ABSTRACT
This chapter builds the theoretical foundation that anchors and situates the key constructs used throughout the book, namely discourse, text, social practice, language, semiotic system, meaning, context, and multimodality. First, it discusses the role of theories and presents an overview of a sociocultural perspective as a set of lenses to interpret the phenomenon of classroom discourse. This sociocultural perspective is further elaborated through the works of Vygotsky’s semiotic mediation and internalization, Bakhtin’s intertextuality and heteroglossia, and Latour’s Actor-Network Theory. The chapter then expands on the theories behind discourse and social practice based on the works of James Gee and Norman Fairclough, as well as the theories behind language and meaning based on the works of Michael Halliday and Jay Lemke.
