Abstract
Social semiotics is a branch of linguistics that has been taken up extensively in many fields across the arts, design and humanities. It is concerned with the meaning of signs and symbols within particular social contexts. The principles and methods of social semiotics have begun to be applied within technical fields such as the sciences, medicine and engineering. This paper argues that social semiotics offers potential for application in geotechnical engineering education. The paper identifies three key ways in which social semiotics can be of value in geotechnical engineering education. It does this through a mix of review and synthesis of extant literature, on the one hand, and through presentation of empirical data collected by the author, on the other. The three arguments presented are: 1) that social semiotic approaches offer potential for understanding specific disciplinary values and interests, 2) that it allows for ‘unpacking’ of disciplinary representations, and 3) that it may offer insight into student’s learning and/or misconceptions.