Multimodal knowledge : Using language, mathematics and image in physics

To organize its highly technical knowledge, science consistently uses a range of different resources for making meaning, including language, mathematics and images. This chapter explores why these resources are used and what effect they have on the scientific knowledge being taught and learned. Focusing on physics, it shows that language, mathematics and image are each crucial to building its highly complex knowledge as each enables particular meanings that are indispensable to the field. Through an analysis using the Legitimation Code Theory concepts of ‘semantic gravity’ and ‘semantic density’ and the SFL model of field (presented in Chapter 5), the chapter articulates the specific affordances of each resource for building physics knowledge. In particular, the chapter shows that each resource is necessary; physics could not develop its knowledge and students cannot express this knowledge without all three. By bringing together conceptualizations of knowledge from LCT and models of meaning from SFL, the chapter also illustrates the power that interdisciplinary analysis using both approaches can bring for understanding science.