Mathematical discourse deploys three semiotic resources at the
same time ? language, symbolism and visual images. It is unique in how it
presents mathematical concepts and relations, which are mostly abstract
concepts. This paper analyses how these resources collaborate to explain
mathematical concepts to Primary 1 students in Singapore. As these
students are at the beginning level of learning mathematical concepts, the
textbook needs to concretize the abstract mathematical concepts. The data
analysis follows Systemic Functional ? Multimodal Discourse Analysis or
SF-MDA (O?Halloran, 2007). It is concluded that in the deployment of
those three semiotic resources, the mathematical speech functions and the
mathematical processes have been carefully and effectively selected as
seen from the intersemiosis to concretize those abstract mathematical
concepts for the young minds.