ABSTRACT
This chapter examines more closely the various semiotic resources that are available to teachers for making and interpreting meaning in their social worlds. Teachers' individual language knowledge is comprised of a wide range of linguistic constructions, stored in their minds as form-meaning pairings, that they develop and use in the myriad activities they engage in daily in their social worlds. The term semiotic resources is used to refer to all of the various means of making meaning. A mode is a "regularised organised set of resources for meaning-making, including, image, gaze, gesture, movement, music, speech and sound-effect". Meaning potentials of semiotic resources are not universal; they are context-sensitive with particular meanings activated or motivated by the contexts in which they appear. The term multimodality refers to the multiplicity of modes in addition to speech and writing that individuals mobilize to make meaning.
