Language and discourse in conceptual models for chemical equilibrium

Abstract

A semiotic perspective is used in order to establish the features impressed by language and discourse on particular subject matter content, the chemical equilibrium. Starting from the restrictions imposed to the discourse by the nature of the subject matter contents and by the discourse community, the textbook author constructs its own discourse which, in turn, must help the reader in grasping the paradigmatic and situational context, using as resource the sintagmatic and intertextual context. Different components that must be considered to assign meanings are described and a model is applied, using content analysis, to analyse pictorial representations used by three textbook authors to present the concept of chemical equilibrium. We found out that the proposed model allows the reconstruction of the discourse meanings used by the authors.

Keywords

• language and discourse
• conceptual models
• chemical equilibrium