically, the “shape” of (the semiotic) chora suggests a female presence as a
connective force that lays claim to sensuous form and when this presence is articulated,
it provides for an expansion of the psychic journey for traditional philosophical
disciplines through metaphors and stories by which to live. The workings of chora
are linked to conditions of critical consensus that are contingent upon the integration
of special knowledge into public knowledge through rational design. This knowledge,
which is revealed through a conception of care as wet nurse or mother, constitutes the
primordial basis for every signifying system that promises to makes sense of all those
areas of existence that are beyond measurement and categorization. A wet-nurse is called
for because the story is dependent upon a non-spatial continuum that requires nurturing
a relationship between past, present and future. What is assembled from memories
taken out of order is strung together with the help of lapses to produce something
meaningful in speech and writing. Stylistically, pauses and lapses are used to specify
where not-knowing occurs and how description replaces what is missing. “Nothing”
prevents the desired conclusions from being true under the agreed assumptions that are
poured into the materiality of language but these assumptions may not be what they are
presumed to be because words and images speak beyond our intentions and control.
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C. CRAWFORD
For Plato, true philosophy is motivated by a kind of erotic desire that pulls man out
of the cave toward its true home, the world of ideas (Republic Book VII). Education
is compared to that of a prisoner who once having grasped at nothing but shadows in
the artificial light of the cave eventually learns to see the sun. Once images are seen for
what they are, the prisoner is equipped to return to the cave but the flame of the hearth is
diffused and everything becomes indistinct. Faced with the dark-ground of not-knowing
requires a kind of receptivity that paves the way for a deeper insight into the structure
of being. Only someone capable of penetrating the interior of things merits returning
to the depths of the celestial hearth. This capability lies in the capacity to be inspired
but can only be understood when inspiration is remembered in utterances made in a
dream, or in waking states or rational explanations for these visions (Lee, pp. 71-72).
The hearth (fire), when associated with a middle ground that shares a certain intimacy
with the dark, is a symbol of an invitation to reverie that comes from a distant path and
understood as a place from which to derive pleasure (Bachelard, 1964, pp. 40-41).2
Chora constitutes the experience of being two places at once and serves as a sign
of acquiescence. Its dual role is distinctly participatory and the result of organizing
private space contributes to a manner of perceiving the surrounding landscape.
Associated with absence, lack and uncertainty, chora is a routine part of daily
life that contributes to the failure of standards for social behavior and endangers
the human condition. A sudden loss of continuity denotes a crisis of meaning that
introduces the problem of two different natures that are indicative of the split between
appearance and reality. As a negative presence, the choric receptacle operates as an
opening for something to take place in which, as in a dream, memories are received
in a state of withdrawal facilitated by some impersonal source. In this dialogue, the
mysterious and incomprehensible nature of the in-between sets up the condition for
the substitution of laws for unpredictable events and deprives particular absences
or errors of any active value. This operation, which is a virtually matricide, alludes
to complex relations of production and reproduction that are suppressed in order to
enter the socio-symbolic order.
Plato maintains that chora takes a particular shape through the organizing power
of human persuasion and the effect of what is produced is what is perceived by the
senses. Individual intuition, instinct and emotion must be persuaded by reason to
become something other than what they are to produce a unified image of the ideal
state. Viewed as a spatial medium that serves a cognitive function, it appears as a
recipient to allow physical things to stand their ground. Things that are capable of
being apprehended by the intellect and that can be represented in a concept by a
concrete instance are quietly upheld by chora. Although it is described an invisible and
formless quality of being which receives all things, chora is only thinkable through
“bastard reasoning” and partakes of the intelligible in a most incomprehensible way
(Timaeus 52b). The way it operates reflects a mode of philosophical inquiry marked
by the production of symbols to compensate for contradictions and conflicts having
to do with creation that must be brought into relation with whatever is lacking.
140
For Plato, the vanishing point is the center of a system in which disappearance
upholds a specific position of reception (Timaeus 52). The idea behind this point of
view is to give uncertainty a passive role because the invisible is the not-yet known
and the world Plato constructs goes beyond the particulars that begin to emerge. What
is recollected in chora is a commonplace property of living things whose imprint is
carried out in other things. Two different things from wildly different sources touch
and fuse and divide in chora; they don’t have any sense of where they have been but
inscriptions or marks enable elements to locate others of like-kinds to carve a path
to live together, harmoniously. Sometimes, when things become enfolded in chora,
the fear of being devoured (by the mother, the abyss or uncertainty) is overwhelming
and the threat may be perceived as retribution for having to endure the identity of
something it is not. When an element or kind is reduced and irrelevant parts are cast
off, there is nothing left of the devouring mother because what has been successfully
edited and defined in words, encompasses the entire philosophical system. For Plato,
as long as chora remains constant and unobtrusive, it will be the primary source of
measurable action and subservient to the controlling force of reason.
The shift from the centrality of a domestic hearth to a heavenly one reduced the
value of the interrelation between private and civic life (Symposium 1989). Once the
goals of philosophical education were woven into the fabric of the social order to
eliminate distractions and to provide a basis for public consensus by rational design,
human situations were entrusted to technical solutions that forced “natural” qualities
into an artificial relation to life to satisfy the demands of the collective organization
of cognitive structures that dominate symbolic communication.
Jacques Derrida (1995) claims that chora (Khora) lays the ground for the real
substance of philosophy but it always resists interpretations and definitions.3
Once “this strange mother” gives place without engendering, “it can no longer be
considered an origin” because it is pre-originary, signifying that it is before and
outside all generation. In order to think chora, he claims that it is necessary to go
back to pre-originary beginnings, where meaning is derived from what follows and
prepares the way for what’s to come. Derrida interprets chora as nothing more than
an introduction legitimized by the themes it serves to render familiar before the real
task [of philosophy] begins.
In an effort to return chora to its erotic roots, teacher and psychoanalyst Julia
Kristeva (1984, pp. 25-30) appropriates Plato’s chora to found a theory of beginnings
in the maternal body in terms of semiotic relationality. The term semiotic, which
is derived from the Greek word, semeion for a distinctive mark, imprint or trace,
is operative in rhythm, intonation and kinetic energy and is observable in socially
communicative discourse (Ibid.). Her interpretation of the semiotic chora as a place
that mediates between a fixed essence and the impulse toward movement situates
chora at the heart of the philosophical debate about beginnings and problematizes
our relation with a preverbal origin that belongs to a formative phase of human
development. For Kristeva, the semiotic chora is the ambiguous site of the potential
141
C. CRAWFORD
to become, and the nature of beginning is located in emotions such as love, hate and
suffering that are given in the primordial act of becoming.
Kristeva’s concept of the semiotic chora relates to the philosophical problem
of “the beginning before the beginning” that Plato sought to reconstruct in his
story about an ideal state that had been lost or forgotten (Kristeva, 1980; Timaeus
21b-22d). Although he acknowledges that the Greeks had achieved literacy from
time to time, he argues that their achievements were swept away by “a heavenly
flood that left only illiterate and uncultured people in its wake” (Timaeus 85c-e).
Plato attributes this flood to “inflammations of the soul” that flow in and boil over in
a kind of “mindlessness” that leads to madness and ignorance (Ibid.). For Kristeva,
“flooding” refers to being overwhelmed by the instinctual and what happens when
the language of infancy is not balanced out by the symbolic.
Kristeva’s theory of the semiotic chora retraces the archaic origin of the Greek’s
forgotten history to put memory into a form of communication that recognize
stylistic, rhythmic and poetic ambiguities in the process of learning the symbolic
function. In her attempt to restore the legacy of the maternal feminine and to put
forward a theory of an embodied thinking subject, she looks to chora as a kind of
ambiguous relationality to reconnect history and biological traces with the primitive
roots of language. The semiotic chora signifies a return to the maternal body as
a structuring principle of the symbolic order and constitutes a crisis where a new
modality of the signifying process is generated. Her strategy is to reveal Plato’s
chora as a semiotic expression of the maternal bond necessary to facilitate a child’s
introduction into the symbolic order and to show that this bond is the underlying
source of creative activity (Kristeva, 1984).
According to Kristeva, artistic practice has a privileged relation to the semiotic
because the artist, like the mother who must educate the infant driven by bodily
drives, is in direct contact with the chaos of the drives at their earliest stage and
must struggle to give them form. Both separation from the mother and giving birth
to ideas gives the individual the power to initiate his or her own state of being by
representing the feelings and conflicts that give rise to them in an entire range of
symbolic manifestations. This process has to do with affective self-governing that
puts all other developments of morality, competition and creative activity in motion.
The difficulty lies in being receptive to creative perception, individual differences
and affective aspects of interrelatedness.
Aesthetic experience carries a certain pleasure that is associated with an archaic
space before boundaries of self and other breakdown. Nonsensical ideas that do not
belong to discourse or acts of understanding are constituted from an indefinable
space in practices that provide a framework to communicate a mysterious reality
that is the source of perception and thinking. For Kristeva, these practices, which
play with metaphor and meaning, demonstrate that language is both arbitrary
and entangled with loss: “Not a language of the desiring exchange of messages
or objects that are transmitted in a social contract of communication and desire
beyond want, but a desire of want, of the fear that edges up to it and runs along
142
its edges” (Kristeva, 1982, p. 38). Fear, which Kristeva associates with the term
“abjection” is a place that “preserves what existed in the archaism of pre-objectal
relationship, in the immemorial violence with which a body becomes separated
from another body in order to be” (p. 10). Neither subject nor object, the abject is
excluded to allow the symbolic order to persist and represents both the threat of
meaning breaking down and constitutes a reaction to such a breakdown. Artistic
practices that confront and explore the place of the abject are really an effort to
cover up the breakdowns and the reassertion of boundaries associated with them
that follow, because playing with metaphor and meaning reveal that language
is at once dependent upon individual discretion and delineated by the abject
fear of loss. Meaning, which begins by imagining certain things that cannot be
expressed by speech or thinking or by seeing, and being drawn “toward the place
where meaning collapses,” marks what Kristeva calls a “primal repression” that
precedes the establishment of the subject’s relation to its objects of desire and
representation (p. 2). Horror, repulsion, melancholia and depression represent a
return of the abjected maternal and refer to the sense of loss related to having
neutralized something vital.
’SKIRTS allude to the theoretical underpinnings of Plato and Kristeva through the
problematic of painting to draw out the capacity of anamorphic space to articulate
discontinuities in another dimension. This capacity, which arises from oppositions and
loss, communicates through visual manifestations of things that can only exist prior
to differentiation. Guided by certain parameters that include the persistent evidence
of the hand, the importance of mistakes and the inclination to think through the art
form, the subject of ’SKIRTS, which has to do with feelings that arise from the non-
object rather than the subject, involve breaking away from representation to uncover
an otherness that takes us back to an undifferentiated place when individuation is
not completely formed. Turning away from the status of object means conceiving
of and producing images that come about in the half-light, unconstrained by the
individuating character of form.
Painting is a non-academic line of inquiry that does not conform to a preconceived
plan. It is a manner of conceiving of the space where philosophy breaks off and
the body is re-inscribed to contemplate what is seen and not seen. ’SKIRTS,
which alternate between a series of procedures that do not separate production
from conception, enter into a relationship of give-and-take to portray a vision of
the surrounding landscape in a veil of sameness. Moving between the formal and
the undifferentiated without seeing, painting and un-painting expands moments
between phases, puts different parts in common, and lets things show through.
These operations are indebted to the in-between to maintain a reciprocal relationship
between keeping everything in “flight” and securing a relation in concrete form at
the same time. Pre-word and amorphous, what is brought back and erased repeatedly
passes through the interstices of chora and leaves behind some kind of sediment or
space that is both limited and detached. Traces, changed into marks of passage, are
carried into the realm of form and simultaneously cast astray.
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C. CRAWFORD
Painting and writing cut into a surface to trace images and signs with lines
and segments that begin and end with a stroke. Substituting lines for text, what
is constituted by a concrete language and constructed out of definite sequencing,
secure a relation to depictions of physical and emotional reality that are more than
topological facts. Moments of reflection are put in touch with what a thought looks
like, echoing the many parallels that have been written about the interplay between
philosophy and the visual arts. Since the task to examine the parallel between them
is primarily pedagogical, the lines of intentionality are blurred and what cannot be
experienced completely overflows into the art form. Line breaks, inflections, tonality
and gaps are ‘words’, but not what words are purported to be; they are a source
of incompletion to ward off what might otherwise appear hemmed in. Between
iteration after iteration is an otherness that rises to the surface in a vagueness of
mental perception that refers to a certain presence that is nevertheless absent.
Landscape is a standard subject of painting but when viewed at a distance, the
subject is no longer an object, but what is adjacent to it. ’SKIRTS, which exhibit
what cannot be properly called a place, are built up into a dense abstract form that
has no final intention other than to anticipate the coherence of physical and psychic
events that are held together by the viewer. Not being bound by the object, being
evasive, and following the trajectory of the creative process, allow for a glimpse
of something that remains open for others to seek. It also provides the incentive
to grasp the uncertain status of a work of art and this leads to seeking out what
permeates traces that are constituted in painting. The trace which refers to but does
not belong to a particular reference applies to what is left over and picked up again
from accumulated material that is distilled in different mediums. Traces appear in
terms of presence and absence – between what is there and not there.
The impulse that drives ’SKIRTS is the desire to access another way of knowing
that does not require total comprehension. Reality gives way to dreams to confirm
and inscribe an intuition of shadowy visions of a primitive scene – a space that is
both totally free and totally limited. Although strange things that are difficult to
imagine reopen a sense of loss, they also evoke something material that reference
an unknown thing from a murky distance. Psychoanalytically, this would entail
suffering the pain of intimacy, where the struggle to think back through our mothers
is embodied in a negotiation of emotional and aesthetic expression related to identity.
In the Platonic sense, it is a kind of unspeakable communication that precedes or
exceeds the limitations of language and utilizes a complex set of desires to locate
meaning in the temporal flow of life. For things to come together from different
spheres of knowledge, one must be observant and receptive, present and absent at
the same time. To be “touched” is to experience an emotion that is provoked by an
arrangement of a combination of things that move us in a particular way.
The semiotic belongs to a tradition of digressive and transgressive thinking that
links its unaccountable discourse across time, space and disciplinary boundaries.
By recognizing chora as a process of production or a process that unfolds between
the archaic and the social, Kristeva demonstrates that the semiotic chora is a system
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’SKIRTS 007
Acrylic/Canvas, 60” x 60”, 2013-14
’SKIRTS 073
Acrylic/Canvas, 60” x 60”, 2013-14
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C. CRAWFORD
of breaks and flows. These links, which are associated with the paradox of double
belonging and the structural importance of the mother-infant relationship, involve
a kind of semiotic literacy as a way of looking at things and solving problems. At
a time when ideological fabrication involves fantastic forces designed to mislead,
an approach to knowledge that includes the affections and aversions of everyday
life could serve as a foundation for an epistemological movement that calls for
recuperating the material conditions of lived experience. This practice, which
contains contradictions and constantly changing positions, accepts that something
between holds boundaries in place and demands a specific discourse closer to the
body to make sense of our collective past. For those whose concerns start from
the personal aspect of exploring the constitution and functioning of the symbolic
contract, it means thinking in terms of differences to establish new bridges between
nature and culture. Because educative practice is a translation of personal life into
a language taken from temporally defined conventions, systems of knowledge
have to be learned or worked-out through teaching and individual experimentation.
Education, which includes everything that happens to us from the time we enter the
world of meaningful symbols requires a radical alteration if we are to re-interpret
where we stand in the ordering of things.
In Kristeva’s theory of poetic language, the semiotic and the symbolic are key
concepts, and Freudian theory is the psychoanalytic foundation for her thinking.
By elaborating on the function and uncertain place of the pre-verbal semiotic and
its interaction with the symbolic, she attempts to disclose that language owes its
potential for renewal to the infiltration of subversive elements that disrupt the
existing state of affairs. For her, the semiotic is a preverbal sign that announces an
expression of “unspeakable forces” that strive to attack traditional forms and give
notice to the presence of a child and the child’s relationship with the mother prior to
language acquisition and symbolic separation (Smith, 1998). To form an identity and
to bridge the gap between isolation and social structures, the child must negotiate
the oedipal triangle by a kind of imaginative activity that has a place somewhere in
the social system. The semiotic, which draws on corporeal memory of the dialectical
interdependence of the maternal bond before the symbolic separation from the
mother takes place, enables the unconscious forces to institute creative modes of
representation.
Symbolization seen in love, artistic practice, works of art and psychoanalysis take
place in the dialectical area between the symbolic and the semiotic to enable subjects
to be at once transgressive and contained in the symbolic order. These practices
articulate the energy and drives that are experienced in the body before separation
from the mother and at the same time submit them to a socially permissible code.
This dialectic is the condition of the maternal bond in which the subversive work of
the semiotic does battle with the symbolic and connects language to the body.
In order to play an effective role in a network of relations, and to participate
in the creative organization of a shared narrative, it is necessary to be “touched”
intellectually and to assume responsibility for the choices being made. These choices
146
require coming to terms with “collective depression” and “agonistic space” that
Kristeva (1989) links with the loss of meaning and the dark abyss of the feminine
that is rooted in lack of representation. The difficulty of enduring the pain and tension
of passing through this space is analogous to withstanding the tension of having
knowledge without knowing it and rejecting all attempts to rely on technological
innovations to see what is objectively true.
In order to resist ideological manipulation of public discourse, Kristeva calls for
preserving the oedipal structure, (which privileged patricide and the subsequent
possession of the mother), and reinvesting it with the full psychic resonance of the
role of the mother. This resonance, which is the “subversive core” of a philosophical
point of reference for emancipatory politics that pertains to the expression of semiotic,
preverbal and instinctual drives that allow for the affirmation of individuality as
well as commonality in language, precipitates an opening into the other that can be
“heard” and “felt” without having to rely on conceptual operations to prove their
existence. The implication is that “sounds” and “feelings” are “un-thoughts” that
contribute to an organizational principle that is always indirectly inferred. The “un-
thought,” which is suspended in a co-existence that broadly refers to the creative
domain, is concerned with the underlying sentiment that “sounds” in disturbances to
bring about a mode of communication.
Kristeva insists that the dialectical relation between the semiotic and the symbolic
should not be confused with inexpressible muteness. Rather than troubling silence,
it should be recognized as an inviolable quality of “melodic alliteration” that speaks
of infinite transformations that resonate in the sacred connection between body and
meaning. As the semiotic makes its way into the material of language as tones and
rhythms, it causes an upheaval in artistic and political modalities and calls attention
to the “madness” and the “pregnancies that are incomprehensible and disturbing
to the status quo. For Kristeva, listening to these disturbances and recognizing the
unspoken in speech, brings about a kind of social and emotional resonance that
alternates between time and its ‘truth’ (Moi, 1986, p. 153).
Kristeva describes these intervals as “spasms” that give birth to the workings of
the imagination and that constitute a leap toward elsewhere. For her, elsewhere is
“the place where I am not” - where the struggle to think back through our mothers is
embodied in the negotiation of emotional and aesthetic expression related to identity
(Kristeva, 1982).4 This means suffering the pain of intimacy in order to hear the
silence in the “rift of difference” that has the power to lead the mind elsewhere
(Heidegger, 1971). Any utterance that breaks the primal silence in speech or writing
is part of a two-fold bidding of listening and responding. Listening involves being
receptive to hearing what is restrained in the soundless or tranquil and responding
is related to acts of imagining that invite things in to bear upon one another as they
unfold. It is Kristeva’s contention that the power associated with this unseen ground
affirms a woman’s specific relation to meaning and constitutes the need to reflect
upon philosophical issues that share a common ambition for knowledge and the care
of other human beings. For her, motherhood is not identical with femininity, but the
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C. CRAWFORD
mother/child relationship can provide a foundation for a new ethics of difference that
calls for openness to the other and in which a woman finds her own language without
abandoning the symbolic dimension.
In the interest of education, feminist philosopher Nel Noddings associates
receptivity with intuition reminding us that historically intuition is associated with
the dark, mysterious and timeless and is sometimes seen as an alternative way of
knowing (Noddings & Shore, 1984, pp. 165-173). She uses the term receptivity in
relation to situations when one is faced with what to do and a motivation for doing
it and associates it with the love that is present in the acts of teaching and learning.
For Noddings, receptivity maintains and enhances relatedness to set the stage for
making a commitment to “seeing what is there, considering what might be changed,
speculating on what might be” (Noddings, 1984, p. 60). While Noddings admits that
each human consciousness participates in the construction of reality, she emphasizes
the relatedness that must be perceived and accepted before any coherent picture can
be constructed.
In the search for meaning, the question of what something means may be met
by a “storm of silence” until the search becomes active and correspondences are
drawn up in a systematic way to see what the behavior of the objects have to say.
In the receptive phase, manipulative or assimilative activity must cease in order
to watch and be guided, “attentive as though listening,” so that what is there may
exercise its influence upon the situation. This state of activity is a controlled state
of passivity that abstains from controlling the situation and lets the situation direct
what is done to it. Noddings describes it as a dual orientation toward objects that
are confronted in consciousness and by becoming both subject and object, reflect
the activity of caring for human beings. Of this double-belonging, Noddings writes:
“The other is received, his reality is apprehended as possibility for oneself. The
object is received; its reality stands out against the background of its possibilities in
the one receiving” (1984, p. 8) Attentiveness in conjunction with “natural interest”
places the relation in a capacity for empathy that leads to “a heightened sense of
aliveness” and a realization of kinship between oneself and the other. This capacity,
which is the starting point for relatedness, provides a “little space” for becoming
intensely involved in a double bonding where the spirit of the enterprise stems from
emotional intelligence and a mutual welcoming that is realized as a reconnection
with a thing held in common.
For Noddings, educating only from a rational-cognitive approach is a mistake
because “we share only the justification for our acts and not what motivates and
touches us” (1984, p. 8). Her approach requires a process of decision-making
founded on concrete situations and being immersed in the changing character of
that experience. What is experienced depends upon the point through which the
individual can assert his or her passionate impulses on the situation to be drawn
closer to the heart of the matter. To open the door to receive a message that belongs
to a different order and to know how to act, it is necessary to perceive what occurs in
the domain of change. This domain, which is pregnant with possibility, may take on
148
a life of its own as the subject evolves along with the environment. Rather than being
governed by habits of mind, fixed through repetition and conventional assumptions,
the relation between things may be postulated to explain anomalies and reveal all
sorts of variations.
A semiotic education involves a specific practice that makes itself felt in
meaningful intellectual activity. This practice, which has to do with analyzing and
locating a perspective from which questions and concerns can be addressed, calls
for a dual discourse that recognizes two systems of logic and how they interrelate.
Interactions that are both mental and physical are transmitted by subtle and
(not so subtle) cues of sensory communication based on strong commitments
to particular techniques. Semiotics, which relies on these tremors to allow for a
glimpse of another way of engaging in thought, sets us on a path to explore the
other side of rational cognition through a more internal orientation toward meaning.
Successive beginnings, ground clearings, and displacements pave the way for what
comes to pass in images that Plato compares to “living things” (Cratylus 439, p. 174)
because mark-making such as painting (and writing) are creations that have “the
attitude of life” (Phaedrus 275, p. 461). Chora and subsequently, the semiotic chora
constitute the midway point between things to initiate the un-doing of the language
of representation and to allow for the possibility of escaping imprisonment in the
discourse. Where we leave off, which belongs to another kind of energy that has the
power to lead the mind elsewhere, will be returned to again and again only to appear
differently in every new development. “Beginning is begotten of nothing”… “but
if unbegotten, it must also be indestructible”… “therefore the self-moving is the
beginning of motion and this can never be destroyed” (Phaedrus, p. 441).
NOTES
1
Paul Virilio, Grey Ecology, trans. Drew Burk, ed. Huberitus von Amelunxen, ATROPOS PRESS,
New York 2009. A critic of contemporary art, Virilio is concerned with the speed of perception and
how art is related to reality. From the beginning, reality functions “accident upon accident,” but the
“destructive mechanics” of instantaneity and a disembodied visual spectrum call for placing himself
and his work in the space between…and taking on a position of delirium to deal with the relationship
between phenomena where “no mastery can be had.” This “mode of thought does not lend itself to a
concrete philosophy or a precise “rational” thought (tr. Intro. pp. 16-17).
2
See Gaston Bachelard 1964. The Psychoanalysis of Fire, tr. Alan C. M. Ross. (Boston, MA: Beacon
Press).
For an analysis of the phenomena of fire and the emotional value it lends to rational and affective
abstract concepts of substances.
3
See Jacques Derrida, “Khora” in On the Name, ed. Thomas Dutoit, (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1995). For Derrida, khora (chora) labors under the constraints of rhetoric and
appears to represent absence and presence at different times. The question of what this place situates
is a matter of structure drawn from the text that implies the possibility of a determined existent via acts
of language.
4
Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon Roudiez (New York: Columbia
University Press) pp. 1-5. Kristeva speaks of abjection as a revolt of being in which the one haunted
by it is literally beside oneself. There is no correlation between one or the other that could support
the possibility of being autonomous. The only quality of the abject is that of being opposed to I and
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C. CRAWFORD
through its opposition draws the subject toward the place where meaning collapses and pushes one
toward non-existence. Being in the middle (of treachery) is the beginning of separation from oneself
and the process of becoming an Other at the expense of one’s own death. Abjection is the border of
ones condition as a living being where the loss of the body becomes the place where it is not and the
body is deprived of a world.
REFERENCES
Bachelard, G. (1984). The psychoanalysis of fire, E. R. Farrell (Trans.). Dallas, TX: The Pegasus
Foundation.
The I Ching or Book of Changes (1950). C. F. Baynes (Trans.), Bollingen Series XIX. Princeton University
Press.
Derrida, J. (1995). “Khora”. In On the name, T. Dutoit (Ed.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Heidegger, M. (1971). Poetry, language, thought, A. Hofstadter (Ed.) (pp. 204–209). New York, NY:
Harper Row.
Kristeva, J. (1980). Desire in language, T. Gora, A. Jardine & L. Roudiez (Trans.), L. Roudiez (Ed.). New
York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Kristeva, J. (1982). Powers of horror: An essay on abjection, L. Roudiez (Trans.). New York, NY:
Kristeva, J. (1984). Revolution in poetic language, M. Waller (Ed.). New York, NY: Columbia University
Press.
Kristeva, J. (1986). About Chinese women. In T. Moi (Ed.), The Kristeva reader. New York, NY:
Kristeva, J. (1989). Black sun: Depression and melancholia, L. S. Roudiez (Trans.). New York, NY:
Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley & Los
Angeles, CA: University of California Press.
Noddings, N., & Shore, P. J. (1984). Awakening the inner eEye: Intuition in education. New York &
London: Teachers College Press, Columbia University.
Plato, The republic. The dialogues of Plato. (1927). B. Jowett (Trans.). New York, NY: Boni & Livright.
Plato, Cratylu. The dialogues of Plato. (1927). B. Jowett (Trans.). New York, NY: Boni & Livright.
Plato, Phaedrus. The dialogues of Plato, (1927). B. Jowett (Trans.). New York, NY: Boni & Livright.
Plato, Symposium (1989). A. Nehamas & P. Woodruff (Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing
Company, Inc.
Plato, Timaeus. (2000). D. J. Zeyl (Trans.). Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.
Plato, Timaeus and Critias. (1977). D. Lee (Trans.). London & New York: Penguin Group.
Smith, A. -M. (1998). Speaking the unspeakable. London/Sterling & Virginia: Pluto Press.
Virilio, P. (2009). Grey ecology, D. Burk (Trans.), H. von Amelunxen (Ed.). New York, NY: Atropos
Press.
Cair Crawford
New York
USA
150
DIANE FAHEY
12. TWO POEMS
PORTRAIT
On Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”
The gold waterfall of her turban,

its lazuli bands, are brought into relief,
nuanced, by the sombre, subversive shades
lurking in folds, cupping chin and cheekbones,
and sculpting the richest garments one might wish for
to clothe human hope and sweet promise.
The chaste collar, the pearl’s milky arc

accord with the sheened whiteness of her hazel eyes;
in their depths – transparent, forever
unknown to us – I read of fears mastered.
She stands poised at the meeting points between
youth and fate, between flesh and eternity.
Her diamond self waits, her angled gaze tests
the contract between seeing and believing.
MORNING
First light, or an efflorescence of darkness?

Doors glimmer between fact and dream,
gather substance; the bookcase fills with distinct
spines, each a claim on memory.
Across the housefront and lawn of Le Sidaner’s
Table in the Sun, slabs of brightness;
buttery flecks on birch trunk, vined archways,
the blue tablecloth, the scarf-draped chair.
Above my lampshade’s sea-green, Vuillard’s

Woman Sewing before a Garden Window.
A golden glare the trellis cuts to diamonds

D. FAHEY
picks out the white on her chequered gown,

clasps nape, shoulders. Bowed over a shapeless
shape, she makes and mends, almost faceless.
Diane Fahey
Clifton Springs, Vic.
Australia
152
SÉBASTIEN PESCE
13. EDUSEMIOTICS OF EDUCATIONAL GESTURES
INTRODUCTION
The quality of education is broadly thought of as depending on the recruitment of

good teachers, seen as professionals capable of acting along the lines of the “best
practices” they have been taught. In this context, one may wonder why teachers
sometimes have a hard time abandoning their “bad habits” for supposedly good ones
whose relevance seems obvious to public policy makers, specialists of comparative
research in education or teachers’ educators.
My aim in this chapter is to investigate the so-called “good” and “bad” habits
behind teachers’ practices, and the kind of cognition such habits imply. I propose to
analyse the way meanings and more broadly narratives underlie the establishment,
enactment and transformation of “habitual practices” in teachers. I will then consider
the way habits of belief, habits of conduct and habits of practical action interplay in
the implementation of such habitual practices. With regard to the twofold dimension
of habits (at the same time natural and necessary to any human being and dangerous
when they make us “jump to conclusions” in an unreflective way), I will eventually
propose to consider the making and use of “educational gestures” as alternatives to
forms of habitual practices that would have become inefficient.
HABITS AND THE MYSTERY OF TEACHERS’ COMPETENCE
Habitual Versus Best Practices and the “Good Teacher”
One can observe today a growing perspective in public speeches about quality of
education: the main condition of education quality is the competence of teachers.
Good teachers mean good education, bad teachers bad education. This reductionist
analysis is very consistent with the old stereotype of the “charismatic teacher”: some
teachers “have it”, they are made for the job, ready to take charge of the classroom.
There is something magical, some secret, in the way they speak or behave thanks to
which they can do a good job (i.e. implement “best practices”).
From such a good teacher/best practices view of education, one way of questioning
education appears, which is in my mind a behaviourist one: since we know exactly
what works (just look at what they do in Finland, Sweden, Quebec…), why don’t
teachers just reenact these wonderful techniques? Put otherwise, why is it so difficult
for a “bad teacher” to lose bad habits? Why do they go on implementing gestures

S. PESCE
that seem not to work, or to ignore innovative professional gestures? Why do they
ignore the good practices we ask them to implement during their initial training,
practices they know to be clever and consistent since we thoroughly explained the
theories underlying such practices?
We will see in this chapter how edusemiotics helps us take some distance with
this general view of “good habits”, more precisely with these prejudices concerning
teachers’ competence, best practices and theory/practice relationship. My aim
in this chapter is to develop an edusemiotics of habits that may offer us a better
understanding of the way teachers build their skills. I propose to investigate teachers’
“habitual practices”, and to rethink these habitual practices in reference to Peirce’s
writings on habits.
Habits and Habitual Practices
Habits play a key role in the activity of any professional, and for that matter in
anyone’s everyday life. When one thinks about “habits”, the notion that actually
comes to mind is probably that of “habitual practices”. Yet, habitual practices (let us
say “customs”) are not synonymous with “habits”, in the strong, pragmaticist sense.
Nevertheless, these habitual practices are one component of habits. As such, they
will deserve some attention in this chapter: they will constitute the “degree zero” of
habit we will explore first, before going further into definitions.
Such customs are everywhere in teachers’ ways of working. Among these habitual
practices, we may think of any way of speaking, organising the classroom setting,
assessing students’ work, reacting to certain kinds of incidents… for instance, the
habitual practices of: giving a detention, asking students to write an essay, marking
these works. In the same way that there are habitual practices in teachers’ daily
work, there are habitual practices at the scale of the school, or at the scale of public
policies: for instance habits related to the teacher/students ratio, to the design of
curricula, to the choice of gathering one teacher with a certain number of students
for one hour, around one specific subject matter.
The general idea is that some of these customs are good, while others are bad…
To sum up, the general perspective on habits, understood as “habitual practices”,
may be described as follows: 1. A habit implies some kind of reflex… when acting
through habits, an individual reacts to a situation generally well known to him/
her… habit is a usual way of responding to a usual situation; 2. No meaning-making
process is necessary to implement an habitual practice or gesture; 3. More broadly,
habit does not imply thinking and, moreover, habit implies not thinking, this absence
of reflexivity defining the notion.
These features make habit a very bad candidate for the character of intelligent
behaviour. Is habit an unintelligent way of being? If so, is it something unintelligent
we should nevertheless accept? Should we get rid of it by becoming permanently
reflexive?
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EDUSEMIOTICS OF EDUCATIONAL GESTURES
Habitual Practices, Reflex and Reflexivity
Can we really propose that professionals, and specifically expert professionals

who act through habit, act “without thinking”? Probably not, or only if we keep
a traditional conception of “thinking”, a conception that is not consistent with the
cleverness of habit I will soon defend. Let us start, in order to offer a first alternative
to the “acting without thinking” theory, with a rephrasing: in the play of habit,
judgment and action are partly synchronous. It is this synchronicity that may give
the impression that enacting habits puts aside any act of thinking.
Maine de Biran (1799/1929) insists on this aspect of habits: they imply some kind
of synchronicity between judgment and action. To describe thinking and judgment,
Maine de Biran evokes “inferences”, understood as they would be today: movements
of thought from one (set of) propositions (or premises) to new propositions (or
conclusions).1 For Maine de Biran, the expert physician is prompt to make this kind
of quick inference.2 The transparent-like and quick aspects of these inferences may
lead us to false judgments. Maine de Biran is particularly cautious: for this author,
habit is a natural process, but a dangerous one. One main “influence of habit on
the faculty of thinking” may be indeed to jeopardise the act of thinking itself, the
relevance of the decisions taken and of the gestures implemented. Thinking precedes
habits, and when a habit is established, thinking disappears.
Ravaisson offers quite a different view. In his 1838 thesis, a milestone in the
“philosophy of habit”, Ravaisson discusses this naturality of habits. Habit is first
described as “a general and permanent way of being, the state of an existence”
(Ravaisson, 1838/2008, p. 25), and more surprisingly at first sight, as intrinsically
connected to change: habit is the result of a past change, but is a way of “anticipat(ing)
both the impression of external objects in sensibility, and the will in activity” (ibid.,
p. 51); it makes things easier, “movement becomes swifter”, “precision and assurance
arise” (ibid., p. 53); but in the same way one observes, with habit, “the diminution
of will and consciousness” (ibid., p. 55). The phenomenon implies at the same time
something “obscure” and “intelligent”: “although movement, as it becomes a habit,
leaves the sphere of will and reflection, it does not leave that of intelligence. It does
not become the mechanical effect of an external impulse, but rather the effect of an
inclination that follows from the will” (ibid.).
As will also appear in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, habit implies
a practical intelligence, inscribed in the body, but escaping conscious thinking: “it is
more and more outside the sphere of personality, beyond the influence of the central
organ of the will –that is to say, within the immediate organs of movements – that
the inclinations constituting the habit are formed, and the ideas are realized. …The
spontaneity of desire and intuition is dispersed, in some way, as it develops, within
the indeterminate multiplicity of the organism” (p. 55-57). Here already emphasised
is the role of what is well known today as the autonomous nervous system in the
construction of habit, and thus the embodied dimension of habit.
155
S. PESCE
Any student of habit is familiar with this twofold definition: on one hand useful,
allowing us to spare time, making us reactive, making easy our everyday activity; on
the other hand dangerous by putting aside any act of thinking. But, though familiar,
this description and the role it gives to the act of thinking (or not thinking) when
resorting to habit may be misguiding. Ravaisson, and later Merleau-Ponty, propose
a description of habit that, rather than opposing it to thinking, offers a new view
on cognition. Habit may constitute a clever form of behaviour; but this cleverness
implies a specific form of cognition.
Another Form of Cognition?
Every scholar interested in the question of habit knows this comment made by
Merleau-Ponty upon Bergson’s description of habit as a “fossilised residue of
spiritual activity” (Merleau-Ponty, 1945/1962, p. 142). Maine de Biran proposes an
interpretation of habit that seems to give a positive answer to that question. Will and
thought did precede the establishment of habit. Habit keeps track of such thought,
but is not anymore an occasion of thinking.3 As such, habit seems an unintelligent
component of human behaviour. This view is probably determined in great part by
a traditional view of cognition: any act of thought, any cognition, any inference,
must be conscious. Neither Maine de Biran nor Bergson considers habits in terms
of unconscious forms of cognition. Cognition is happening in a subject only if he or
she is aware of being thinking.
When Maine de Biran asserts that thinking deserted behaviour in the enactment
of habits, it is probably this traditional conception he expresses. A second conception
is present in his analysis: because he is very confident in the beneficial effects
of exercising one’s rationality, Maine de Biran has a hard time conceiving that
even thorough thinking may lead to mistakes: false positives and mistakes in all
forms, situations in which professionals “jump” to false conclusions, all that make
explicit signs of an absence of thinking. Eventually, Maine de Biran, while using
the word “inference” in the very acceptation the word has today, probably reduces
this movement of thought to inductive and deductive processes. Maine de Biran
describes with great subtlety processes he is probably not able, because of a lack of
conceptual tools, to analyse. In other words, when Maine de Biran evokes the idea
of jumping to conclusions,4 he describes at length processes of transduction and
abduction without conceiving them as important aspects of cognition… this is why
he rejects these processes as malfunctions.
These are precisely the acts of transduction and abduction that occur in these
situations in which Maine de Biran perceives a synchronicity of judgment and action.5
If an inductive inference allows a movement from the particular to the general, and
a deductive inference takes the form of the reverse process, transduction implies
reasoning among instances or facts, within the realm of the particular. Transduction,
as Denoyel (2012) reminds us, was acknowledged by Piaget, who considered it a
form of “proto-logic” present in children, and coming down to some form of magical
156
thinking. Today, transductive inferences remain very often seen as in contradiction

with “logic” and “correct thinking”. Nevertheless, acts of transduction constitute an
important part of cognition. They are characteristic of this moment when the subject
has the feeling of a meaning yet to come, of a connection that yet remains to be
made, named, or expressed. I feel that these two facts, these two observations, may
be linked, are connected (transduction); I do not know yet how they are connected,
but soon a hypothesis about the kind of connection involved will appear (abduction).
Every mystery novel includes many occurrences of transductions and abductions.6
Transduction produces some form of pre-notion that will give rise to a new
conception, under the form of abduction: a hypothesis to the best inference will
be made. Typically, the conclusions to which the physician “jumps” in Maine de
Biran are these kinds of abductions, which have been described for centuries as
“paralogismes”, or fallacies. It is not a surprise that Maine de Biran sees here a
failure of thinking. In Ravaisson’s or Merleau-Ponty’s view, these processes (even if
the authors do not describe them as transductions or abductions) locate the enactment
of habits at the core of cognition: habit is not the time of thinking’s surrender;
moreover, it is probably one of the major expressions of everyday cognition, an
idea proposed for instance by Leake (1995). There is thinking in habit, and one
can affirm this is not “another” or a “specific” kind of thinking, different from the
“normal”, “conscious”, or usual way of thinking: the forms of cognition associated
with habit are probably the more obvious, usual, let us say “normal” forms of
cognition anybody experiences… even though they conflict with the general view of
the cognition-action process (theory versus practice, plans before action).
We do not need to function along the lines of analytical, reflective and conscious
cognition in everyday life; we do not need elaborate plans to prepare some coffee,
drive a car, or implement hundreds of simple gestures. This is precisely the case
in professional settings with experts, who can be described as having developed a
specific relationship to habits. They are prompt to function in this non-analytical
way, to develop ways of acting based upon transductive and abductive thinking.
Things get done without requiring a high level of awareness of the choices made
(Varela et al., 1991, p. 35).
Many investigations come to that conclusion, in the context of comparisons
between beginners and expert cognition and activity. It is well documented that
experts generally act in an analogical way, and come back to a more analytical mode
when coping with an unexpected situation, that imposes the creation of new solutions,
an “understanding” in the classical sense of the word. Experts develop more situated
forms of cognition, in which knowledge is distributed within the scene. The expert
bartender will easily reach a particular bottle without thinking or really looking for
it.7 Only when the bartender takes an empty bottle, will he have to slow down the
process, and think about it more deeply: where are my stocks of this liquor?
Saying that an expert “jumps to conclusions” when enacting a habit is, if not
a mistake, a deceptive shortcut. Acting through habit does not come down to
implementing a program, a kind of loop, in the sense of computer programming:
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IF such signs THEN such action. Acting through habits does not mean giving
an automated answer while dealing with a certain setting. A series of cognitive
processes are involved in habits; the action or set of gestures produced through
habit is something new, implies innovation and creativity: in short, any action in
this context is the result of an instance of semiosis: there is “repetition without
repetition”, in Bernstein’s sense (1953/1996), a notion Clot (2002) investigated
precisely to analyse professional gestures and the development of skills.
A habit is both the result of past semiosic events and the place where new semiosis
occur. It is precisely what I propose to investigate with the concept of educational
gestures. In order to do that, we now need to consider habits in their ecosystem,
in their context of existence, and to explore the meanings and meaning-making
processes involved in the play of habit.
HABITS IN CONTEXT: MEANINGFUL GESTURES IN MEANINGFUL CONTEXTS
From an edusemiotics standpoint, cognition is (depending on the approaches)

analysed with regard to the semiosic processes in play or (and that is the perspective
I propose here) is understood itself as a semiosic process. In the third section of this
chapter I will consider the interplay of habitual practices, habits and educational
gestures in terms of semiosis, in the strong sense this notion has in Peirce. But I will
first propose a few remarks about the role of meaning in habitual practices.
We have now some notion of why “good habits” or “best practices” cannot be
spread that easily: there is a meaningful dimension in habits (at the very least: as
we will see, it is a little more than that, since habits are nothing but the product
of semiosis). Asking teachers to enact such or such gesture may lead them to
import in their classrooms the superficial features of this gesture, and not its
meaningful aspects. Yet it may actually be misleading to evoke the mere “meaning”
of a gesture; one may be tempted to reduce any action or gesture to a twofold
object having, on one side, a material dimension, on the other side a symbolic,
meaningful aspect. This view presents the risks of: first, considering that there is
one meaning associated with a gesture in a dual, binary way; second, ignoring the
changing, dynamic, process-like dimension of the meanings involved; third, taking
into account only verbal meanings (and not other types of interpretants); fourth,
considering only conscious meanings.
These four interpretations are very characteristic of a semiologic (rather than
semiotic) view of meaning. This view is typically one that leads to the “give sense
to learning” stance: according to this perspective, there are definitely good habits
and gestures; what a good teacher has to do is to implement such practices, and to
explain to his/her students why such a way of doing things is the good one. From this
standpoint, the same strategy of “giving sense to…” can and must be enacted with
teachers during their training: tell them what to do, just do not forget to tell them why
they will act this way. Everybody knows this does not work… It is precisely why we
need to explore more thoroughly the question of meaning.
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How Same May Two Gestures Be?
As soon as one considers the possibility for a teacher to reproduce a gesture, in one
word to “do the same”, it may be consistent to ask Nelson Goodman’s question:
the same, but the same what?8 To what extent may the gesture implemented by one
teacher in a Swedish or Finnish classroom, and the one implemented by another
teacher in a British, French or American classroom, be described as “sames”?
Let us use a simple, and quite familiar, example, in the context of parenting. Two
mothers may ask their child, with the very same words, and seemingly with the same
tone, to “stop acting silly”. These seemingly very “same” gestures may have very
different effects: in one case these words will make the child stop instantaneously; in
the second case they may have no effect at all, or even make things worse…. What
first seems to be the same gesture (on a superficial level) may actually constitute two
very different actions, depending on the previous shared experiences of the child
and mother in the same kind of situation, the previous utterances of this demand, the
effects of these previous demands, etc.
In most cases, what is the same is a set of apparent, superficial features. But the
gesture as a whole (these features plus a set of phenomenological experiences), as
inscribed in a rhizome of meanings, feelings, concepts, may be very different. The
same is true for an educational gesture, implemented by a teacher in a classroom. Let
us first emphasize these few ideas:
1. An efficient habitual practice, or an educational gesture, must be considered on an
encyclopedic, rhizomic, historical level;
2. An educational gesture must be thought of in terms of meaning, but moreover in
terms of dynamic (changing) and shared meanings;
3. In pragmaticist terms, the sameness of two things depends on their effects.
The meaning of a gesture rests in its effects, and does not come down to a verbal
description like, say, “marking means giving ‘points of reference’ and ‘encouraging’”;
if for a student marks mean “unfair”, “comparison”, “nasty teacher” and lead this
student to grumble each time teachers announce marks, these are the meanings we
should consider. People act towards things upon the meaning these things have
for them. The meanings people assign to one action do not transform the action
(superficial features) but transform the more complex gesture that includes this
action and its effects. Meaning is the one existing for teachers, the one existing for
each student, and for the whole classroom: it is not possible to describe, analyse, talk
about any gesture without taking into account all of these meanings.
Meaning, Intention and Affordances: Habits and Motility in Meaningful Contexts
Any habit or educational gesture is shaped by its environment and, in the same process,
shapes its own environment, in a meaningful way. It is another way of describing
Varela’s (1999) notion of coupling between subjects and their environment, and to
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understand the material and symbolic inscription of habits in contexts, in reference

to their ability to build upon, use, produce, and transform affordances: here is, in my
view, a very pragmaticist perspective.
Let us recall Peirce’s example of the definition of a diamond: the concept of diamond
is directly related to the effects it has in the world. In other words, the diamond is
what it is with regard to the use I can make of it, relatively to its affordance. It is
very certainly an idea that Mead borrowed from pragmaticism and made available
for thinkers in the field of activity theory. Brassac (2008, p. 12) quotes Mead when
describing the way people “attribute secondary qualities to the thing which has now
become perceptual”: “The piece of flint had a certain density and friability in advance
of its use as a knife”… put another way, “Certainly, the silex owns a structure before
it is used as a knife, but it is its manipulation by an individual that makes a knife
out of it. (…) For G. H. Mead, the creation, production of something new results
from the action of an organism which, in an active relation to the physical world,
perceives physical things that constitute it while assigning them secondary qualities
and functional properties. We have here a dynamic co-determination of the agent of
the change and of the physical thing which is changed” (ibid.).
One cannot consider our relationship to our environment in terms of affordances
only when analysing high-order cognition phenomena or in terms of conscious
action within the world. Motility implies the existence of certain affordances in
our everyday world, and in the expression of habits. Let us come back to the case
of teachers: I may exclude a student from the classroom while being in rage, as a
reflex, by habit… but in this context each movement and each object are meaningful.
There is meaning in my pupils dilating though rage, even if there is no choice of
mine here. The door my finger points to in an automatic way is characterised by an
affordance, it is through this door the student will pass in a minute, and this object
(as the headmaster’s office, the corridor etc.) are perceived, or taken into account, in
the habitual practice of excluding a student.
In any case, an act, or a gesture, is a way of (or has such an effect as) attributing
qualities to objects in the world, or actualising these qualities, or acknowledging
them, or creating them, or transforming them. Any act can be thought of within
this interplay of meaning-making and affordance… any act, including of course
usual practices and apparently unthought-of and unprepared reactions to unexpected
situations. Thinking of the meaningful dimension of any act in terms of interactions
with objects offering affordances comes down to conceiving action in terms of
significant gestures, in Mead’s words, or in terms of actions mediated by signs.
According to Brassac (2008, p. 13, my translation), “the act is in some way the
category allowing G. H. Mead to theorize this micro-narrative of the alteration of
an organism and of its environment. The impulse, first stage of the act, is in some
way a ‘selective attention’ of the organism in regard to its environment; it includes a
tendency to behave in a certain way (R) vis-à-vis the environment (S). The sensory
stimulus produces a conscious responding attitude leaning on an imagery, which
accounts for former experiences in which responses have been given.” It is probably
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not useful here to remind that in Mead, “behaviour” and responses to stimuli must
not be seen as mere reflex reactions, the relation between “responses” and “stimuli”
being mediated by meanings: it is this idea which underlies the notion of significant
gestures, and this principle of meaningful mediation that, borrowed from Peirce,
is passed on to generations of social scientists by Mead. Peircean, or pragmaticist,
too is this claim from Mead quoted by Brassac (ibid., ibidem), and anticipating the
concept of affordance: “We see the objects as we will handle them.”
From Meaning to Narratives: Underlying Meanings in “Habitual Actions”
Affordances and the expression of will, in any act, and for instance in the case of
habits, articulate with each other through time, after a series of previous experiences
that made the world meaningful. A part of the complex set of cognitive and motor
events that constitute habitual practices occurs by anticipating the use of an object, an
interaction with something or somebody. There is a dynamic, process-like dimension
of habits but, more important, a dynamic dimension of the meanings involved: the
meaning of a habit is not univocal; more precisely a habitual practice involves a set
of multiple meanings interacting with each other and with environment itself. If it
remains essential to conceive habits in terms of meanings (and to consider these
meanings with regard to a broad view of semiosic processes), it would be probably
more coherent to consider the narratives, and not only the meanings, involved in
habits. Habitual practices are wonderful storytellers, and cannot be understood
regardless of this aspect. This narrative dimension of habitual practices is one I
will quickly describe before proposing a description of “educational gestures” as
articulating habits, habits of conduct and habits of practical action.
The meanings we are dealing with in habitual practices are not fixed ones: they
develop through time, and connect with each other within elaborate narratives. Habits
do not merely carry or express meanings: they tell stories. I have given the example
of a sanction, such as “giving a detention”, as a form of habitual practice. “Giving
a detention” constitutes a habitual action, an action a teacher may implement while
coping with a certain category of events. Even if the choice of “giving a detention”
may come to one teacher more or less “naturally”, it is underlain by meanings of
which agents are more or less aware or reflexively conscious. And this is a highly
notable habitual action because it peculiarly exemplifies the notion of “underlying
narratives” or the notion of “underlying meanings” (Ardoino, 1972, p. xv). The
habitual practice itself constitutes a whole story, with a beginning, a series of key
moments, a dénouement. Moreover, it tells a whole story in which each character
and each object is connected to specific meanings and plays a particular role.
The utterance of a habitual practice is particularly interesting because it unveils the
secret stories generally hidden behind the scene, and determining people’s actions. For
instance, when a teacher sees two students talking during a written test, it is likely this
teacher will see them as “cheating students”, and not as “cooperating students”. Here,
“cheater” is not just a meaningful character given to an individual, but the result of the
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whole story of written tests, exams, competition in schools, and so on and so forth. As
immediate, quick, and obvious the habit of seeing the students as cheating may be, the
story behind is very elaborate, and implies numerous principles, ideas, values. The
teacher will adopt this conclusion (they are cheating, rather than cooperating or lending
a pen to one another) before formalising the varied premises involved (for instance,
the rules associated with written tests, the understanding of a more global perspective
on learning, schooling, assessing, and controlling). Teachers gather and categorise
perceptual clues, often unconsciously, and subsequently jump to conclusions.
Individuals draw conclusions based on the cognitive models, theories, and
worldviews they are enacting, creating, developing, and transforming within
particular couplings, an enactive process that implies that people, things, gestures,
and speeches be categorised or that “secondary qualities” be assigned to these
things, people and situations. These multiple operations of categorisations: a) are
interconnected; b) develop over time; c) are determined by underlying schemata; d)
constitute, together, through their interconnections and their temporal aspects, the
enaction of basic, simple, culturally embodied “stories”, and it is in this sense that
these categorisations are “narratives”.
The narratives people have in stock determine the “choice” of what perceptual
clues are relevant, prior to the interpretation of a specific event. In the case of
bullying, the narrative is often transparent: any act of bullying implies a perpetrator,
a forbidden act being perpetrated, and a victim. The narrative arises from the
dynamics that connects these elements: from, first, an initial state of equilibrium to,
eventually, a retrieved equilibrium, thanks to the action of a “hero” rendering justice,
a hero who is generally the teacher (regardless of whether he or she is simultaneously
the victim). When I state that this narrative is transparent, I mean that when one
describes it to a group of teachers, these teachers generally answer: “Of course, it is
what bullying is, what else could it be?” In this case the narrative thus is not fully
hidden, or easily unveiled. What is hidden is the fact that it is this narrative that is
chosen among an infinite set of possible narratives. Teachers are taught that when
they observe an act of bullying, they are to catch and punish the victim because,
obviously, being punished makes bad guys less bad and because, more obviously, no
behaviour may be explained by non-psychological factors (e.g. pedagogy, teaching
style, spatial organization). In other words, people are not encouraged to analyse
the “pragmatic”, situated dimension of events, nor are they invited to consider the
forms of couplings organising our encounter with the environment, nor the fact that
students “act” based on the meanings they assign to things and contexts. Students are
regarded not as “acting” in a meaningful way, but as merely “behaving”.
In the normal life of a school or of any other educational setting, neither these
habits nor the narratives and underlying meanings structuring them need to be
questioned. When critical situations occur, when things do not go well, or when our
embodied interpretations and habits of practical action appear inefficient, we must
unearth these meanings and narratives: it is when educational gestures can play a
beneficial role.
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EDUCATIONAL GESTURES AS REMEDIES TO THE HABIT ISSUE
Until now, I have mainly questioned teachers’ habitual practices, and not habits
themselves; I insisted on the fact that habits, in a pragmaticist sense, were distinct
from habitual practices. In this last section, my aim will be to propose a model
articulating habitual practices, the three dimensions of habits derived from Peirce’s
semiotics and pragmaticism, and the notion of educational gesture.
As we will see, habitual practices, as understood in the previous sections, and
educational gestures, are very similar things. They are actually, on a certain level,
the very “same” thing, implying (almost) the same cognitive, material and semiosic
processes. There are mainly three dimensions that distinguish them in my view:
the procedures and processes governing their establishment; the actors involved in
the creation and in the enactment of these two expressions of habit; the level of
consciousness these actors have of the meanings and narratives involved.
I have, at length, insisted on this very well known feature of habit: on one hand
habit is “natural”, useful, allows us to spare time, to react quickly; on the other
hand habit is dangerous in the extent that it makes us “jump to conclusions”, and by
organising a part of our activity in a unreflective way, can lead us to mistakes. As
much as we do not want to become victims of habits, we need to use them every day.
The notion of “educational gestures” aims precisely at dealing with this paradox,
allowing teachers to take benefit from the resource habits represent, while reducing
their potentially negative effects.
Habitual Practices and Past Semiosic Processes
The embodied and enactive approaches to cognition are in my view particularly

consistent with Peirce’s pragmaticism… moreover, Peirce’s complex and complete
view of habits offers rich conceptual tools to understand habitual practices. If we are
to understand the way teachers make sense of situations, develop certain ways of
acting, and certain beliefs, if we try to understand the way such processes grow in the
context of actual educational settings and through experience, we need to understand
how perception, semiosis and action are connected in these settings, more precisely
in the formation then enactment of habits. Peirce appears here as an excellent way of
identifying the different forms of cognition and semiosis involved in the formation
of habit.
How come that for some thinkers habit appears as a fossilised residue of
spiritual activity, while it is for others the living phenomenon in which cognition
fully develops? As seen above, there is a straightforward answer to that question:
these authors speak of very different things. In the former case they have in mind
a traditional view of cognition (the conscious, reflective, deductive design, then
implementation, of a plan based on conscious theories and frames of reference); in
the latter, they consider an embodied, unconscious, incorporated form of cognition.
In the former case they consider that cognition has been, has preceded these habits
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that vaguely bear sedimented traces of meaning produced by past cognition; in

the latter they see some lively form of cognition and meaning-making in the very
moment when habit organizes action.
Peirce’s pragmaticism helps us understand how consistent (with the everyday
reality of habit and with each other) these two views of habit are: these two forms
of cognition indeed support habit, both in its formation/transformation and in its
enactment. It is this notion the title of this chapter proposes to sum up: habit is a
residue of a past spiritual activity, but a lively one rather than a fossilised one; it is
the lively locus where cognition occurs, and the long way to its establishment is the
source of new cognitive processes. More important, each step of the “making” and
enactment of habits requires and builds upon semiosic processes.
The point of departure of our investigation was the good and bad habits of
teachers. There is a simple question one can ask observing what I proposed to call
“habitual practices” rather than “bad habits” (habits are not, cannot be, good or bad;
they just are): what is the meaning of giving a detention, excluding a student from
the classroom, if these sanctions do not have beneficial effects and do not change
the life of the classroom? To this question there is an obvious (at first sight) answer:
none, these gestures seem to have no sense. And yet, such habitual practices are fully
inhabited by meaning. In most cases, teachers resorting to these kinds of practices
are perfectly able to describe these meanings. They can refer to the origins of their
knowledge, both of the practice in question and of the meaning associated with it: I
have been said by colleagues to give a detention each time a student says… does…
does not, etc.
In these habitual practices are meanings, even if those are not meanings in a
pragmaticist sense: not meanings that are shared by all the actors; not meanings in
terms of the effects they have on people’s reality (these meanings do not necessary
allow professionals to reach the goals they first chose). In other words, these
habitual practices are full of the products of a great number of past instances of
semiosis, inherited by new teachers, transmitted to them by more expert colleagues.
They are full of the meanings and narratives evoked above: even without thinking
seriously of this meaning, a young teacher giving a detention acts along the lines
of the perpetrator-crime-victim narrative, of the “punishment makes bad guys less
bad” narrative or, in Lakoff’s words (1987), sees his action governed by the same
idealised cognitive models that organise the work of his or her colleagues. These
habits are typically the “fossilised residue of a [past] spiritual activity”, or the result
of past semiosic events: they are, in Peirce’s words, dynamic interpretants (without
being just that; I will come back to that soon).
Habitual Practices and the Mediation of Signs in Immediate Interpretation
It is very appealing to describe the quick response made by professionals to situations

as the result of an “immediate interpretation”… appealing, nevertheless probably
quite a mistake. This idea of “immediateness” is very consistent with the idea of
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“synchronicity” of judgment and action… immediateness there is, probably, in one

very specific sense. It is what I wish to comment before insisting on one point.
It is precisely this (seeming) immediateness that makes habits more than useful,
necessary. What does such immediateness mean on a semiotic level?
Interpreting, however quickly this is done, comes down to assigning secondary
qualities to objects. These immediate interpretations are cognitive events, and as such,
suppose the mediation of signs. Meanings, idealised cognitive models, narratives,
operate as mediations between the situation and myself, the spectacle offered to me,
and the actions I will soon implement. There is no such thing as thinking, cognizing,
understanding, seeing, bearing one’s attention on… without the mediation of signs.
It is precisely in this sense that edusemiotics considers any cognitive event as a
semiosic process: seeing the situation “as” means manipulating signs, and operating
semiosis… How quick the interpretation may be, “seeing as” is the result of an act of
semiosis. The meanings and narratives underlying my view of a situation may seem
fossilised (and yes, they are the result of past semiosis): anyway, a new semiosis
occurs at the very moment my body enters the scene. Past/fossilised and present/
lively semiosis are not contradictory, or exclusive of one another. They concur in the
“making” of the situation as seen by me.
The Threefold Dimension of Habit
From a pragmaticist standpoint, what is generally called “habit” implies in my view at

least three dimensions. It is why I prefer to talk about “habitual practices” and to keep
the word “habit” to describe notions derived from Peirce’s works. These distinctions
among the different forms of habits are necessary to understand the complexity
of the semiosic, cognitive and bodily processes in play in the establishment,
implementation and transformation of a habitual practice. Habit indeed constitutes
a key concept in Peirce’s pragmaticism, and many scholars have described learning
as taking and changing habits. I have proposed elsewhere a threefold definition of
habit, which I drew from this pragmaticist approach. I will focus here on essential
aspects of these definitions.
When one thinks of Peircean “habit”, the first notion that comes to mind is the
one of final interpretants. On this account, habits are laws and principles, and fully
belong to thirdness. Let us think of a “habit” as a notion, a general idea, a concept,
a meaning associated, for instance, to a word. When one hears or reads the word
“hat”, one sees in his mind’s eye a clothing accessory… this is what Peirce calls
an immediate interpretant. At the very moment of seeing or hearing the word an
instance of semiosis occurs. Nevertheless, such semiosis (occurring here and
now, and each time one sees or hears the word) is made possible by a number of
past semioses, that have allowed the creation of a “habit”: this habit of “seeing” a
hat, of thinking of this general idea of a hat when facing the word “hat” is a final
interpretant. Interpreting the word in this way is a tendency, a disposition of the
mind. This is the first, and most obvious meaning of the word “habit”, the first of the
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three dimensions we are interested in here, and the one, moreover, which helps us
understand the inevitable association of past and actual semiosic processes. In any
habitual practice, we resort to such meanings: any immediate interpretant (seeing a
talker as a cheater) means there is now a semiosis occurring, but the possibility of
such semiosis is the result of a past instance of semiosis, itself a source of the habit
of seeing any talker as a cheater in the context of an exam. Any habitual practice, to
that extent, involves Peircean “habits of meaning”, or “habits of belief”, or general
laws (final interpretants: residue of past semiosis, or of a past spiritual activity); but
this residue is not fossilised, but rather motivates a new act of semiosis… this is the
very principle of Peirce’s infinite semiosis.
At a second level, let us consider the role played by “habits of conduct”, a notion
used by Peirce. In many paragraphs of Peirce’s writing, the notion of “habit of
conduct” seems almost synonymous with “habits” as final interpretants. But I propose
to define these habits of conduct as general manners of addressing specific situations:
“final logical interpretants” for Peirce, similar to Piaget’s and professional didactics’
“schemata”. Habits of conduct constitute schemata, programmes of action, which
will be enacted in specific situations. Such habits of conduct are made of a quite
fixed set of dynamic interpretants that will be rearranged, based upon similar habits
(in the first sense evoked: habits of belief). This is a “quite” fixed set of dynamic
interpretants, to the extent that habits of conduct are not mere motor programmes.
Each situation may trigger a similar set of meanings, but never the very same set of
meanings. Observing one student talking will trigger the “talker as cheater” habit of
belief, but also some other meanings and narratives that are triggered now because
it is this particular student who is talking (say the “hard-working student” rather
than the “lazy bully”). The specific rearrangement of beliefs, the specific material
features of the situation, will impose the selection, rearrangement and interpretation
(token) of certain habits of conduct (types). Habits of conduct may be composed
of many gestures. For instance, “excluding a student” involves moving, talking,
writing a report, reminding of rules, meeting parents. These specific gestures will
themselves evolve, be interpreted, rearranged, each time a habit of conduct will be
enacted, and translated into a unique interpretation, in the same way a specific piece
of sheet music may be interpreted… And as two interpretations of a same score may
be seen as “the same piece of music”, this same schema of action, this same set of
features may appear as “the same practice” to (naïve) observers. Saying that the
repeated expression of habits is not just the repetition of the same motor program
comes down to saying again that each particular event implies new semiosic events,
i.e. resorting to existing habits of beliefs, interpreting them, and transforming them.
There is eventually a third dimension of habits, in the form of what I propose to
call, after Noël Denoyel, “habits of practical action”. The words “habits of practical
action” describe the particular, situated actions that our “microidentities” allow
us to implement in specific “microworlds”, in Varela’s words. Habits of practical
action are far more precise and specific than the very general habits of conduct. Put
in simple words, habits of practical action are gestures: the finely tuned gestures
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people perform in professional contexts, a form of habit that evokes many of

Merleau-Ponty’s examples. Habits of belief are notions, ideas, concepts, laws;
habits of conduct are schemata; habits of practical action are specific, particular
actions. Many habits of practical action are involved in the habit of conduct
consisting in giving a detention… among which: raising a brow, saying such words,
pointing to the door. Habits of practical action are micro-events, and in some cases
very discrete phenomena. The people who perform them do not always perceive
the existence of these habits of practical action; or they may be gestures that are
conscious but considered unimportant, irrelevant aspects of a situation. On the
contrary, people are generally aware of enacting a habit of conduct: “this morning
I fired Kevin… again”; they are not necessarily aware of all the habits of practical
action involved… “Did you say ‘Kevin, out’, or ‘Kevin, you are fired’?” – “Well,
I do not remember… it’s not very important, is it?” Habits of practical action, in
certain cases, are so obvious that they may not even be questioned (on the contrary,
people who may promote the relevance of detentions, nevertheless recognize that it
may become the topic of a discussion). Habits of practical action may include many
things: the tone of my voice, the first words I use in the morning while entering the
classroom, the moments when I sit down or stand, the way I formulate a remark to
a student, the way I move in the room, my bodily movements. A habit of practical
action is based on “habits of conduct” enacted by quick inferences, interpretations,
and discrete semiosis that will be important in determining my engagement in a
habitual practice, or my “reflex” to understand such words in a certain way and to
make certain interpretations.
Along the lines of the previous descriptions I proposed of “habitual practices”,
“habits of conduct” may appear to the reader as a quasi-synonymous of “habitual
practice”. I insist here on two points: first, using the words “habits of conduct”
implies convoking Peirce’s view of habits and semiosis, and makes us say far
more that what we say when we merely speak of “habitual practices”; with these
words, we now insist on the semiosic and cognitive aspects of habitual practices,
emphasising the direct interplay of past and actual instances of semiosis, old and
new meanings, and the mediation of signs, in the very moment of interpretation.
Second, and more important, I insist on the fact that habitual practices rest on the
interplay of these three kinds of habits: habits as final interpretants (or “habits of
belief”); habits of conduct; habits of practical action. It is this interplay one has to
take fully into account when working out educational gestures.
Educational Gestures as a Remedy for Habit Issues
As useful as they are, as constitutive as they may be of professional expertise,

habits, or rather what we chose to call “habitual practices”, sometimes threaten the
ones who rely to them. When habits have become ineffective, when jumping to
conclusions means mistaking rather than “getting it” in a glimpse, active reflexivity
can enter into play. The habitual inferences embedded within these habits may be
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S. PESCE
identified… the inferences or acts of semiosis behind these habits may once again
be made explicit.
What we call “good habits” are habitual practices that tell efficient stories,
stories consistent with the reality as perceived by the different actors, stories that
help people act in efficient ways. In the context of educational settings, what is
efficient in a gesture is not so much the superficial, visible features of it, as the
meaningful structure underlying these features. For that reason, when a gesture
becomes inefficient, it has no sense to question the sole dimension of “habits of
practical action”: what must be investigated are habits of conduct (the general
schemata, the structure of action, the way gestures are organized in a global
pragmatic narrative) and habits of belief, i.e. meanings and narratives underlying
these action schemata.
Educational gestures are a way of unearthing underlying meanings and narratives.
As habitual practices, educational gestures rely on the very human, ancestral
functioning of habit. As any habitual practice, educational gestures articulate
habits of belief (narratives and meanings), habits of conduct (general schemata
of action) and habits of practical action. There are nevertheless some differences
between habitual practices and educational gestures. Educational gestures can be
thought of along the lines of Mead’s notion of “significant gesture” (Mead, 1934),
and the expression refers to the specific way in which teachers and educators may
respond to specific situations through the mediation of meanings. An educational
gesture develops based on a set of couplings of the subject and its environment and
thus is a way of acting vis-à-vis educational situations based on previous semiosis.
Educational gestures are habitual practices that have been consciously established by
a group (and not inherited by a few members of this group) and whose meanings are
the results of an active collective inquiry. The words “educational gesture” describe
both a specific form of action and the procedures allowing the emergence of such
form of action; an educational gesture is both a process and product.
There are many ways people can develop “habits”, in the sense of “habitual
practices”. They can inherit them (they have observed colleagues, they have been
told to do this or that, they appropriated a procedure indicated by the school rulebook,
etc.); people can create new kinds of practices and then get used to them “naturally”;
they can get used to them through effort and training. On the other hand, there is
mainly one way to develop educational gestures: elaborate them collectively, with
colleagues and/or students, as answers to critical situations that have been perceived,
identified, named, analysed. As a process, educational gestures, at the time of their
design, imply a whole group (teachers and students), facing a critical situation,
to engage in a collective inquiry. They decide that some of the habitual practices
involved in the everyday life of the classroom have become inefficient, and choose
to investigate the meanings and narratives underlying them. They gather, mentally
observe and discuss the situations experienced, and try to replace old meanings
by new ones. They choose alternative practices that will better express the new
meanings they have produced.
168
Here is an example: until now in this school, any student arriving a few minutes
late in his classroom was sent back to the headmaster’s office, and would not come
back before the following class. Because this sanction recently tended to be given
more and more often, teachers first talked about it, then invited the students into the
debate. They came to this conclusion: sanctioning latecomers is intended to express
a meaning: being late diminishes the time spent learning, which is bad. And yet,
the very sanction deprives the faulty student of his/her time in the classroom: how
absurd is the story told when we state that missing class is bad precisely by asking
students to miss more class? It is another story the group then decides to tell in the
case of students being late: since good learning implies taking benefit from every
minute of the lesson, missed minutes of class will be caught up… this is the basis
of a new habit of belief. To enact this meaning, from now on, each latecomer will
go to his desk as soon as he/she enters the classroom, without any comment being
made; it will be written somewhere that this student “owes” 10 minutes of work.
He or she will “do his 10 minutes work”, for instance, during the recess. All these
gestures constitute new habits of practical action, altogether making a new habit
of conduct called “catching up delay”, and replacing the “excluding latecomers”
habitual practice. This is a new educational gesture that students and teachers choose
together to experiment with for a while, then to institute if it seems to work. If so, this
will become, through habituation, a new form of habitual practice, a meaningful one.
Moreover it will then be a meaningful answer to a meaningful question, preferred
to the ancient “excluding latecomers” habit, which was a meaningless answer to
a question that had, by the way, never been asked. A very naïve observer of such
practice (one who would not know the process through which the educational gesture
has been created… one, moreover, who would not have read this chapter) may say:
I discovered a great form of sanction for latecomers called “catching up delay”, let
us do the same; another naïve observer would say: it does not change anything, this
sanction comes down to depriving students of recess, this is an awful way of dealing
with lateness! Each of these observers in his own way would remain stuck in the
good/bad practices fantasy, ignoring that assessing such practice implies considering
not the meaning it may have to the observer, but the one it has (and for this reason
the effects it has) for the people involved in its design and in its use.
An educational gesture is a construct, made and shared by the whole group, not
solely made by the teacher: when an educational gesture is enacted, even if the teacher
speaks, the whole group participates to the event that constitutes the enactment of
this educational gesture, having participated to build this gesture. In the context of
the enactment of educational gestures, students and teachers develop habits in the
strong sense. Educational gestures cannot be thought of without considering schools
as non-polemic places: educational gestures exist in schools where teachers and
students sit at a table together and think about their experience.
To that extent educational gestures rest on the twofold semiotic dimension of
habits: they are designed first through conscious semiosis, semiosic events that are
carried out by a group that takes time to ask the question: what is happening to us?
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S. PESCE
What does it mean? Could we do a better job together? But then, this educational
gesture is put into practice, people get used to it (they transform it into an habitual
practice), its meanings become embodied, in a certain way partially fossilised (to
the extent that they do not need to be made explicit each time the habit is “played”).
Each time an educational gesture is implemented it enacts, through new situated
semiosis, the meanings first elaborated by the group.
Educational gestures rest on a structure or schema underlain by previous
instances of semiosis, allowed by an epistemological activity, or an inquiry.
Educational gestures imply some “habits of conduct”, general ways of acting whose
meanings have been previously elucidated, then strengthened through experience,
in other words, progressively embodied. An educational gesture implies particular
forms of “habits of practical action”: particular in the sense that whereas habits of
practical action may result from trials and errors and thus may resolve into “habitual
behaviour” or “habitual practice”, educational gestures result from a wilful reflexive
activity. Therefore, an educational gesture (that, ideally, is efficient) may replace a
series of ancient habits of practical action of which one became aware and decided
to change. An educational gesture results from previous events of semiosis, yet
its implementation is conditioned by situated cognitive phenomena in the form of
analogical, transductive operations. It is considered to be not the fossilised residue,
but the result and the continuation, as an ongoing cognitive, social and motor process,
of a past reflexive cognitive activity.
An educational gesture is, to that extent, and above all, a significant gesture:
understood by all the actors involved as a meaningful answer to meaningful situations;
built reflexively by a group (and not inherited, lived passively or to which people are
subjected); constituted of habits of beliefs that have been made explicit by and for
all the actors (in other words whose underlying meanings and narratives are known
by everyone). Resorting to educational gestures may allow teachers to embody, in
educational settings, an old idea, a quite simple one in fact, that public policies,
school leaders and teachers tend to forget: students do not behave. As intelligent
beings they act. And as such they deserve their very existence and daily activity to
be welcome in meaningful contexts where their semiosic activity is thought of as
something worthy.
NOTES
1
Maine de Biran, 1799/1929, Section II, Chapter 6.
2
Ibid., Section I, Chapter 3
3
Ibid., p116.
4
Ibid., p. 203.
5
Ibid., ibidem.
6
See Josephson (1996), Patokorpi (2007), Carson (2009), Konnikova (2013).
7
I take this example from Gibbs (2005, p. 143).
8
“The response to the question ‘Same or not the same ?’ must always be ‘same what?’”; N. Goodman,
Ways of Worldmaking, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing Company, 1978, p. 8.
170
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Sébastien Pesce
University of Cergy-Pontoise
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HELEN ANDERSSON & DAVID MACHIN
14. IMAGES OF RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP

IN A UNIVERSITY PROMOTIONAL BROCHURE
IN THE ERA OF MARKETIZATION AND
AUDIT CULTURE
INTRODUCTION
Scholars across a range of academic disciplines and from around the world have
been writing on the huge changes facing universities through the process of
marketization. Overall this involves a shift from a former model of universities
having a role in citizenship and knowledge to one where they must demonstrate that
they contribute to the economy, be organized on the principles of private companies
and where students are increasingly treated as consumers taking up a product. This
has had considerable impact on the professional identities and agency of academics
and in turn on their relationship with students. In Multimodal Critical Discourse
Analysis, a semiotic tradition upon which we draw in this paper, it has been shown
that a linguistic analysis of university documents and promotional material throws
up insights into exactly what these shifts involve. This type of analysis is one highly
useful way to explicate the buried strategies found in texts; strategies that are used to
legitimize and naturalize particular ideas and values, such as the transformation of
education into a neoliberal model.
In this chapter, also drawing on Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, we carry
out an analysis of a twice-yearly university brochure produced by the management
at Örebro University in Sweden where public institutions are presently undergoing
rapid and intensive processes of marketization. This brochure is circulated around
the city and represents “what goes on at the university” including texts and images
of research, teaching and students. We are interested specifically in how the images
carried in the brochure recontextualize these aspects in line with marketization.
Our analysis points to a shift towards a representation of research not as lengthy
periods of reflection, interconnected with networks and traditions of knowledge, but
as immediate, easily comprehensible, and as being produced by fun, approachable,
energetic academic staff. We argue that this not only has implications for how the
public views what scholarship is comprised of and student expectations of lecturers,
but also for what is viewed as knowledge itself. And, we argue, this brochure reveals
an important contradiction in New Public Management strategy. Universities are
becoming increasingly organized around targets and forms of calibration of learning

H. ANDERSSON & D. MACHIN
outcomes and personal goals for outputs and generation of funding. But at the same
time, visually, universities are represented on websites and in brochures as fun,
vibrant and lively places.
We begin by presenting the context of marketization in Swedish Universities and
point to some key features of transformations in organization brought about by what
is known in Sweden as the New Public Management. We then look at the linguistic
strategies of legitimization to use those as a basis for our subsequent visual analysis
of the brochures. It is important in multimodality to carefully indicate the unique
roles that can be performed by different modes of communication. In this case what
can promotional brochures “say” visually about practices in universities that could
not be said in language?
THE MARKETIZATION OF UNIVERSITIES IN SWEDEN
During the last two decades the Swedish educational system – as with those in
many other countries – has embraced neoliberalism. New Public Management ideas,
values, norms and techniques have been gradually implemented. However, the
transformation in Sweden has been more rapid than in other countries. Sweden has
moved from a system with “one of the most centrally planned and uniform school
systems in the OECD area into one of the most liberal in terms of decentralization
and market elements” (Lundahl et al, 2013, p. 499).
Market ideologies have shifted into social spheres that earlier, especially in
Sweden, have been characterized by other ideas, norms and beliefs (Wedlin, 2008;
Djelic, 2006). Ideas about competition, achievement, performance, employability,
choice and individualism have to a certain degree replaced values such as equality,
fairness and the common or public good. Education in the neoliberal paradigm
is regarded “as a private good” or a “private commodity” and the main tasks are
to foster individual traits such as “responsible”, “self-governed” and “problem-
solving” (Judson & Taylor, 2014; Lynch, 2006). Commentators have argued that
the very idea of Sweden as an inclusive and encompassing welfare state based on
solidarity and equality has been challenged by the neoliberal ideas of marketization
(Ekström & Hjort, 2010).
This movement has involved a shift away from leadership by academics to
an organization characterized by business ideals. These new ideals mean that
universities (and education) are increasingly organized, managed, evaluated and
judged in terms of productivity (Ek et al. 2013; Ball, 2004). The matter of turning
universities financed by the state into foundations has been heavily debated in
Sweden within the universities, in the press and in social media during 2013. Critics
of this marketization process – both in Sweden and in other countries – argue that
it is important that universities function as a counterpoise to the market (i.e. doing
research, asking questions and delivering – on their own terms – analysis of society
itself), that they should promote freedom of thought and produce critical, creative
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IMAGES OF RESEARCH AND SCHOLARSHIP
thinking and active engaged well educated citizens. This has been replaced by the
university taking an operational role in society and working as business organizations
focusing on producing “commercially-oriented professionals” and meeting what
are heralded as the needs of the market, producing “public-interests professionals”;
value productivity, effectiveness and excellence (Judson & Taylor, 2014, p. 52;
Lynch, 2006).
Scholars have made a number of important observations about the way that
the new management system and marketization have changed the basic way that
academic staff performs their jobs (Gewirtz et al, 2009; Alvesson, 2013). A new form
of management and organizational control grew in private industry in the 1980s and
spread to public institutions in the 1990s and onwards though what is known as New
Public Management and that requires employees not only to do their own job but
to regularly communicate about how they are doing this to a more removed form of
management (Iedema and Scheeres, 2003). Academics were required to write reports
on work not through terms that came from their own local field of expertise but in a
more generic language using such market-oriented terms as “targets”, “innovation”,
“leadership” and reflecting personal dispositions such as “striving for excellence”,
“strategically planning”.
Scholars have shown how this new management system requires professionals
to transform what they do and why they do it into a different set of priorities and
categories as these filter down from policies, through managers, and audits (Power,
1997). Done in the name of “transparency” and “accountability”, professionals must
continually communicate about what they do through an abstract language imposed
upon them by management. This will usually involve systems of measurement and
counting of things that may have little meaning to professionals themselves but
which later will serve as the measures against which they will be judged. At worst,
critics observe, time and energy shifts away from core tasks towards meeting more
abstract criteria laid out by management (Levitas, 2005). Some commentators argue
that the new public management system leads to public institutions increasingly
diverting resources away from traditional work towards promotional activities
(Alvesson, 2013).
The shift to the employee as an individual accountable for their meeting targets
is also one key part of these changes. The managers at a distance require employees
to demonstrate appropriate competitive, team and service oriented attitudes, and
commitment to excellence. In organizational studies this has been seen as part of
a process of de-professionalization through normative control (Rasmussen, 2011).
One consequence can be that central professional values are marginalized (Bergh
2010, Gewirtz et al, 2009). But in the case of education as a whole we shift away
from the professional academic concerned with the civic role of education. Power
(1997) has observed that part of the rise of managerialism has been the demise in the
trust and status of professionals. As we show in our own analysis shortly this shift
in status of academic professionals is apparent in the Örebro university brochures.
175
THE LANGUAGE OF MARKETIZATION
We place our analysis in this paper in the tradition of Multimodal Critical Discourse
Analysis that, in addition to Critical Discourse Analysis, also looked at the modes
of visual communication in brochures and websites. In 1993 Fairclough (1993)
had already identified a change in the discourses of British universities. Higher
education institutions had turned into businesses trying to sell “goods, services,
organizations, ideas or people” (1993, p. 141). Fairclough observed a discursive
shift in advertisements for academic posts, from an impersonal, distant, settled
conservative institutional identity (the traditional university) to a university with a
personalized and assertive voice using self-promotional claims.
More recent studies on university prospectuses (Teo, 2007), webpages (Zhang
& O’Halloran, 2012; Zhang & O’Halloran, 2013) and mission statements (Morrish
& Sauntson, 2010; Morrish & Sauntson, 2013) have observed the same changes
at more progressive levels. There has been an integration of a market discourse at
many levels of communication in the higher education and universities. Such studies
demonstrate that universities are moving, to different degrees, from more traditional
identities associated more with traditions of knowledge with an authoritative and
detached voice to one which seeks to signify a more egalitarian identity, one which
is, personalized, presenting an informal relationship with the customers. A key part
of this is that universities should appears as “international” or “global” even though,
typical of the New Public Management Language, what this means in concrete terms
of never clearly formulated.
The closer analysis of the language of university texts points to a number
of features of marketization and the “rhetoric of the free market”. Universities,
academic leaders and higher education research increasingly using words that are
imported from the corporate sector: buzzwords like entrepreneur and entrepreneurial
(Mautner, 2005) or those from a neoliberal discourse: human capital, innovative,
competitive, globally engaged, enterprise (Holborow, 2013).
It has also been shown that this new language embodies values that not always “sit
comfortably in the traditional values of university academics” (Morrish & Sauntson,
2013, p. 61) such as reflecting normative control and positive attitude markers
(excellent, excellence, high/est quality, committed to, strive for, professional, strong,
innovative, flexible, strong, new, outstanding, employable). These terms were used
to promote and enhance mainly the “products” of the university education and the
ways to achieve those goals. The use of advertising or promotional elements can
be found in different university texts or instantiations of the commodification of
language (Fairclough, 1993; Teo, 2007).
At the visual level we find uses of colour, photographs and space that resemble
commercial brochures (Teo, 2007). We find flashing images (Zhang & O’Halloran,
2012) – close-up, near-frontal angles – showing smiling faces (Teo, 2007) with
people gazing at the visitor/reader as if aiming to reduce the social distance between
176
the university and the visitor (e.g., at the website). Hansen and Machin (2008)
carried out an analysis of commercial images intended for corporate branding, often
used in promotional brochures and websites and demonstrated how commercial
images represent highly idealized settings and optimistic moods, usually designed to
connote concepts and values such as “ambition”, “confidence”, or “freedom”. Search
terms defined social goals (e.g., friendship, love, protection, care, rivalry, teamwork,
communication), desire for knowledge and progress (exploration, aspiration,
curiosity, innovation, growth, on the move, ideas, inspiration, vision, imagination),
states of mental and physical well-being (spirituality, balance, relaxation, satisfaction
and well-being) and finally such terms as freedom, individuality and escape.
As we show in our analysis below the same, deliberately set up, moral landscape
can be found in the Örebro university brochures. Our critical interest in this chapter
is the consequence of this for how research and scholarship become represented.
METHODOLOGY
In this chapter two notions from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) are used:
discourse and the recontextualization of social practice. These provide the theoretical
setting for a critical visual analysis using semiotic models from Barthes (1977),
Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996), Van Leeuwen (1999), Floch (1995), placing this in
the broader project of developing a multimodal critical discourse analysis (Machin,
2013).
In CDA, the broader ideas communicated by a text are referred to as discourses
(Fairclough, 2003; Van Dijk, 1998). These discourses can be thought of as models of
the world, in the sense described by Foucault (1977), and which can include kinds
of participants, behaviours, goals, and locations (Van Leeuwen & Wodak, 1999).
These discourses are not simply realized in texts but contribute to the production
of social life. Texts can subtly reconfigure the role played by participants, shifting
their goals to support and legitimize particular kinds of ideologies. The aim is to
reveal what kinds of social relations of power are present in texts both explicitly and
implicitly. More recently there has been a visual turn regarding CDA (Kress & Van
Leeuwen, 1996, 2001). Machin (2013) argues that CDA must apply the same kinds
of systematic description and analysis of visual communication to also understand
how discourses are disseminated and legitimized. Just as in language-based CDA
language is seen as a not just a vehicle for communication but for social construction,
so should visual communication – as in the case of the visual representations of
academics, research and teaching we find in the Örebro University brochures. We
can ask therefore whose interests such representations serve, what kinds of social
relations they set up and what kind of ideas, values and identities they seek to foster.
Van Leeuwen and Wodak (1999) suggest that it is useful not only to think about
discourses as models of the world and why these are legitimate but also as models of
what should be considered as reasonable ways of acting in the world. They use the
177
term “scripts” (p. 99) to describe the sequence of behaviour that is associated with a
particular discourse. Central to Van Leeuwen and Wodak’s work is an account of the
way producers of discourse recontextualize events in order to reflect and promote
their own interests. This is of particular use here as these brochures represent a clear
attempt of the management to shape university activities in the context of a branded,
market-oriented view of the university. The authors list four categories which can be
used in analysis:
Substitution: The details and complexities of activities can be substituted
by generalizations or abstractions. Also participants in activities can be
represented in terms of who they are, through appearance and feelings, rather
than what they actually do.
Addition: Recontextualization also involves adding elements. Particularly
important here are the addition of purposes and reactions. Reactions, for
example, can represent participants’ feelings, pleasures, fears, etc. Where there
is an over-representation of reactions we can ask what these are and why these
should be added.
Evaluation: In texts recontextualization always involves evaluation of the
social practice. Events and people in each recontextualization are represented
according to the goals, values and priorities of the presenters.
Deletion: A representation cannot represent all the aspects of a social practice,
so it is important to ask what has been deleted – which participants, actions,
objects and settings. Deletions will point to discursive elements that are not in
harmony with the values of the presenter.
The listed categories are useful for understanding how the brochures recontextualize
Örebro University and scholarly activities to convey particular kinds of scripts,
values and identities together with social relations that favour marketization.
For the visual analysis in this paper we draw on the ideas of Barthes (1977). He
offers a list of important carriers of meaning in images: objects, poses and settings.
We also draw on Floch (1995) who demonstrates the importance of analysing the way
images are placed into different kind of presentations or designs. Photographs may
make specific iconic choices in settings and objects, but it is how these photographs
are then used in designs that can also greatly influence the meaning that they carry.
ANALYSIS OF THE BROCHURES
The following analysis presents some representative photographs taken from the
brochure produced by Örebro University in a period of four years. We begin with
an analysis of who is represented and how. We then deal with poses and how these
participants are represented as acting. Finally we look at context by analysing the
settings and objects represented in the images.
178
Participants
We intend to demonstrate which participants are represented in the brochure

and how they are represented. We can think in terms of how this plays a role in
recontextualization, what is added, what kinds of evaluations are provided and what
kinds of substitutions are taking place.
One striking feature of the brochure is that we find mainly images of individuals.
These are often depicted in close-up, or extreme close-up as seen in Figure 1.
Figure 1
This approach pertains to academic staff, management, students and alumni. In

terms of Van Leeuwen’s (1999) observations on the representation of social actors
here we find high degrees of individualization and personalization. University staff
are represented not to be seen as distant or distracted intellectuals but as personable
and warm, as what they “are” vs. what they “do”. In effect, the academic staff appear
as “open” and “communicative”. These are values that have been established as
typical of the promotional language used by universities and other public institutions
(Machin & Mayr, 2012). But, as with the linguistic use of such notions, visually it
is not clear what this means in concrete terms. In fact the rhetoric of “openness” of
public institutions under the new public management can mean ever less transparent
levels of power and complex unfathomable bureaucratic language which itself
produces drains on time and resources (Berg, 2010).
It is also important that these individuals look directly out at the viewer, engaging
with them rather than simply witnessing them as they carry out their work (Figure 2).
Kress and Van Leeuwen (1996) differentiated between different kinds of what they
called “image acts” that photographs can perform. Where a person does not look
out at the viewer we can say this is an “offer image”. In the images in the brochure
we find that most people smile or laugh. Kress (1989) explains that where we find
a word or its synonyms over-used in a text we can guarantee that this signals some
kind of problematic area, usually one of recontextualization. Van Leeuwen and
179
Wodak (1999) suggest that reactions are an important part of recontextualization. The
discourses of equality, of being relevant or working in teams are all here evaluated
continually by the happy staff. The smiles connote or indicate satisfaction, happiness,
fulfilment, friendliness and well-being, individuals or groups enjoying the activities
at hand and at the same time demonstrating an appropriate attitude and an acceptance,
or commitment to, of the circumstances and conditions linked to the situation.
In terms of recontextualization of social practice the actual appearance of people
as they go about the serious and highly focused activities of carrying out research,
supporting postgraduate researchers, running scholarly journals, etc, while at the
same time having to continually textualize these processes for management at a
distance, where they are continually reminded of how they need to compete with
other units and other universities, are recontextualized by the substitution of the
moods with those of equality and play.
Figure 2 is of particular interest since it is only academic staff photographed in this
way. Jewitt and Oyama (2001) argue that looking down on a person in a photograph
in this way gives the viewer power over them. In this sense such representational
strategies present the academic in a way that diminishes their power or status, at least
here symbolically. This is important in shifting away from associations of academics
as remote or lofty intellectuals. Administrators are never positioned though this use
of downward gazing camera angle as this would not be appropriate.
Figure 2
Likewise while management may be represented in medium-close up and be depicted

striking certain kinds of poses that connote lack of formality and modernity, we
180
do not look down on them sitting on the floor. This stripping of power is reserved
for academic staff. Of note for many academics in is the shifting discourse of
power relations between academics, administrators and management. On the one
hand this can be seen as part of a process of de-professionalization (Power, 1997).
But on the other hand it represents a shift to increasing presence of larger bodies
of administrative staff who now operate in universities as part of the new public
management order – staff who are required to manage the bureaucracy of required
by management at a distance.
This growing section of public institution staff no longer perform as support
staff or secretaries, but themselves perform duties under the language of new public
management, themselves working on the basis of their own individual personal
strategic plans with goals and targets (Levitas, 2005). As well as individuals,
photographs tend to depict small groups or teams. We do not see the whole departments,
or rooms filled with administrators, or large management teams. In these images
we find researchers as well as management and students represented as individuals
or small groups. We can see this in Figure 3 demonstrating the same degree of
intimacy and approachability through proximity and level camera angles signalling
an environment of “openness”. In Figure 3 there is a sense of teamwork, of warm
collegiality, lack of hierarchy. There is no sense of powerlessness, marginalization,
nor of anger or frustration. This is in contrast the increase in documents where staff
must demonstrate their own personal strategies and were internal management
discourse involves setting departments in competition as regards generating external
funding and publication outputs.
Figure 3
We also find this lack of hierarchy represented in Figure 4 where senior management
are depicted sitting with students, striking the same posture.
Equality is also accomplished by how images are placed and presented on the page.
In Figure 5 we see a two page spread that includes different sections of university
participants: management, senior academic, administration and student. In design
181
Figure 4
a range of frame sizes can be used to create a sense of diversity, of hierarchy or

equality, even where there is none. It is sometime the case that different sized image
frames is used to bring a sense of diversity or different levels of salience where there
is none (Machin, 2007). It is important (as in Figure 5) that administrative staff in
this case do not appear in pages that are crowded with text and other images but ones
with lots of white space. And the sections of text that relates to them use wider line
spacing. These are spacious, designs where all staff are credited their own luxurious
white space, where typeface is given room to breathe and spread out. The use of space
has been important in corporate communication more widely. Corporate buildings
often have huge entrance spaces to show their importance and expansiveness. Some
universities, while shifting at the same time to hot-desking for academic staff will
at the same time invest in new-corporate style entrance buildings that use glass and
metal. In design more widely elements in a composition can be given space to spread
out, room to breathe, or they can be more crammed in, overlap even. In this case the
meaning is of space at a premium, of crowding or informality. On these brochures all
staff are equally represented as part of that expansive corporate space.
As Barthes (1977) has argued, poses are important as they connote broader ideas,
values and identities. In Figure 6, the set of poses suggests energy, enthusiasm and a
dynamic environment. On one level this is done where people are shown as leaning..
They can also be depicted as leaning forwards towards the viewer.
Researchers have observed that television news readers now commonly strike
poses that involve leaning or lack of symmetry to connote more casual moods
whereas formerly it was important to represent them as formal, authoritative and
impartial (Ekström and Kroon, 2011). Importantly, the images of people leaning
forwards and other images that show strong amounts of engagement with the
182
Figure 5
Figure 6
viewer or between colleagues point to the value of communication. Scholars have

put communication at the centre of the modernist aesthetic of the New Public
Management (Cameron, 2000). Communication suggests transparency, openness
and is part of the discourse of accountability that scholars (e.g., Levitas, 2005)
demonstrated as leading to bewildering levels of audits and textualization (Iedema
and Scheeres, 2003). Other poses often communicate liveliness and dynamism.
We find staff pointing at the viewer. We also find staff jumping and depicted in
different poses to deliberately create a sense of energy and action where in fact
there may be none. Such images are typically the case for the representation of
staff who works in the humanities.
183
When representing research done in humanities or social science we do not see

images of people spending hours in front of their computers alone in their rooms,
carrying out extensive, rigorous, time consuming research, attending seminars. Such
activities which are generally quite slow and which can be solitary may appear
visually dull and certainly not “fun” or physically lively are deleted in the process
of recontextualization. While the language may emphasise targets, strategies,
competition and speed, visually there can be a sense of stillness. This is typical of
the era of branding. Machin (2004) in a study of the visual language of corporate
branding showed that images that connote moods and concepts such as “freedom”
depicting a woman jumping in the air, can be placed on mortgage and bank loan
promotional material to load the process of borrowing huge sums of money with
the idea of being free from worry. In the case of the brochure the stresses of work
under the new public management system, the competition and strategic planning
are softened.
Staff depicted sitting on the floor can also be used to represent “spontaneity” or
“creative” since rules of formality have been broken. In their study of corporate
promotional images Hansen and Machin (2008) showed that concepts like
“creativity” or “original” or “thinking out side of the box” would be represented,
not through actual examples of these things but through a set of limited clichés.
An image of “creative” could depict a person sitting on the top of a step-ladder
surrounded by blue sky or show people striking odd postures. In this case actual
creative thinking becomes substituted by trivial and repetitive imagery. Also
important are the objects and settings that point to the context of the university are
imp[ortant. Most commonly represented in images are settings such as spacious
corridors, huge windows, hallways, libraries, stages and stairs. What is deleted
from the brochure are offices and teaching spaces and meeting rooms. Using public
spaces connotes a highly social environment; people are not isolated in offices or
labs. In these communal settings staff is represented as being on the move, showing
flexibility, ready to “perform” and at the same time enjoying the social relations they
engage in – with each other and the viewer.
CONCLUSION
Research into New Public Management and the marketization of universities and other
public institutions has identified a process of textualization as professionals have to
continually communicate about their work to management who will most likely have
no experience in their specialized fields nor in education itself. This communication
will take place through an abstract language of targets and outcomes. This can be to
the extent that these targets and outcomes become the ends in themselves, shifting
energy and resources away from core activities. One important part of this shift is
in terms of normative change where staff must demonstrate dispositions required by
management, such as being “strategic”, “committed”, “team oriented”, etc. These
brochures play an important role in this process.
184
The brochures themselves visually textualize the work of university staff

as having clear targets with clear outcomes. The kind of learning and research
represented in them is easily graspable, tangible and relevant rather than being
part of deeply specialized, gradual and long term processes and traditions. The
brochures also play a role in normative representation as staff as vibrant and lively
and team oriented.
What is different at the visual level is that the brochures present a happy,
personalized, easy, creative view of working in a university. Here we find a kind
of implicit contradiction in New Public Management communication. Measuring
and quantifying processes through abstract language are a fundamental part of
university work under New Public Management. These create a direct barrier
to actual creativity and real innovation since tasks are discouraged which fall
outside of auditing systems or can become stifled due to layers of bureaucracy and
management directives. Practically, working life in a university is now organized
on the basis of individualism, personal strategic plans and competition between
departments and colleagues. Those not meeting targets and outcomes will feel the
consequence of this. Yet visually the brochures depict staff as undifferentiated,
having fun together and standing comfortably in close proximity to each other,
striking the same poses.
In terms of the recontextualization of social practice New Public Management
is shifting universities away from a role of providing an enlightened and open
minded citizenship to one where they must have relevance to the market. These
brochures play a huge role in the evaluation of this process, where knowledge
becomes reformulated as something that is easily graspable rather than complex
and produced by elitist, university professors. The idea of the discipline needed
for deep study and the challenge of working through complex and challenging
ideas is substituted with fun, entertainment and performance. This is significant
because the New Public Management is fostering precisely the opposite kind of
environment. Creativity is stifled under immovable abstract targets and measures.
Academics are deprofessionalized and must act alone, being rewarded as
individuals for meeting their own targets, often which involve juggling multiple
levels of excellence at the same time, according to timetables and schedules
prescribed at bureaucratic levels wholly unconnected to the professional realm or
expertise of the academic.
Given the way that the New Public Management is transforming education it is
important that our research in this process goes beyond pointing out that universities
are taking on a promotional language. We need to look in detail at the way that the
identities and practices of the participants in these institutions are also being changed.
This need not take the form of idealizing the former situation, but certainly should
provide insights into what in simple terms is the changing definition of knowledge
itself, a shift in a sense of what kinds of questions an inquisitive society should be
asking and crucially a change in what is meant by learning itself.
185
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187
ANDREW STABLES & INNA SEMETSKY
POSTSCRIPT
The chapters in this edited collection have explored a number of theoretical

challenges and pedagogical opportunities opened up by the interdisciplinary field
of educational semiotics: edusemiotics. While semiotics – in terms of a novel
educational theory, or research methodology, or a framework for policy and
practice – remains practically nonexistent in many teacher education programs,
underexplored in textbooks and, subsequently, unrealized at the level of both
formal and post-formal education, this volume provides a fuller consideration of
educational semiotics in both its theoretical and practical aspects. As such this
book has much to offer teachers, academics, students, and those in a position of
leadership and responsibility. The volume continues an innovative impulse that
has begun with Semiotics Education Experience (published by Sense in 2010
in the same series “Educational Futures: Rethinking theory and practice) and
Edusemiotics: semiotic philosophy as educational foundation (2014, Routledge)
and reflects the urgency to end the prevailing tradition of the uniquely linguistic
turn in analytic philosophy and education alike, while also defying the long-
standing habit of the Cartesian worldview. The central tenet of edusemiotics is
that we are signs among other signs, and all signs develop, grow and evolve
towards ever new signs and new meanings. Multiple signs intervene in, and
do not supervene on, human experience, thus calling for their exploration and
interpretation. Human subjects always relate to the “otherness” of the greater
social, cultural and natural dimensions. Human beings are living signs amidst
other signs that they use, read, and interpret, thereby acquiring a capacity to learn
and also grow in meaning.
Key education scholars worldwide as contributors to this volume have now begun
to draw inspiration for their research from semiotics, thus increasing the value of
educational semiotics at the level of theory, practice and potential policy making.
This edited collection presents a range of international research, both theoretical and
empirical, thus creating a path towards a radically new and challenging knowledge
base for education. The present volume brings to the fore not just the philosophical
foundations of semiotics for education but also the multiple practical implications
of such a stance. While the legacy of American philosopher and semiotician Charles
Sanders Peirce is highlighted in many chapters, the authors have also revisited
and interpreted anew European thinkers such as Greimas, Bourdieu, Kristeva,
Bakhtin and others. Their significance for edusemiotics has been explored by many

A. STABLES & I. SEMETSKY
contributors to the volume in terms of developing specifically semiotic pedagogies

for present-day education.
As has been noted in the Preamble, the inclusion in this volume of the dimension
of art represented by different art-forms and poetry construes a significant
innovative feature of this book in addition to the exploration of edusemiotics as a
novel conceptual framework for educational theory and pedagogy. While semiotics
may be understood analytically as the science of signs that has its specific logic, such
a formal approach is complemented by poetics reflecting creativity as an important
aspect of edusemiotics. In addition to its theoretical and critically oriented chapters,
this book has addressed creative practices as a mode of research together with the
inclusion of original artworks and poems as the examples of edusemiotics in action.
The collection provides a rich array of ideas that draw on multiple viewpoints
and experiences which cross national barriers. This volume thereby strengthens the
discourse in education by establishing a long sought-after unity in multiplicity; such
unity provided by the conceptual framework shared by the authors and represented
by edusemiotics. The volume serves as a cutting-edge, yet accessible, resource of
contemporary interpretations of semiotic ideas and their potential for educational
practice, research and policy.
The volume gives a material expression to the voice of The International Network
for Semiotics and Education as a virtual community that was created out of the first
of three international seminars which took place at Ghent University in October 2008
and was followed by a 2011 seminar at the Université de Cergy-Pontoise in Paris,
a 2012 seminar in the University of Bath and a further symposium in 2012 at the
Finnish Educational Research Association conference that resulted in an invitation
to set up a “semiotics & education” (SEMED) strand at the International Semiotics
Summer School in Finland in 2013. Some members of the group are also presenting
their up-to-date research at the 12th World Congress of the International Association
for Semiotic Studies held at the New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria, in
September 2014.
As this book includes contributions from educational researchers across
continents (USA, Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Brazil, Finland,
France, Canada), it provides multiple perspectives for the way educational theory
and practice can be conceived, enacted and maintained. Thus this volume connects
diverse points of view and aims to promote future debates in philosophy of education.
This collection thereby is not only timely but long-overdue in the increasingly
interconnected world since, by definition, the action of signs is embedded in the
interconnected network of relational dynamics, forming an open system of multiple
interactions and creative interpretations. Notably, contributors have been engaging in
their research with not solely theoretical explorations, but also with empirical studies
and pedagogical activities, including recommendations for teacher preparation and
training. The volume presents accessible yet deep discussions in the context of
research, teaching and learning aiming to expand a provocative theoretical critique
in the area of educational semiotics to communities of inquirers and practitioners.
190
POSTSCRIPT
It should become a necessary reading and to serve as a textbook in a variety of

courses across disciplines, while highlighting its necessary presence in the schools
of education. The research addressing semiosis as the future-oriented evolutionary
dynamics of signs is to become an important component of a comprehensive
educational policy agenda of the 21st century that problematizes the existing
knowledge economy and manifests a novel ethico-political paradigm as an intrinsic
aspect of educational semiotics.
Andrew Stables
UK
Inna Semetsky
191
CONTRIBUTORS
Helen Andersson is a Lecturer with the department of Media and Communication at

Örebro University, Sweden. Her research focuses on language use and interaction in
different contexts and texts. She is currently doing research within the fields of crisis
communication and classroom interaction.
Mariana Bockarova is a PhD candidate in Education at the University of Toronto

where she is a research fellow in the “Assessing Language Through Play” project.
She earned her Master's degree in Psychology at Harvard University and published
12 entries in the Encyclopedia of Media and Communication (University of Toronto
Press, 2013).
Kevin Brophy is Professor and chair of the Creative Writing program at the
University of Melbourne, Australia. He has authored 13 books of poetry, fiction
and essays including Patterns of Creativity (Rodopi, 2009), Radar (Walleah Press,
2012) and Walking (John Leonard Press, 2013). In 2005 he was awarded the Martha
Richardson medal for poetry. He is patron of the Melbourne Poets Union.
Cair Crawford received her PhD in Philosophy of Education and Cultural Studies
from Columbia University in 2006. She is an artist in New York City. Her work
is informed by the philosophical traditions of the ancient Greeks, Continental
Philosophy and feminist theory; and also the current debates about creative and un-
creative thinking. She is represented in numerous private and public collections.
Harry Daniels is Professor of Education at the University of Oxford. He has

directed over 40 research projects funded by ESRC, various government sources,
The Lottery, The Nuffield Foundation and the EU. His current research concerns
children who go missing from school and the implications of new school design for
children’s experience. His CV witnesses extensive publications including a series of
internationally acclaimed books concerned with socio-cultural psychology.
Diane Fahey holds a Diploma in Secondary Education and a PhD in Creative

Writing (University of Western Sydney, Australia). She has published multiple poetry
collections including The Stone Garden: Poems from Clare (Clouds of Magellan,
2013) and has won various awards including the Newcastle Poetry Prize, the Wesley
Michel Wright Poetry Prize and the John Shaw Neilson Poetry Prize.
193
CONTRIBUTORS
Sue Learoyd-Smith is a Research Fellow in the Department of Education, University

of Oxford. Her research interests are in understanding the influence of different
school modalities on teachers’, students’ and parents’ educational experiences.
David Machin is Professor in the department of Media and Communication at

Örebro University, Sweden. His research interests are in Critical Discourse Analysis
and Multimodal Analysis. His recent books include The Language of War Monuments
(2014) and Visual Communication (2014). He is co-editor of the journals Social
Semiotics and Journal of Language and Politics.
Hau Ming Tse is a Research Fellow in the Department of Education, University of

Oxford, and an Associate Lecturer in the School of Architecture at Oxford Brookes
University. She is a qualified architect who has worked for David Chipperfield
Architects for 9 years, where she was an Associate Director. Selected projects include
the Hepworth Gallery, Wakefield; the headquarters of BBC Scotland, Glasgow; San
Michele Cemetery, Venice; and The Figge Art Museum, Iowa.
Winfried Nöth, Professor of Linguistics and Semiotics and Director of the

Interdisciplinary Center for Cultural Studies at the University of Kassel until 2009,
honorary Member of the International Association for Visual Semiotics, and former
President of the German Association for Semiotic Studies, is now Professor of
Cognitive Semiotics at the University of São Paulo. In addition to 300 articles, he
has published 31 books including Handbook of Semiotics (2000), Self-Reference
in the Media (2007), and Estratégias semióticas da publicidade (with L. Santaella,
2010).
Sébastien Pesce, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education,

University of Cergy-Pontoise, France, and member of the Lab Ecole, Mutations,
Apprentissages. He specializes in Educational Semiotics, Environmental Education,
Critical Pedagogy and Institutional Pedagogy. He has co-edited the books Pratiques
Réflexives en Formation (2009), Pédagogie Alternative en Formation d’Adultes
(2010), and Pédagogues de l’Extrême (2011).
Eetu Pikkarainen, PhD, works as a lecturer in the Faculty of Education, University

of Oulu, Finland. His research interests are in the theory, and especially the semiotics,
of education. His recent publications include papers in Educational Philosophy and
Theory (2011) and Journal of Philosophy of Education (2014).
Michael Rosen is renowned for his work as a poet, performer, broadcaster and
scriptwriter. Appointed UK Children’s Laureate in 2007, he lectures and teaches in
universities on children’s literature, reading and writing. As an author and anthologist
he has been involved with the publication of over 140 books and is Professor of
Children’s Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London.
194
CONTRIBUTORS
Inna Semetsky is Professor at RosNOU, Moscow and Adjunct with the University
of Waikato, New Zealand. She is recipient of the first Kevelson Memorial Award
from the Semiotic Society of America. In addition to numerous articles and chapters,
she has published 8 books including Re-Symbolization of the Self (Sense, 2011), The
Edusemiotics of Images (Sense, 2013) and Deleuze and Education (EUP, 2013).
Andrew Stables is Professor of Education and Philosophy at the University of

Roehampton, London, having spent the previous 19 years at the University of
Bath. His work on semiotics arises from a range of earlier studies in philosophy
of education and curriculum. He has held visiting positions at the Universities of
Ghent, Chiayi and Oxford. Among his latest publications is Be (com)ing Human:
Semiosis and the Myth of Reason (Sense, 2012).
Marek Tesar is a lecturer in childhood studies and early childhood education at

the Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His research
is concerned with the construction of childhoods and notions of the place/space of
childhoods. He has published numerous journal articles and book chapters and his
doctorate on this topic received several national and international awards.
Jen Webb is Professor of Creative Practice at the University of Canberra, Australia.

Her research includes the relationship between art and critical social moments.
Her exhibition of visual poetry “What we forget” was presented at the Belconnen
Arts Centre group show, Creative Practice (2011). Her recent publications include
Understanding Representation (Sage, 2008) and Understanding Foucault: a critical
introduction (Allen & Unwin, 2012).
E. Jayne White is a senior lecturer at University of Waikato, New Zealand. She

uses Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories in the context of early childhood education. She is
an Editor for the International Journal of Early Childhood. Her recent publications
include Educational research with our youngest: Voices of infants and toddlers
(Springer, 2011) and Bakhtinian pedagogy: Opportunities and challenges for
research, policy and practice in education across the globe (Peter Lang, 2011).
Jessica L. Wilkinson has a PhD in Creative Writing and lectures at RMIT University
in Melbourne Australia. Her first collection of poems marionette: notes toward the
life and times of miss marion davies was published by Vagabond (2012). She is the
founding editor of RABBIT: a journal for non-fiction poetry, and has co-edited a
collection of essays and poems entitled Refashioning Myth (Cambridge Scholars
Press, 2011).
195

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Pedagogy and Edusemiotics: Theoretical Challenges/

Michael Apple, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

ISBN: 978-94-6209-855-8 (paperback)

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2. Signs as Educators: Peircean Insights 7

3. Poetry Meets Pedagogy: Conversations in/about Classrooms 19

4. Schools and Schooling as Semiotic Engagement: A Focus on Design 35

5. Interpreting Metaphoric Acts: A Dialogic Encounter with the Very Young 51

6. On the Implementation of Technology in Education 69

8. Education, Values and Authority: A Semiotic View 91

9. The Pedagogy and Politics of Governing Childhoods Through Images 107

10. Learning Existential Lessons: The Edusemiotics of Images 121

11. ’Skirts: Thinking Thoughts and Unthoughts 137

12. Two Poems 151

13. Edusemiotics of Educational Gestures 153

14. Images of Research and Scholarship in a University

This collection is a companion volume to the recently published co-authored book

I. Semetsky & A. Stables (Eds.), Pedagogy and Edusemiotics: Theoretical Challenges/Practical

Cair Crawford – herself a practicing artist – devotes her chapter to an elaborate

It is difficult to choose the reader for this poem.

I. Semetsky & A. Stables (Eds.), Pedagogy and Edusemiotics: Theoretical Challenges/Practical

The vases are all empty.

HOW TO READ A POEM

is too modest and private an aim

2. SIGNS AS EDUCATORS: PEIRCEAN INSIGHTS

Semiosis defines our essence, and so

LEARNING FROM SIGNS: SEMIOTIC PREMISES

I. Semetsky & A. Stables (Eds.), Pedagogy and Edusemiotics: Theoretical Challenges/Practical

when he argued that we learn from communication in general. In his Pedagogic

SIGNS AS LIVING SEMIOTIC AGENTS

Signs, Life, and Learning as Phenomena of Thirdness

Purposiveness and Intentionality

Self-replication and Autopoiesis

A symbol is self-replicative because it only exists in its replication in the form of a

Self-control and Self-correction

Self-control is one of the essential characteristics of life, as Dewey reminds us in

The Agency of Signs in Thought

THE SELF-LEARNING SIGN AND THE GROWTH OF SYMBOLS

Self-correction from errors or for the purpose of adapting to the semiotic

Semi-autonomous self-corrective learning is also characteristic of scientific

SURPRISING EXPERIENCE: THE AGENCY OF SECONDNESS IN THIRDNESS

HOW SIGNS TEACH NEW INFORMATION

LEARNING FROM ICONS, INDICES, AND SYMBOLS

3. POETRY MEETS PEDAGOGY

I. Semetsky & A. Stables (Eds.), Pedagogy and Edusemiotics: Theoretical Challenges/Practical

Michael Quite often a starting point is a phrase or an image; it might be a memory,

Class in the Classroom

Jen So it’s genuinely child-centred learning.

Jen Which means you’re giving them training in self-reflexivity.

The Texture of Reality

Jen It is interesting in a phenomenological sense. There’s been quite a lot of work

Jen … and syllables…

Jen So it’s a constant process of external evaluation?

4. SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLING AS SEMIOTIC

I. Semetsky & A. Stables (Eds.), Pedagogy and Edusemiotics: Theoretical Challenges/Practical

THEORETICAL AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

A full explanation of the development of the theoretical and analytical framework is

is to acknowledge both the importance the headteacher within the society of

School B is characterised more by an emphasis on pastoral care, though is also

(ii) physical aggression is an ever-present threat. In insofar as spaces offer flexible