Rekontekstualisering af socialsemiotik - fra teori til grundskolens praksis

Resumé

This article explores how social semiotics can be recontextualized from linguistic theory into practical use in Danish primary education. Drawing on M.A.K. Halliday’s concepts of register and stratification, Basil Bernstein’s theory of recontextualization, and Mary Schleppegrell’s pedagogical adaptations, the authors develop a didactic framework designed to support teachers’ lesson planning and students’ engagement with texts. The framework aims to make complex linguistic theory accessible and meaningful within the constraints and demands of contemporary school practice.
The study addresses a central challenge in education: how to transform theoretically grounded approaches into tools that are manageable for teachers. The proposed model integrates analyses of both verbal and visual texts and emphasizes the importance of subject-specific language practices (disciplinarity). It provides teachers with guiding questions and analytical tools that link semantic meaning to lexico-grammatical resources.
The approach is illustrated through a detailed example of a teacher’s preparation for a 2nd-grade Danish lesson based on the picture book Trylleblik. The analysis demonstrates how verbal and visual modes construct meaning differently, but at the same time interact to create aesthetic interpretations. The teaching sequence shows how linguistic concepts can be scaffolded through classroom activities. 
The article concludes that social semiotics, when recontextualized as suggested, can provide powerful tools for a functional approach to inclusive and inquiry-based teaching. However, wider implementation requires institutional support, collaboration between researchers and practitioners, and further development of accessible teaching resources.