Demythifying Multicultural Education: Social Semiotics as a Tool of Critical Pedagogy

This article discusses the assumptions and curricular implications of a social semiotic approach to education. Semiotics refers to the meaning we make with language as well as other objects. events, and actions. Social semiotics emphasizes the social, cultural, historic, and political contexts that shape that meaning. A social semiotic approach to education can help teachers and teacher educators to deconstruct the reproduction of class, politicize the ideology of colonialism, and overcome the inequities they engender. By providing a way to challenge selectively reproduced cultural politics, social semiotics provides a way to reconstruct and democratize schools and society