Social Semiotics of Montessori Materials

Social Semiotics of Montessori Materials
According to Chandler,The Basics of Semiotics, “Semiotics is the study not only of what we refer to as “signs” in everyday speech, but of anything which “stands for” something else. In a semiotic sense, signs take the form of words, images, sounds, gestures, and objects.” “Contemporary semioticians study signs not in isolation but as part of semiotic “sign systems” (such as a medium or genre). These semioticians figure out how different meanings are made and how they represent reality.. On the other hand social semiotics is the study of the social dimensions of meaning. “Social semiotics focuses on social meaning-making practices of all types, whether visual, verbal or aural in nature” Semiotic modes or “channels” such as speech, writing, and images make up the meaning-making system. Semiotic modes can be visual, verbal, written, gestural and musical tools for communication. They also include various "multimodal" combinations of any of these modes.
The social semiotics, of Montessori Method teaching materials is about the connection between the materials and the meaning of the language used in the Montessori culture. The language used in Montessori can be verbal or non-verbal. Color, shape, size, weight and surface texture are all considered when designing Montessori Materials. The materials are usually two-dimensional or three-dimensional are accompanied by a specific set of written and/or oral language. Each material is presented in a specific way to the child in order to appeal to many or all the senses. The senses are touch, taste, sound, sight, and smell. Montessori-specific language is used to represents the relationship between what is being said orally and the design or use of the materials. The semiotic complexity of Montessori materials is key, even though the design may seem simple.
The design of the Montessori materials illustrates many potentially meaning-bearing variables, including color, shape, texture and size. These materials, and their multimodal parts, function as elements in external activity; they are also designed to be “materialized abstractions” or “representations of abstract, cultural meanings, functioning simultaneously as internally-oriented signs”.
Montessori materials have two semiotic modes. The modes are that of movement and of an internal sign system of language. “Through these multimodal combinations Montessori could be said to have design complexes of signs with both external and internal orientations”. The largest unit of meaning in the social semiotic background is the text. Butt states, “Semiotic modes available to teachers, as they construct mediational means, to achieve transitions of this type include, verbal, iconic, indexical, kinesthetic, geometric, and musical” These modes are used in the meaning-making of Montessori materials.
Montessori materials can also be described in terms of two sub-units according to Feez. “The first sub-unit comprises the objects (material/iconic) and the movement (kinesthetic), which constitutes their use as mediating learning materials…The second sub-unit comprises the discourse (verbal), initiated by the teacher, which accompanies the use of the objects”. “Montessori tools are interpreted as a complex of mediational means designed to shift children’s meaning-making from local context-bound experience towards generalisable, decontextualised and recontextualisable, education knowledge”

“Montessori materials can be thought of as a designed semiotic, recoding the verbal meanings of educational knowledge in nonverbal forms, in order to mediate these meanings for children”. Common language makes it possible to analyze the meaning relations from multiple viewpoints, by identifying text as the unit of meaning. This is not only the relations of meaning to sound, but also its relation to contact and to the language as a whole, and any other semiotic system.
Three Semiotic Modes in the Montessori Classroom
Symbolic/Symbol: The sound box. An apple or an airplane symbolizes the sound "a".
Iconical/Iconic: The sandpaper letters. The children rub and trace with their finger the letter "a" while sounding out "a"
Index/Indexical: The writing of letters. The children trace dotted letters in order to learn how to write. The writing of the letter "a" gets encoded in the brain by tracing the letter over and over.

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