Abstract
Physics as a unique discipline has its distinctive way of organising and representing knowledge. The discourse of physics has attracted the attention of scholars from different fields because it shares many characteristics of natural sciences and holds an indispensable position in the school curriculum. The book under review presents a trimodal perspective to explore the semiotic characteristics of language, mathematics and images in the organisation of physics’ knowledge in discourse. The following six merits can best represent its special characterisation.
First, the theories of systemic functional linguistics and sociology of education are well integrated in the descriptive framework of this book to study knowledge organisation by different semiotic resources. Doran shows that the two perspectives are complementary, because the former focuses on the way language and other semiotic resources construe knowledge, and the latter offers a theorisation of knowledge itself. Two important dimensions – specialisation and semantics – are considered the most pertinent for the exploration of physics. Moreover, based on Bernstein’s (1999) idea of horizontal discourse and vertical discourse, Doran regards the discourse of physics as the archetypal hierarchical knowledge structure. This enables us to understand the structuring principles of knowledge and achieve systematic descriptions of the semiotic resources in the discourse.
Second, this book highlights the crucial role of language, mathematics and images in building abstract theories of physics. They are considered as important semiotic resources, each having its own unique functionality and its own particular way of construing knowledge. The exploration of the meanings they can make presents the fact that they can serve as coordinated resources to achieve higher order meaning. Therefore, the discourse of physics requires us to understand physics knowledge semiotically.
Third, language is regarded as the most important semiotic resource to build complex meanings and to unpack technical knowledge in physics. For Doran, the crucial linguistic means are grammatical metaphor and technicality. The former enables events to be abstracted away from any particular instance, while the latter is related to the use of field-specific technical terms, which are arranged by a set of composition and classification taxonomies. Doran shows that the advantage of using language is that it facilitates physics to reorganise everyday experience into uncommon-sense knowledge and to build large networks of field-specific meanings. However, it should be noted that language does not work on its own but interacts with other resources to build the technical meanings and the hierarchical knowledge structure of physics.
Fourth, Doran proposes a comprehensive and systematic stratal architecture of mathematics in physics and takes the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes as the primitive basis. By examining individual symbols and symbol complexes in mathematical expressions, Doran investigates the internal variation of symbols and the univariate and covariate features of mathematics, and describes the relation of each symbol to every other symbol and symbol complex in an equation. Doran discovers two peaks of informational prominence in mathematical statements: the Theme and final Articulation. This understanding enables us to see that mathematics uses derivation to realise large complexes of implication relations and uses quantifications to move general theory to the empirical world.
Fifth, Doran’s analysis of both diagrams and graphs shows that images have strong functionality in the field-specific meaning making and that they complement language and mathematics in organising information and scaffolding semantic density. We are shown that diagrams can display activity sequences and organise classification and composition taxonomies, while graphs can present large arrays and offer a counterpoint to the movements in generality shown by mathematics.
Sixth, based on the paradigmatic relations between language and mathematics, Doran proposes a system of elemental mathematical genres, in which Situation, Reorganisation, Result and Interpretation are the four basic stages. This brings to us the fact that the systems of linguistic and mathematical genres can be brought into a single network with their complexing relations, thus formalising a description based on axial foundations for a stratal organisation of mathematics, and a single generalised stratum of genre realised by both mathematics and language.
In short, Doran’s insightful study brings us the fact that the hierarchical knowledge structure of physics is the product of the interaction of language, mathematics and images, which can represent a wide range of meanings and develop generalised models from empirical data. As we have seen, language is a solid base upon which images and mathematics can extend field-specific meanings. One of the values is the integration of systemic functional linguistics and sociology of education into a feasible model for analysing the discourse of physics. Taking physics as a hierarchical knowledge structure, Doran examines the disciplinary affordances for each resource in relation to the knowledge of physics and shows that language, mathematics and images display the capacity to develop general propositions and to generate empirical descriptions. Throughout this book, we come to see that each resource has its capacity for organising knowledge and that their complementarity contributes to the overall knowledge structuring of physics. It thus enhances our understanding of disciplinary knowledge in general and can be a useful reference for us to understand multisemiotic discourses. Moreover, key concepts such as genre, field, metafunction, rank, system, semantic density, semantic gravity and hierarchical knowledge structure are crucial in studying the construal of physics knowledge.
Since there is always subtle difference in the way different resources are used to construe disciplinary knowledge, a more detailed picture of the discourse of physics could be presented if quantitative corpus analysis were added to the approach Doran takes. Nevertheless, this book is beneficial to graduate students and researchers who are engaged in the field of discourse studies and helpful to language teachers who are teaching English for Specific Purposes, as the teaching of disciplinary English requires a good understanding of disciplinary difference.