Knowledge and knowers by Karl Maton

A review essay 
Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge 2014.

Fiona Jackson

Abstract

This article outlines selected aspects of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), as presented in
Maton’s book Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education (2014),
and considers their usefulness to the field of education research, in particular, for language
education. An introduction to key LCT concepts is provided highlighting their analytic
power for the investigation of the varying forms of educational knowledge structures,
knower roles and what forms of pedagogic practices promote or inhibit cumulative learning.
The notion of ‘context’, in relation to LCTs concept of semantic gravity and
decontextualised knowledge forms, is considered alongside Cummins’ notions of
contextualised and decontextualised language. The importance of further research into what
is meant by ‘context’ in relation to pinpointing the nature of contextualised and
decontextualised knowledge, and the nature of forms of cumulative learning is raised.

Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a realist sociology of education (2014)
distils the evolution of Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), while emphasising
issues of knowers and their practices. The sweep of the book is large,
complex and theoretically dense, addressing more issues than can be usefully
considered in a single article. Areas such as Maton’s discussion of LCTs
foundation in Bourdieu’s field theory and Bernstein’s code theory, while
important to engage within order to understand fully the theoretical lineage of
LCT, will not be discussed in detail here. I focus on those aspects that seem
most immediately provocative and generative for research into pedagogical
practice (using issues in relation to language education as exemplars) – the
dimensions of Specialisation and Semantics. However, I begin with brief
contextualisation of these dimensions within LCT as a whole, sketching its
roots in the thinking of Bourdieu and Bernstein.
 
LCT locates itself within a social realist paradigm, drawing particularly upon
the sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein, while
pursuing the goal of building a sociology of knowledge that addresses the gap
of ‘knowledge blindness’ (Maton, 2014) in educational research. This gap,



128        Journal of Education, No. 59, 2014

For more information on Legitimation Code Theory see the LCT website:1

www.legitimationcodetheory.com

Maton argues, is the result of prior intensive research foci on relations to
knowledge, for example, as in relations of social power to knowledge.
Consequently, knowledge itself is under-researched and constructing a
sociology of knowledge requires working with an understanding of
knowledge as something real, with different types of knowledge varying in
structure, properties and effects. However Maton also argues that taking
knowledge seriously is no license to valorise it at the expense of forms of
knowing rooted in knower practices, hence the focus of the book on knowers
as well as knowledge.

Legitimation Code Theory  addresses issues of social practice, aiming to1

identify and articulate the underlying organisational principles of social fields.
It sees people as agents operating, both collaboratively and competitively, in
fairly independent, yet interlinked social arenas. Drawing on Bourdieu, it
argues the goal of much social practice is to achieve maximum relational gain,
in terms of social control, position and prestige. Each field works uniquely,
with distinctive types of prestige and sets of resources. Yet beneath the
particularities lie similar generative principles which LCT works to excavate
and understand. Currently LCT has identified dimensions of Autonomy,
Density, Temporality, Specialisation and Semantics. Knowledge and Knowers
focuses on the educational field, setting out how the dimensions of
Specialisation and Semantics contribute to the building of a sociology of
knowledge and knowers. Maton argues that knowledge in itself is under-
researched, but cautions that taking it seriously is not to valorise it at the
expense of forms of knowing rooted in knower practices.

Located within a social realist paradigm, LCT understands knowledge as
neither purely cognitive nor social. Maton argues against construing knowing
only as inner mental processes, or on focusing attention solely on knowledge
as social power. Intensive scrutiny of relations to knowledge in educational
research has led to the serious gap of ‘knowledge blindness’ (Maton, 2014).
LCT assumes we build knowledge collectively as well as individually,
socially as well as cognitively. New knowledge arises out of extant
knowledge that has been crafted and evaluated by socially contingent actors
engaged in relationally strategic manoeuvres within particular fields.
Bernstein’s code theory is harnessed to sharpen the analytic focus provided by
Bourdieu’s field theory. Code theory helps unravel how knowledge structures

http://www.legitimationcodetheory.com


Jackson: Knowledge and knowers. . .         129

impact upon fields, focusing attention on knowledge as the medium of the
educational message; on how knowledge practices themselves are structured.
By extending Bernstein’s ‘pedagogic device’ into the ‘epistemic-pedagogic
device’ Maton provides the means to analyse knowledge and knower
practices across intellectual, curricular and pedagogic fields. LCT thereby
extends, enlarges and synthesises selected concepts from both field and code
theory, developing rather than displacing them; establishing an explanatory
framework for the cumulative theorisation of the underlying organisational
principles of knowledge and knowing.
 
While Maton’s exposition of LCT, via its prior chronological development,
illustrated with numerous examples from substantive empirical studies, is a
strength I hankered for a clear synoptic overview of the inter-relationship of
the components of LCT. Figure 1, on page 3, shows my initial ‘mapping’ of
just one set of legitimation codes – those from the Specialisation dimension.
The diagram reads most logically from the bottom up.

Maton posits the Legitimation Device (LD) as the deep, generative level of
organisational principles regulating all social fields, the agents operating
within them, and their practices. He uses the metaphor of a currency exchange
for its actions, revealing partial roots in Bourdieu’s notion of ‘capital’. Thus
actors enter and operate in social fields with varying forms and quantities of
social currency, or ‘value’. The Legitimation Device controls how people
interact and exchange their social currencies. Those with maximum power
over the Legitimation Device regulate which Legitimation Codes have most
power, and thus what counts as legitimate within the fields. The operations of
the Legitimation Device thus form social fields as active ‘fields of
possibilities’ (2014) in perpetual flux. Actors within these fields work both
together and against each other in order to leverage the largest gains in
attaining the most prestigious relational positions, and in controlling what
counts as prestige. The practices of actors, which can be both explicit and
tacit, comprise languages of legitimation that count as competing claims for
legitimation.



130        Journal of Education, No. 59, 2014

Figure 1: Interrelations of Legitimation Device and Epistemic-Pedagogic 
Device and Specialisation Codes (Jackson’s ‘Mapping’)



Jackson: Knowledge and knowers. . .         131

The ‘epistemic-pedagogic device’, one arm of the LD, pertains to issues of
knowledge and education. Its revision and extension of Bernstein’s
‘pedagogic device’ provides a way of understanding arenas of social struggle
across three fields of practice: the fields of production, recontextualisation
and reproduction. The field of production is the site of the genesis of new
knowledge, of the ‘unthinkable’ – what people such as scientists, academics,
poets, artists and inventors generate. The field of recontextualisation is the
site for the selection from the knowledge of the field of production, its
rearrangement and transformation into forms for pedagogic communication.
The field of reproduction is the site where the teaching and learning of
recontextualised knowledge happens. Each field operates according to its own
specific logics, meaning it is problematic to conflate the forms of operation of
fields as identical. However, individuals such as university academics may
operate across all three fields. For example, an applied linguistics lecturer
may conduct original research on how language is deployed differently in
corporate meetings and written documents arising from such meetings. This
may contribute to the development of theories of corporate communication
and the relations between spoken and written discourses (field of production).
The lecturer may write a textbook on corporate communication for
undergraduate university students (field of recontextualisation), and then may
teach in an undergraduate course on corporate communication (field of
reproduction), focusing on strategies for effective communication in meetings
and written documents. A lecturer setting out to theorise their practices in
each field, would need to work with a conscious understanding that each field
operates according to its own logics. 

The shift from Bernstein’s conception of field ‘rules’ to Maton’s of field
‘logics’ seeks to prevent false claims that they propose practices as
deterministically rule governed. The mapping of the EPD also highlights that
knowledge moves in many paths, with the bi-directional arrows showing
recontextualisation happening between fields. The right-to-left arrows
indicate that artifacts from recontextualisation fields can be intellectualised or
absorbed into production fields as a part of ‘prior’ knowledge that acts as ‘raw
material’ for the genesis of fresh knowledge. For example, student essays
produced within a corporate communication course may be the subject of
research into knowledge building and/or communication processes within the
field of communication education. Insights from such research may contribute
to the building of communication and genre theory. In addition, educational
knowledge (from the reproduction field) can be recurricularised (extracted
from, re-directed, moved to) as curricular product of recontextualisation



132        Journal of Education, No. 59, 2014

fields. For example, following analysis essays by corporate communication
students may be transformed with theorised annotations and wrap around text
relating salient aspects of genre theory to the essays, and included in a book
on academic writing for communication students.

Maton’s other key revision of Bernstein’s model is to argue that distributive
rules do not control the practices of the field of production. While Bernstein’s
model asserts that every field has its own distinct practices, the unique
practices of the field of production remain unspecified. Maton further argues
that the rules controlling the field of production are not mainly distributive,
but that distributive logics relate to all fields of the EPD, reaching across the
activities of the whole arena. Distributive logics illuminate that “a
precondition for playing the game is entering the arena” (2014, p.51). This
implies that the EPD regulates not only who has access to ‘thinking the
unthinkable’ (means to control, as well as generate, the genesis of new
knowledge) via participation in production fields, but also who has access to
the means of constructing ‘thinkables’ in recontextualisation fields and to an
array of different ‘thinkables’ in reproduction fields. Thus, if epistemic,
recontextualising and evaluative logics regulate the various ‘whats’, then
distributive logics regulate “who enjoys access to which ‘whats’ ”(2014,
p.51). Therefore the EPD sets out the key components and deep principles
underlying people’s contestations to control which criteria of achievement
prevail and the ‘conversion rates’ among them. Consequently, the people who
control the EPD control the ‘ruler of legitimacy’ in key social arenas and
secure the greatest reach and impact for their own location in status
hierarchies.

The idea of ‘languages of legitimation’ illuminates both the sociological
nature of knowledge practices and the epistemological nature of potentially
legitimate knowledge claims. Languages of legitimation underpin the
practices of actors and simultaneously count as claims for the legitimacy of
their actions, or, “for the organising principles embodied by their actions”
(2014, p.24). They constitute the grounds for contesting claims to scarce
supplies of prestige and material goods. Thereby they are positions
strategically adopted with the purpose of maximising the advantage of the
locations of agents inside a “relationally structured field” (2014, p.24). They
signal the terms and criteria for acting in a field and are specifically located
within particular versions moulded by the actors’ positions and perspectives.
So languages of legitimation constitute organising principles that have
consequences. Firstly their innate compositions are neither uniform nor



Jackson: Knowledge and knowers. . .         133

impartial. Secondly, the structure of a language moulds the potential of what
can be communicated. This conception of languages of legitimation facilitates
a focus both on analyses of ‘relations to’ knowledge practices and analyses of
‘relations within’ knowledge practices.
 
In relation to knowledge practices languages of legitimation are realised (in
one dimension) as epistemic relations and social relations that constitute
specialisation codes. Specialisation refers to the reality that all human
practices and beliefs are both:

(a) about, or positioned towards something, thus involving relations to
objects of focus, and

(b) by someone, thereby concerned with relations to subjects.

In highlighting the co-existence of these elements within all human activity,
Maton facilitates a conceptually whole focus, signalling the salience of
attending both to issues of knowledge in itself, and identity and social
formation. Maton analytically differentiates between ‘epistemic relations’
(referring to relations between practices and their objects) and ‘social
relations’ (referring to relations between practices and their subjects or
originators). Epistemic relations illuminate issues of what can legitimately be
named as knowledge, while social relations focus on who can assert
themselves as legitimate knowers. These concepts are deployed using
Bernstein’s notions of classification and framing. Classification refers to the
strength of boundary maintenance between situations. Framing refers to the
location of control inside contexts. Stronger framing points to greater control
from above. Therefore, stronger epistemic relations refer to practices which
place firm boundaries and control around what can legitimately constitute
objects of study and what procedures may be used. Stronger social relations
refer to the placement of strong boundaries and control around who may be
recognised as legitimate knowers.

Maton argues against dichotomising typologies in educational research, and
so visualises epistemic relations and social relations as intersecting continua
that generate a Cartesian plane which produces a topological space
comprising four specialisation codes – knowledge, elite, knower, relativist as
set out in Figure 2 below:



134        Journal of Education, No. 59, 2014

Figure 2: Cartesian Plane – Specialisation Codes

This topological space provides possibilities for separate variations in the
strength of epistemic relations and social relations. The mapping of infinite
numbers of positions along continua of relative strengths is thus possible,
along with the tracing of shifts of position within quadrants. 

Knowledge codes are those which strongly mark off what counts as legitimate
objects and/or methods of study, while backgrounding the salience of
personal attributes of those who do the studying. This is schematised as ER+
SR-. Physics is typically an example of such a code, where specialised
knowledge of particular objects of study using strongly controlled procedures
is stressed. In principle, there is no social restriction on who may claim
legitimate physics knowledge, as long as they master the accepted procedures
for knowledge building in physics.

In contrast, knower codes (SR+ ER-) ground assertions of legitimacy in
particular kinds of knowers. There is stronger classification and framing of
social relations – who makes claims is the most important factor in terms of
ideal knower traits. Differences between knowers are thus stressed. Wide
ranging knowledge assertions, methods and procedures are largely a matter of
individual choice. Social knower codes aim to speak the experiences of
knowers with truth being established via the ‘voice’. 

In the field of reproduction this points to the possibilities of nuanced plotting
of variable positions.  For example, in relation to English Studies, the study of
literature in schools can usually be placed as a knower code, where social



Jackson: Knowledge and knowers. . .         135

relations predominate in relation to the importance of knowers’ responses to
literature (usually through cultivation, developing the dispositions of knowers
into a range of possible literary gazes). However, where the focus of study is
linguistic, while the placement is still likely to be within the knower code
quadrant, it will be much closer to the knowledge quadrant, since the focus
will be far more on the knowledge, understanding and analysis of linguistic
structures in a highly systematised way and far less on the traits of the
knowers. There may well be other possible placements, such as of the study of
literature at an elite university. In such circumstances, what you know about
English literature may be as important as who you are as a knower – for
example, if to count as a legitimate knower you must arrive with extensive
reading of classical as well as English literature as foundational knowledge to
the further growth of your already cultivated literary disposition. Such an
approach would likely be placed within an elite code.

Figure 3: Specialisation Codes – Placement of Literature and Linguistics

Additionally within the field of reproduction, the specialisation plane offers
an analytic framework for the nuanced investigation of teaching and learning
practices. It allows for tracking of subtle shifts in emphasis of specialisation
codes across different aspects of the pedagogic process. It can also facilitate
exploration of issues such as the dispositions and practices of teachers and
learners, and degrees of code match and code clash between them (see Chen,
2010 for an example from professional education).

Maton further elaborates upon specialisation codes in terms of types of gazes,
identifying a continuum from weaker social relations to stronger social
relations:



136        Journal of Education, No. 59, 2014

Figure 4: Continuum of Gazes

Trained gazes are those with weaker social relations (SR-) and stronger
epistemic relations (ER+) while born gazes are those with much stronger
social relations (SR+) and weaker epistemic relations (ER-). Cultivated gazes
are those with a somewhat weaker social relations acquired by long
immersion that cultivates the legitimate dispositions of the knower. Social
gazes are acquired by virtue of one’s location in society, such as from one’s
class position, or one’s social category, such as being black or female.
Hierarchical growth of knowers can occur through cultivated gazes. That is,
an increasing range of knowers can, in principle, be admitted at the base of
the hierarchy and can then be socialised into the legitimate cultivated gaze.
These ideas therefore potentially provide a shared language through which to
explore ongoing contestations surrounding pedagogic issues. For example,
suggestive research areas regarding school-based learning of home and
additional languages include:

! What is the legitimate gaze of cultivation in particular contexts?

What are the languages of legitimation for our different home languages!

as school subjects? How do these compare with each other, and what
are the implications of any differences? 

! What are the implications of aiming to expand the base of knowers in

language education?

! Who are the guardians of the gaze? What is the nature of their

legitimation codes?

! Which criteria and pedagogic processes are deployed in the processes of

cultivation of legitimate gazes? 

! What code clashes are evident in the field (e.g. between policy-makers,

curriculum designers, textbook writers, teachers and learners? What are
the implications of these clashes?

LCT specialisation codes can be further analysed into ‘insights’ and ‘lenses’,
offering increasingly delicate discriminations within, as well as between



Jackson: Knowledge and knowers. . .         137

codes. Space constraints, however, do not permit elaboration of these here –
Chapter 9 explicates these distinctions.

A further key concern for Maton is the question of what constitutes, and
promotes, cumulative theorising and learning, as opposed to segmented
thinking. This is deeply linked to Bernstein’s suggestive model of ‘horizontal’
and ‘vertical’ discourses (2000). Horizontal discourses are those of everyday,
informal knowledge. Vertical discourses are those of specialised, systematic,
formalised knowledge. Within vertical discourses, Bernstein then identified
two types of knowledge structures. Hierarchical knowledge structures
comprise hierarchically organised knowledge systems with clearly principled
knowledge, coherently structured and systematically integrated. Horizontal
knowledge structures consist of numerous specialised languages, each with
specific criteria for specialised modes of analysis. These operate from
different assumptions and are segmented from each other. Maton focuses here
on developing Bernstein’s model to be useful in the field of reproduction. He
asks how educational knowledge can facilitate cumulative learning (that is,
greater conceptual hierarchisation) as opposed to segmented learning. He
argues that segmentalism

[comprising] ‘a series of discrete ideas or skills rather than cumulatively building on
previously encountered knowledge’. . . ‘can constrain students’ capacities to extend and
integrate their past experiences and apply their understandings to new contexts, such as
later studies, everyday lives or future work’ (2014, p.107). 

Cumulative learning enables transfer of knowledge between contexts and
through time, while segmented learning often restricts transfer, leaving
learners with knowledge locked within the ‘semantic gravity well’ of
particular contexts. Maton proposes the notions of cumulative learning,
semantic gravity and semantic density as key tools to articulate the underlying
organising principles enabling understanding of what makes discourses
horizontal or vertical, or a knowledge structure horizontal or hierarchical.

Semantic gravity refers to the degree to which the meaning of practices relates
to their contexts. Maton elaborates:

This semantic gravity may be relatively stronger or weaker along a continuum. When
semantic gravity is stronger, meaning is more closely related to its social or symbolic
context of acquisition or use; when it is weaker, meaning is less dependent on its context.
One can also describe processes of strengthening semantic gravity, such as moving from
abstract or generalized ideas towards concrete and delimited cases, and weakening semantic
gravity; such as moving from the concrete particulars of a specific case towards



138        Journal of Education, No. 59, 2014

generalizations and abstractions whose meanings are less dependent on that context (2014,
p.110).

Broadly, then, semantic gravity involves degrees of abstraction and
concretisation. A key issue is determining exactly what is meant by ‘context’
in order to establish degrees of dependence/independence of context. Maton
does not directly tease out this issue, but elaborates via two case studies. The
first investigated a Masters level task where instructional designers of
learning resources had to analyse case studies of actual projects, drawing
connections to literature in the field and their own design experiences along
with identifying ‘major project management issues’ in instructional design. A
study specific external language of description of varying levels of abstraction
in student responses was developed for the analysis. So, here, contextual
independence refers to students detaching themselves from the particulars of
their own professional experience, and the specificities of provided case
studies. That is they were expected to distance themselves from specific social
contexts of experience. Greater abstraction from context was also linked with
students’ capacity to draw out generalised insights about, and principles for,
instructional design. The study showed how few students were able to do this,
and posits the absence of scaffolded models of the required weakened
semantic gravity to guide students as one reason for the paucity of
decontextualisation in student responses to the task.

The second case study looks at a thematic unit of study in school English, for
the New South Wales Higher School Certificate. Students had to study a
variety of texts under the theme The Journey, and write an integrative answer
exploring how much studying the “concept of imaginative journeys expanded
your understanding of yourself, of individuals and of the world” (2014,
p.117). Maton characterises this task as aiming to weaken semantic gravity by
pointing students to engagement with broader literary principles applicable to
multiple texts. Analysis of a high and low achieving essay revealed very
different profiles. The high essay moved from relatively weak semantic
gravity (generalising with a literary gaze) down to particularities of individual
texts, then upwards again to more abstract concepts. This builds a semantic
gravity wave through the essay, propelled by a cultivated knower code (2014,
p.119). The student presents her insights filtered and altered through a literary
gaze. By contrast the low essay shows a ‘flat’ profile of much stronger
semantic gravity and narrower range. The essay is segmentally structured with
strongly bounded discussion of each text. Stronger semantic gravity is
expressed through localised discussion of each text along with a personalised



Jackson: Knowledge and knowers. . .         139

gaze where the writer directly links her subjective experiences to discrete
items in the texts. ‘Context’ here is thus construed both as the life and
personal experience of the writer and the particulars of individual written
texts encountered. Meaning independent of context is implied to be that
which is applicable both to those ‘originating’ contexts, and other linked, but
putative contexts; thus generalised meaning projected into an idealised
literary domain. This involves linguistic realisations of such abstractions in a
depersonalised written register. The nature of the links between forms of
detachment from social and symbolic contexts, and forms of linguistic
realisation of these, remains a key area to be researched. Fruitful ongoing
collaboration between Systemic Functional Linguistic scholars and LCT
scholars are opening up this area productively (see, for example Maton &
Doran, forthcoming; Maton, Martin and Matruglio, in press, 2014; Martin,
2011, Martin, 2014).

The concept of semantic gravity invites consideration against Cummins’
earlier concepts of Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) and
Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALPS) (1991), and his later
extension of these into his matrix with two intersecting continua – the first
being Contextually Embedded/Decontextualised Language, and the second
being Cognitively Demanding/Cognitively Undemanding Tasks (2009, 2013).
These were developed for the specific purpose of understanding the situation
and educational needs of immigrant children having to learn through the
medium of a new language while developing bilingual proficiency. Cummins
proposed that such learners mastered everyday language (BICS) up to three
years sooner than they mastered CALPS in their new language. In LCT terms
BICS could be related to knower structures, while CALPS could be linked to
knowledge structures. However, they are not knower/knowledge discourses in
themselves, but communicative resources deployed to effect communication
within knower and knowledge structures. Cummins’ matrix enables finer,
non-dichotomised distinctions than possible just with the BICS/CALPS
division. For example, two teenagers conversing casually via smses are
engaged in relatively context-reduced (in terms of the channel of
communication), but probably cognitively undemanding communication. Two
academics fiercely debating the merits of code theory versus field theory over
a beer in a pub are engaging in relatively communicatively context embedded,
but cognitively demanding communication. ‘Context’ here comprises mostly
the extra-linguistic dimensions of communication. So context-embedded
language is that where meaning is carried para- and non-linguistically, as well
as linguistically, and interlocutors have recourse to immediate negotiation and



140        Journal of Education, No. 59, 2014

re-negotiation of the meanings being constructed. Context-reduced language
is that where the language itself carries most of the communicative meaning,
so requiring high levels of linguistic explicitness. ‘Cognitive demand’, for
Cummins, refers to the extent to which the linguistic tools required for a task
have been deeply internalised and automatised. Cummins is thus not
explicitly teasing out variations of conceptual abstraction and demand.
However, working with such an understanding of a ‘cognitive demand’
continuum could provide a helpful matrix for educators and materials
designers.

Cummins’ model was strongly critiqued, amongst other reasons, for its
inadequate linguistic conceptualisation of CALPS. In responding to the
criticisms, he cited the work of Biber (1986), and Gibbons and Lascar (1998)
as providing sound linguistic evidence for the existence of academic registers
involving varieties of ‘distanced’ language. Gibbons and Lascar, drawing
upon SFLs Mode parameter, concluded: “Register is a product of the
relationship between the linguistic systems and the contexts of their use.”
(1998, p.41). This debate points back to the long vexed question of how to
understand the inter-relationship between conceptual structures, cognitive
processes, their realisations within linguistic structures, and their relationships
to situational and social factors.

While there is overlap between the concepts of semantic gravity and CALPS
they cannot be conflated, in part because they exist to do different things.
Semantic gravity, as part of LCT, sets out to theorise social practices of
people, beyond the needs of bilingual learners and education, and, in
principle, beyond education itself. It focuses upon conceptual
decontextualisation, that is, processes of knowledge abstraction. Cummins
focuses primarily upon issues of communicative contextualisation/
decontextualisation. However, consideration of the prior debates around the
intricacies of unravelling the linguistic/cognitive/pedagogic interface of
register variation illuminates the work still to be done in establishing the
precise nature of semantic gravity continua in diverse educational fields and
processes of knowledge building, and their linguistic realisations. As part of
an ongoing dialogue between LCT and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)
scholars, Martin and Matruglio (2013) are re-exploring the SFL concept of
Mode in the light of Maton’s proposals regarding semantic gravity and
highlighting the linguistic complexity that must be recognised and worked
with. What LCT’s semantic plane offers educational researchers is an
analytical toolkit providing a pedagogically focussed way into the intricacies



Jackson: Knowledge and knowers. . .         141

of educational practices. The resultant insights may then highlight linguistic
aspects of these situations that need additional close research attention,
enabling strategic, targeted application of the most salient aspects of dense
linguistic theory for pedagogically focused problems.

In close juxtaposition with semantic gravity, Maton proposes the notion of
semantic density which

refers to the degree of condensation of meaning within socio-cultural practices (symbols,
terms, concepts, phrases, expressions, gestures, actions, clothing, etc.). . .The stronger the
semantic density (SD+), the more meanings are condensed within practices; the weaker the
semantic density (SD-) the less meanings are condensed. The strength of semantic density
of a practice or symbol relates to the semantic structure in which it is located’ (p.129).

For example, the word ‘world’ can be more or less semantically dense
depending on its semantic location. It is relatively less semantically dense in
the question ‘Where in the world is Waldo?’ in the Where’s Waldo?
children’s books where the reader has to hunt for Waldo in complex,
crammed double-page pictures. It is relatively more semantically dense in the
opening line of Wordsworth’s sonnet The World Is Too Much With Us: “The
world is too much with us; late and soon. . . .” While the former instance
indexes geographical (and pictorial location), the latter invokes an associative
network of worldliness, materialism and consumerism as societal burdens.
‘World’ in geography could condense many more meanings, and invoke a
complex network of conceptual relations, including the whole earth and its:

! peoples,
! surface features (geomorphology) – mountains, ravines, oceans, lakes,

volcanoes, caves; (ecosystems) – savannah, alpine, riverine, tropical;
! atmospheric features – gases.

Again, LCT focuses on possibilities of nuanced tracking of shifts in semantic
gravity and semantic density, through pedagogic processes and artifacts, as
well as in intellectual theories. Each principle is presented as a continuum,
which, when juxtaposed in intersection with each other, generates a semantic
plane, enabling a basis for both ‘typologising practices’ and ‘topologically
exploring differences within types and dynamic processes of strengthening
and weakening (SG89, SD89) as presented in Figure 5.



142        Journal of Education, No. 59, 2014

Figure 5: Semantic Plane

Combining semantic density and semantic gravity as analytic tools permits the
tracking of shifts in the nature and coherence of pedagogic discourse over
time, using notions of semantic waves, and degrees of semantic flow
(Matruglio, Maton and Martin, 2013).

Key issues for ongoing research include establishing to what extent, and in
what ways, semantic waves promote cumulative learning in different
disciplines. Building cumulative knowledge of where, and what forms of,
semantic waving are highly valued across, and within, disciplines is
important. Establishing profiles of teachers/learners in terms of semantic
waving and how these relate to learner achievements could also be
productive. However, these developments are just alluded to within this book.
Maton points to LCT being deployed in praxis (Martin and Maton, 2013) and,
he says, this is “stimulating new ways of realising LCT through what can be
termed external languages of enactment ”(2014, p.209) such as a project in
secondary schools explicating the notion and pedagogic salience of semantic
waves to teachers. Clarence recently investigated the presence, absence and
nature of semantic waving and its role in cumulative learning in humanities
tertiary education (2014).

Numerous other aspects of the book, merit close attention, most notably
Maton’s exposition of cosmologies, that is “how belief systems… underlie the
ways actors select and arrange clusters and constellations of stances that, in
turn, shape what is viewed as possible and legitimate within a field” (2014,
p.149), along with his concepts of axiological and epistemological
condensation. Another key area is his refinement of the ideas of epistemic



Jackson: Knowledge and knowers. . .         143

relations and social relations to account for ‘minor differences’ within each
category that he argues have ‘major effects’ (2014). These are well worth
engaging with and offer fertile insights and tools that could be productively
deployed to explore issues, such as shifts within specific disciplines and how
certain concepts, theories and pedagogical approaches gain ascendancy and
others do not.

Knowledge and Knowers is lucid, generous and written with elegance and
conviction. While LCT focuses broadly on social practices, and on the nature
and effects of knowledge in particular, the dominant focus of Knowledge and
Knowers is on knower structures. Maton deftly fuses insights from Bourdieu
and Bernstein in setting out a cogent theory of knowledge and knowers. A key
contribution is the richness and flexibility of the toolset, with demonstrated
analytic power in researching educational practices across an array of levels
and contexts. While Maton’s contribution is substantial and insightful in his
capacity to draw together salient aspects of diverse theoretical traditions, and
to tilt at the windmills of inadequate educational research, he is also quick to
acknowledge and point to the collective contributions of many other scholars
to the growth of LCT. Knowledge and Knowers is provocative, thought-
inducing and generative; offering a powerful, multi-faceted array of analytical
tools to the project of cumulative knowledge building in the field of
educational research.



144        Journal of Education, No. 59, 2014

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146        Journal of Education, No. 59, 2014

Fiona Jackson
School of Arts
University of KwaZulu-Natal

fjackson@ukzn.ac.za

mailto:jacksonf@ukzn.ac.za