Every sign, as we know, is a construct between socially organised
persons in the process of their interaction. Therefore the forms of
signs are conditioned above all by the social organization of the
participants involved and also by the immediate conditions of their
interaction. When these forms change, so does sign.
(Volosinov, 1973: 21, italics in the original)
To do this I combine a multimodal approach and activity theory to introduce the
histories of school subjects, curriculum and assessment that underpin learning in the
classroom more clearly into the analysis: the social histories that lie behind instances
of learning that a multimodal approach does not easily invoke.
Activity theory is developed from the work of Vygotsky’s cultural historical
approach of semiotic mediation to learning - in which a subject’s relationship to an
object is mediated by semiotic tools. Activity theory moves the analysis of
technology-mediated learning beyond the idea of an individual learner engaged with
what is represented on screen to suggest a more complex view of learning. This
complexity can be understood as the mediational effect of tools on a person’s activity.
People’s consciousness is seen as emerging from their activity with shared tools -
through which they are always in contact with (connected to) the history, values, and
social relations of society embedded in tools (Cole 1996). In common with activity
theory, social semiotics understands mediational tools (semiotic resources) as shaping
thinking, tools that different groups use to realise their specific interests. Activity
theory theorises the rules, norms, and social roles of people within communities that
underpin this mediation more clearly than social semiotics.
Engestrom (1987) developed Vygotsky’s mediational triangle (subject, mediational
tool, and object) into an activity system to represent more fully the essential social
relations that account for learning. The concept of an activity system is represented
in the diagram in Figure 2.1. An activity system can be understood as any group of
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