This is based on my talk at the LSRI (see previous blog post). The development of a semiotic theoretical framework was my response to difficulties in working and researching in an interdisciplinary way on the subject of learning. The difficulties are primarily those of incompatible discourses (often and incorrectly, in my view, conceived of as arising due to incommensurable theoretical perspectives), and thus best addressed using a late-Wittgenstein-language-game or Derridean-deconstruction approach.
So the approach is to conceive of all thought as representations of a semiotic network. There are signifiers, and there are relations amongst signifiers. Everything that we do that we might want to call ‘thought’ or ‘learning’ involves the representation of some part of this semiotic network. The network extends within and between human minds, and includes social/cultural objects and physical artefacts.
My basic claim is that if we stick to this level of description, then there is no incompatibility of discourse, whether we want to talk about research that has been done within traditions such as cognitivism or socioculturalism, or whether we want to talk about the learning of the individual or of the group.
More on this in the near future
