ABSTRACT

Knowledge and semiotics are inseparable. From a perspective of systemic functional linguistics, knowledge is created, developed and realised through semiotic resources, among which language is a critical one. The specialisation of ‘technical knowledge’ introduced at primary and secondary school has received significant attention by educational linguists. In B. Bernstein’s term, disciplinary knowledge introduced in secondary school is ‘recontextualised’ knowledge—that is, the ‘the results of what scientists or historians have done’. Building scientific knowledge concerns several social purposes. The discussion so far has been using the terms ‘subjects’ and ‘disciplines’ loosely to refer to disciplinary knowledge. From an Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective, disciplinary knowledge, particularly the epistemological or content knowledge, can be conceptualised theoretically with respect to register variable field. As J. R. Martin suggests, ‘It would be impossible to produce scientific knowledge without grammatical metaphor.