Abstract
In this response we address some of the significant issues that Tony Brown raised in his analysis and critique of the Special Issue of Educational Studies in Mathematics on “Semiotic perspectives in mathematics education” (Sáenz-Ludlow & Presmeg, Educational Studies in Mathematics 61(1–2), 2006). Among these issues are conceptualizations of subjectivity and the notion that particular readings of Peircean and Vygotskian semiotics may limit the ways that authors define key actors or elements in mathematics education, namely students, teachers and the nature of mathematics. To deepen the conversation, we comment on Brown’s approach and explore the theoretical apparatus of Jacques Lacan that informs Brown’s discourse. We show some of the intrinsic limitations of the Lacanian idea of subjectivity that permeates Brown’s insightful analysis and conclude with a suggestion about some possible lines of research in mathematics education.
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Notes
In fact, one reviewer of an earlier draft of his manuscript apparently questioned the integrity of this approach, calling it an “ethical violation”—perhaps in the spirit of the symbolic violence described by Bourdieu 1995—see Brown’s first footnote.
Language is like the “exchange of a coin whose obverse and reverse no longer bear but eroded faces, and which people pass from hand to hand” (Lacan 2006, p. 209).
In a famous paper, “The instrumental method in psychology”, Vygotsky wrote: “By being included in the process of behavior, the psychological tool [language, signs, etc.] alters the entire flow and structure of mental functions. It does this by determining the structure of a new instrumental act just as a technical tool alters the process of a natural adaptation by determining the form of labor operations” (Vygotsky 1981, p. 137).
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Presmeg, N., Radford, L. On semiotics and subjectivity: a response to Tony Brown’s “signifying ‘students’, ‘teachers’, and ‘mathematics’: a reading of a special issue”. Educ Stud Math 69, 265–276 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-008-9146-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10649-008-9146-0