Continuity and change: semiotic relations across multimodal texts in surgical education

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper we develop a social semiotic account of continuity and change across texts. Our aims are to make a theoretical contribution to scholarly work on inter-textual relations by adopting a multimodal perspective; and to develop a framework for understanding how texts mediate knowing, learning and agency in education and beyond. We achieve this through a case study of surgical education. We present and analyze, first, a collection of pedagogic texts designed for surgeons learning to perform a common surgical procedure. Second, we look at a series of texts that culminated in a pedagogic text on surgery for the general public. We conclude that a multimodal, social semiotic framework provides essential means for the recognition, documentation and understanding of continuities and changes in text production and engagement.