The studies in this edited volume focus on multimodal semiotics in educational contexts. Drawing on Michael Halliday's extensive studies of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), the analytic chapters of this volume offer a variety of approaches to the study of language as social semiotic in education. In his introduction, Len Unsworth notes that the systemic functional tradition makes no distinction between theoretical and applied work. As such, it is not surprising that many SFL studies are conducted within educational contexts, largely because education provides extensive examples of language as social semiotic. Fourteen analytical chapters make up this volume, divided into four parts, each of which focuses upon a different textual aspect. These include: “Semiotics and 3D space,” “Semiotics in film,” “Semiotics in news and public media,” and “Semiotics in school curricula.”

The part on semiotics and 3D space entails four studies of 3D space in educational contexts. Ch. 3, by Theo Van Leeuwen, discusses the discursive construction of space and how different classroom activities are arranged around different spatial configurations, focusing upon the social practice of going to school for the first time. Ch. 4, by Maree Stenglin, discusses how bonding icons become “charged” with interpersonal meanings, using a museum as an example. Ch. 5, by Pauline Jones, presents the case of a socially disadvantaged school, illustrating how communicative choice is linked to spatial arrangements and by that extension to social relations. Two chapters make up the section on semiotics in film. Ch. 6, by Chiaoi Tseng, is a study of coherence in filmic text, arguing that more methods for crossmodal ties are needed to develop accurate correlation between multimodal texts. Betty Pun describes in Ch. 7 how sound patterns in film are integrated with other semiotic resources.

Part 3 on semiotics in news and public media contains three chapters. Ch. 9, by John S. Knox, draws our attention to the use of online newspapers in TESOL classrooms. He focuses upon the multimodal and nonlinear nature of such texts, arguing not only that language learners must acquire multiple literacies to read them, but also that teachers must incorporate such multimodal practices into their pedagogy. In a similar vein, Ch. 10, by Jan Connelly, focuses upon a critical approach to multimodal literacy drawing on examples from public space. The fourth and final part of this volume, “Semiotics in school curricula,” contains four chapters on the multimodal semiotic nature of pedagogy including such topics as: literacy across school subjects (Ch. 11), time (Ch. 12), the multimodal semiotic nature of Montessori pedagogy (Ch. 13), textual meaning in websites and hypermodality (Ch. 14), and conceptual metaphors in the landscape of the knowledge society (Ch. 15).

This volume will be of interest to education researchers interested not only in multimodal semiotics but also in systemic functional grammar. The range of studies illustrates the variety of analytic tools available using an SFL methodology and how such analytical tools can be applied to a variety of educational contexts.