ADALIRA SÁENZ-LUDLOW AND NORMA PRESMEG

GUEST EDITORIAL
SEMIOTIC PERSPECTIVES ON LEARNING MATHEMATICS
AND COMMUNICATING MATHEMATICALLY

I NTRODUCTION

During the last ten years, mathematics educators have incorporated dif-
ferent theoretical perspectives on semiotics into an already working list
of theories in psychology, anthropology, linguistics, and sociology to an-
alyze and better comprehend the processes involved in the teaching and
the learning of mathematics. Semiotic theories are a natural additional per-
spective on mathematics education. Both mathematics and the teaching of
mathematics are essentially symbolic practices in which signs are invented,
used, or re-created to facilitate cognitive operations or purposes. Brousseau
(1997) contended that the symbolic practices of mathematicians and teach-
ers are of a different nature although both have similar didactical purposes –
the communication of mathematics. Mathematicians, he wrote, do not com-
municate their results in the form in which they create them. Instead, they
re-organize their results and give them a general form that is “decontextu-
alized, depersonalized, and detemporalized” (p. 227). The teacher, on the
other hand, undertakes the opposite action. She looks for situations to con-
textualize concepts in order to give meaning to the knowledge to be taught.
That is, the teacher contextualizes and personalizes the knowledge created
by mathematicians. Brousseau argued that when the interpretation phase
goes well for the student – that is, when the student comes to reconstruct
and appropriate the concepts involved in the didactical situation – then the
student comes also to the point of de-personalizing, de-contextualizing,
and generalizing the knowledge intended by the teacher. In addition, the
teacher has to take into account the experiences that the student brings to
the didactical situation. Learners engage in the learning process or opt out
of it based on personal meanings – both in terms of what they bring to the
experience and in terms of what they get from it. As Johnson (1987) com-
mented, “there is the functioning of preconceptually meaningful structures
of experience, schematic patterns, and figurative projections by which our
experience achieves meaningful organization and connection, such that we
can both comprehend and reason” (p. 17). In other words, the learning of
each student occurs within an idiosyncratic web of personal meanings and

Educational Studies in Mathematics (2006) 61: 1–10

DOI: 10.1007/s10649-005-9001-5 
C Springer 2006
2 A. SÁENZ-LUDLOW AND N. PRESMEG

personal ways of interpreting cultural, social, and conceptual signs. Thus,

as Bauersfeld (1980) argued, teacher and students should become aware
of the discrepancies between the matter meant, the matter taught, and the
matter learned. All of the above indicates that the teaching and learning
of mathematics is, essentially, a collaborative semiotic activity mediated
by the simultaneous use, re-creation, interpretation, and appropriation of a
variety of semiotic systems.
Semiotic theories deserve attention because they contribute new per-
spectives on knowing and knowledge, representing and representation,
communicating and communication, teaching and learning. These theo-
ries intertwine in a complex web of relationships that encompasses the
meaning-making process of individuals in sociocultural and cognitive con-
texts. In addition, semiotic theories enlighten the relationships among sub-
jectivity, intersubjectivity, and objectivity. Some of the papers in this issue
contribute to an understanding of the use of semiotics as a theoretical
perspective in mathematics education; others develop semiotic strands in
the teaching and learning of mathematics; and others present instances of
processes of de-contextualization and generalization at different levels of
school mathematics. They also explain, to a certain extent, the intersubjec-
tive, subjective, and objective dimensions deeply embedded in the semiosis
of the teaching-learning activity.
For some time, mathematics educators in Europe, Canada, and the
United States have been applying different theories of semiotics to explain
social, cultural, and cognitive aspects of the teaching-learning activity. Thus
it was not a surprise, in the year 2000, to find scholars in mathematics ed-
ucation willing to contribute descriptions of their work in this area and
to debate their ideas. A Discussion Group on semiotics in mathematics
education was proposed and accepted for the 25th PME International Con-
ference held in Utrecht in July 2001. Due to the interest in semiotics as a
theoretical perspective, Discussion Groups were also accepted for the 26th,
27th and 28th PME International Conferences held in Norwich (England)
in July 2002, Honolulu (Hawaii) in July 2003, and Bergen (Norway) in
July 2004, respectively. In each conference the debate centered on the use-
fulness of semiotics as a theoretical perspective and as a pragmatic stance
in the teaching and learning of mathematics.
This Special Issue on Semiotic Perspectives on Epistemology and Teach-
ing and Learning of Mathematics represents the fruition of the two con-
secutive Discussion Groups at the 25th and 26th annual conferences of
the International Group for the Psychology of Mathematics Education,
held in Utrecht, The Netherlands (2001), and Norwich, England (2002),
respectively. A common thread throughout these papers, some only theo-
retical and some both theoretical and empirical, is the implicit or explicit
 SEMIOTIC PERSPECTIVES ON LEARNING MATHEMATICS 3

acknowledgement that several semiotic systems mediate mathematical

communication and the teaching-learning of mathematics.
The ten papers that follow in this Special Issue may be arranged accord-
ing to the following structure.
I. Semiotics and epistemology: papers by Otte, Radford, and Ernest.
II. Implications of semiotics for teachers of mathematics: papers by
Duval, Steinbring, Presmeg, and Sáenz-Ludlow.
III. Implications of semiotics for classroom communication: papers by
Morgan and Ongstad.
IV. Commentary: paper by Hoffmann.

1. SEMIOTICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY

The papers in this section provide theoretical perspectives on epistemol-

ogy, meaning-making, and the constitution of semiotic systems. Otte’s
article approaches epistemological aspects of semiotics; Radford’s article
gives insights into the cultural influences in the constitution of meaning;
and Ernest’s article presents examples of the evolution and formation of
semiotic systems.
Otte uses the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce to argue that mathe-
matical epistemology, from a semiotic point of view, is essentially a “ge-
netical epistemology”. He taps on the epistemological function of signs
and the process of generalization. Generalization, according to Peirce, is
one of the most important processes in mathematical thought. Otte places
emphasis on acts of generalization and the fundamental role they play
not only in epistemology but also in education. He contends that math-
ematical epistemology is about the relation between the variants and the
invariants of mathematical representations. He also contends that meaning
emerges through the dialectical relationships between the particular and
the general, between law and application, between habit and rule, between
fixation and transformation. In addition, he provides an excellent synthesis
of Peirce’s main classification of signs into indices, icons, and symbols. He
highlights the cognitive and transformational effects that signs have on the
learners who use, produce, or re-produce them through their generalizing
activity.
Radford proposes an anthropological perspective that he names a
“semiotic-cultural approach”. He rejects the notion of negotiation of mean-
ing as well as referential theories of meaning based on a one-to-one cor-
respondence between things and signs (see, for example, the works of
Russell and early Wittgenstein), and ideational theories of meaning that
consider signs as proxies of ideas while ideas uphold an independent
4 A. SÁENZ-LUDLOW AND N. PRESMEG

existence (see, for example, the works of Locke). Instead he adheres to

intentional/phenomenological theories of meaning that place primacy on
the active speaking subject (see, for example, the works of Husserl, Hegel,
and Merleau-Ponty), and praxeological theories of meaning that place pri-
macy on the ideological context in which meaning occurs (see, for ex-
ample, the works of Marx, Vygotsky, and Vološinov). He contends that
his semiotic-cultural approach to meaning conceives knowledge, in gen-
eral, and mathematical knowledge, in particular, as the result of a cognitive
praxis. He agrees with Merleau-Ponty that meaning emerges when different
systems of our cultural heritage–such as syntactical and lexical systems,
literary genres, figures of speech, and forms of representation, etc.–come
together to contribute to cognitive practices. He also agrees with Husserl’s
late intuition that meaning and conceptual objects coexist with culture.
Thus meaning, Radford argues, is both an intersubjective construct and a
cultural construct. That is, his semiotic-cultural approach emphasizes the
central role that culture plays in the production of objects of knowledge
and the way we come to know them. Radford applies his semiotic-cultural
perspective on meaning to the analysis of a teaching episode in a high
school class.
Ernest’s article presents a particular account of the formation and evo-
lution of “semiotic systems” of number and computation from historical,
foundational, and developmental perspectives. He contends that there is
not only one semiotic system of number, but rather there is “a family of
overlapping, intertransforming representations constituting the semiotic
systems of number.” These semiotic systems, he argues, have inherent char-
acteristics according to the users and their levels of creativity, whether in
production, re-production, or appropriation. As he clarifies at the beginning
of his article, there is not only one form of mathematics but instead there are
the mathematics formulated by the mathematician, the school mathematics
planned by the institutionalized curriculum, the mathematics taught by the
teacher, and the mathematics appropriated by the students. Nonetheless,
all these mathematics have one underpinning structure giving meaning
to mathematical signs and their combinations under mathematical rules,
axioms, definitions, theorems, and conventions. He also gives a definition
for semiotic systems, which takes into account three components: (1) a set
of signs, (2) a set of relationships between these signs, and (3) a set of rules
of sign production. Ernest’s article seems to be in consonance with Donald
(1991) who contends that the cognitive evolution of the human culture is
largely the story of the development of various semantic representational
systems and that symbols and the required rules for their use are human
inventions.
 SEMIOTIC PERSPECTIVES ON LEARNING MATHEMATICS 5

2. I MPLICATIONS OF SEMIOTICS FOR TEACHERS OF MATHEMATICS

These articles provide insight into the dialectic between the emergence
of mathematical objects and their meanings and the intentional acts of
interpretation. Duval’s article focuses on representational systems and the
movement between and within these systems; Steinbring’s article focuses
on the semiotic and epistemological functions of signs; Presmeg’s article
models the constitution of chains of signification in the meaning-making
process; and Sáenz-Ludlow’s article models processes of interpretation in
classroom collaborative interaction.
Duval’s article emphasizes two types of transformations on semiotic
representations–treatments and conversions. He defines treatments as those
transformations that can be carried out within the possibilities of a par-
ticular system of representation registers. On the other hand he defines
conversions as those transformations of representations which consist of
“changing a register without changing the objects being denoted”. He ar-
gues that each kind of transformation requires different cognitive processes
that need to be acknowledge in the teaching and learning of mathematics.
He also points out, as Otte does, that mathematical objects should not be
confused with their semiotic representations although these semiotic repre-
sentations are the only access to these abstract objects. Another important
point in the article is his characterizations of objects as (1) knowledge
objects when attention is focused on the invariant of a set of phenomena
or the invariant of a multiplicity of possible representations; (2) transient
phenomenological objects when the focus of attention is on this or that
particular aspect of what is given such as shape, position, size, succession,
etc.; and (3) concrete objects when one focuses only on the perceptual or-
ganization of what is given. This seems to be an important distinction to
take into account in the teaching and learning of mathematics since teacher
and students may very well “see” in their mind’s eyes different objects
although they “see” with their eyes the same marks. Which objects is the
teacher referring to and which objects are the students “seeing” and working
with?
Steinbring argues that mathematical signs have both semiotic and epis-
temological functions. With regard to a particular mathematical concept,
he considers that the relation between its sign/symbol and object/reference
context can be represented in an epistemological triangle, which forms a
reciprocally supported and balanced system. The three reference points of
the triangle are the mathematical sign/symbol, the object/reference con-
text, and the mathematical concept. This triangular scheme, he suggests,
should not be seen as independent of the learner who has to interpret the sign
through his own experiences in cultural environments. Thus, for Steinbring,
6 A. SÁENZ-LUDLOW AND N. PRESMEG

the meaning of signs is part and parcel of the semiotic and epistemological
functions inherent in sign interpretation. He applies his model both to an-
alyze the historical development of elementary probability and to analyze
classroom episodes of elementary mathematics in grade school.
Another significant aspect of semiotic theories is their potential use
in connecting various domains of mathematical knowledge, for instance
mathematics in-school and out-of-school. This is the topic of Presmeg’s
paper, in which she describes cases of students’ symbolic initiatives in
connecting their mathematical activities. She uses the lens of semiotics
chaining to examine students’ symbolic activity in order to trace the
emergence of meaning through chains of signification facilitated by the
teacher. Students made connections between home and school mathe-
matics, or between mathematics and other school subjects, or between
different branches of mathematics by means of chains of signification,
which resonate with the horizontal and vertical mathematization of the
Realistic Mathematics Education model developed at the Freudenthal In-
stitute (Treffers, 1993). In Presmeg’s paper these processes were also
shown to support progressive decontextualization and generalization as
students moved through their personally meaningful chains of significa-
tion. Presmeg explains how her model has evolved from dyadic chaining to
a nested triadic model that incorporates Saussurean and Peircean semiotic
perspectives.
Learners interested in sharing their own conceptualization find their
ways of representing their ideas through conventional or unconventional
symbolizations. Sáenz-Ludlow’s article explains how young learners build
up mathematical meanings through evolving processes of approximation
mediated by the collaborative interaction between teacher and students.
These processes are dialectically constituted as the teacher attempts to
guide the discussion and yet allows freedom of interpretation to the stu-
dents. Her model describes and explains the classroom dialogical inter-
action among teacher and students and among the students themselves as
interpreting games in which elements of playfulness, creativity, surprise,
and unpredictability take place in a space that is social and intersubjective.
The back-and-forth interpreting loops that constitute the interpreting games
are, in essence, tinkering processes based on the interpretation of material
signifiers intended to refer to conceptual objects, the intentionality to ad-
dress somebody else with the purpose of persuasion, and the expressivity
of the learners using a variety of semiotic systems. She uses her model to
analyze the dialogical interaction in a classroom arithmetical episode in
grade school as the students interpret the equal sign in a new arithmetical
context and construct a relational meaning for this sign, meaning that is
also new to them.
 SEMIOTIC PERSPECTIVES ON LEARNING MATHEMATICS 7

3. I MPLICATIONS OF SEMIOTICS FOR CLASSROOM COMMUNICATION

Communication in the mathematics classroom was viewed as depending

exclusively on language (syntax and grammar), the active and passive lexi-
con of the participants, and the nature of the content of the message (Austin
and Howson, 1979). Now, we have become aware that communication de-
pends not only on natural language but also on the specific sublanguages
of different fields, on non-linguistic semiotic systems, and on a variety of
social and cultural contexts in which the content of the message is em-
bedded (Halliday, 1978; Habermas, 1984; Bruner, 1986; Vygotsky, 1987).
Communication is also influenced by the behavioral dispositions and ex-
pectations of the participants as well as by their intersubjective relations of
power (Bourdieu, 1991). Thus, perspectives on communication, in general,
appear to have gained in complexity rather than in simplicity. Consonantly,
perspectives on communication in the mathematics classroom, in particular,
seem not to be the exception. Rather, mathematical communication in the
classroom seems to be a very special case of communication in which nat-
ural language, mathematical sublanguage, and mathematical codes merge
to mediate the learner’s conceptualization of mathematics. The articles of
Morgan and Ongstad give insights into the cognitive and social aspects of
classroom communication.
Morgan’s article analyzes social and cultural aspects of classroom dis-
course and provides an introduction to social semiotics and the work of
the linguist Halliday. She analyzes, in detail, his differentiations between
context of situation (goals of the activity, goals of the participants, tools
available, and other aspects of the immediate environment) and context of
culture (broader goals, values, history, and organizing concepts that the
participants hold in common). She also takes into account Halliday’s no-
tions of field (institutional setting of an activity), tenor (relations among
the participants) and mode (written and oral channels of communication).
She also uses these notions to analyze the production and consumption of
texts in mathematics classrooms. In her paper, she explains why Halliday’s
theory can be applied in the field of mathematics education, and identi-
fies research questions that may be addressed from this perspective. She
offers an illustrative classroom episode demonstrating the application of
the social semiotic approach to address both questions related to the nature
of the school mathematical activity and questions related to the mathe-
matical writings produced by secondary school students. She argues that
considering the subjective and intersubjective relations of the students who
produce mathematical texts in the classrooms allows the observer to con-
sider where power lies, what forms it takes, and how tracking the modality
of utterances of various participants can provide a systematic means of
8 A. SÁENZ-LUDLOW AND N. PRESMEG

insight into the collective dynamics of classroom interactions and the roles
of the individuals.
To communicate mathematically in the classroom, the teacher has to
have the flexibility to move within and between different semiotic systems
(ordinary language, mathematical sublanguage, mathematical notations,
diagrams, graphs, gestures, etc.) in order to refer to mathematical ob-
jects that are other than concrete, and to address the students by means
of material signifiers in order to express the teacher’s interpretation and
contextualization of mathematical objects. The reciprocity between refer-
ring, expressing, and addressing is well developed in Ongstad’s article.
Discursive practices appear to be affected not only by conceptual and cog-
nitive aspects, but also by social ones. The social and cultural aspects that
constitute the fiber of each particular classroom influence the classroom
mathematical discourse since they affect the dispositions of teacher and
students both toward school mathematics and toward each other. Ongstad
considers uttering as a semiotic act in which expressing, referring, and
addressing play a dynamic, simultaneous, and reciprocal role in subjectiv-
ity, objectivity, and normativity/intersubjectivity. He strongly argues that a
“didaktik” approach to mathematics should simultaneously take into con-
sideration the subjectivity of the learner, the objectivity of the referential
content, and the intersubjectivity of teachers and students, not as separate
categories, but as inseparable aspects of discursive practices. His approach
to classroom communication is based on the linguistic approach to com-
munication of Habermas and the social approach to semiotics of Halliday.
He illustrates his approach with several classroom teaching episodes. The
reader will encounter several common notions about communication in the
classroom in Morgan’s and Ongstad’s papers.

4. COMMENTARY

Hoffmann’s article argues the meaning of learning mathematics from a

semiotic perspective and the necessity of signs and representations in this
activity. Amongst the myriad forms that semiotic theories take – as ex-
emplified by the positions described in the papers in this Special Issue –
he has the difficult task of finding commonalities amid the diversity of
lenses on signs and meanings. From a metatheoretical point of view, he
gives a critical review of the papers indicating possibilities for theoretical
refinement and further research. He also makes two important points. The
first is that different theories of signs could be used side by side as long as
their assumptions are not confounding. The second is that certain semiotic
theories could be more appropriate than others according to the problem
 SEMIOTIC PERSPECTIVES ON LEARNING MATHEMATICS 9

or set or problems under investigation. One lacuna that he identifies in this

collection is a more detailed description of Vygotsky’s characterization of
signs as tools of semiotic mediation.

5. CONCLUDING REMARKS

Given the symbolic nature of human activity, semiotics, as a field of study,

encompasses epistemological, social and cultural dimensions of commu-
nication, in general, and of classroom communication, in particular. It is
evident that semiotics in mathematics education is not only one more the-
oretical perspective but a necessary one given the essential role that signs
play in the expression of ideas, in general, and mathematical ideas, in
particular. The articles in this issue cast light on the subjective, intersub-
jective, and objective dimensions deeply embedded in the semiosis of the
teaching-learning activity. From different semiotic perspectives, and from
different theoretical and pragmatic standpoints, all the articles in this issue
contribute to the analysis of semiotic aspects of learning mathematics and
communicating mathematically. They also open windows through which to
observe and explain the teaching-learning activity while opening the gates
for new avenues of research in mathematics education. For example, what
exactly is entailed in the interpretation of signs? Are signs things and/or
processes? When are signs interpreted as things and when are signs inter-
preted as processes by the learner? What is the role of speech and social
interaction in the interpretation of signs? What is the role of writing in the
interpretation of signs? Are there different levels of sign interpretation?
Do interpretations and the level of interpretations change with respect to
different contexts? What is the role of different contexts in sign interpre-
tation? Is it important for the teacher and the student to differentiate the
variety of semiotic systems involved in the teaching-learning activity? Is
there a dialectical relationship between sign-use and sign interpretation? Is
there a dialectical relationship between sign interpretation and thinking?
Is it possible to involve students in creative acts of sign invention and sign
combination to encapsulate the oral or written expression of their concep-
tualizations? Under what conditions do students attain the ability to express
themselves flexibly in the conventional semiotic systems of mathematics?
Can various semiotic theories be applied to analyze data gathered using
different methodologies?
Finally, these papers pose, implicitly, a big question about semiotics that
could be in the minds of readers who encounter semiotics for the first time:
Would it be possible to have a unified semiotic framework in mathematics
education? This is an open question at the present time. This may or may
10 A. SÁENZ-LUDLOW AND N. PRESMEG

not be possible. For the time being, we agree with Otte (this issue) who
argues that not everything can be incorporated into one given system, or
explained within a given theoretical framework, or found to be meaningful
within a giving context.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We wish to thank Willie Dörfler from University of Klagenfurt, Austria,

for his contribution to the group discussion on diagrammatic reasoning and
C. Jotin Khisty from the Illinois Institute of Technology for his interesting
contribution on Martin Buber’s triad “I-Thou-We”.

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Bourdieu, P.: 1991, Language and Symbolic Power, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
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Bruner, J.S.: 1986, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
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Brousseau, G.: 1997, Theory of Didactical Situations in Mathematics. Edited by Nicolas
Balacheff, Martin Cooper, Rosamund Sutherland, and Virginia Warfield, Kluwer
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Donald, M.: 1991, Origins of the Modern Mind, Harvard University Press, Cambridge,
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ADALIRA SÁENZ-LUDLOW
Department of Mathematics
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

NORMA PRESMEG
Department of Mathematics
Illinois State University