Knowledge-building in EMI STEM lectures: A constellation and sequencing analysis

• Lecturer discourse in EMI builds disciplinary knowledge, not just delivers content. • Constellation analysis and sequencing show how EMI lecturers chart knowledge pathways. • Signalling base clusters in lecturer talk can support later knowledge assembly. • EC- moves stabilise terms for recall while EC+ moves condense disciplinary knowledge. • Transporter ‘pressure points’ show where EMI language support is needed. This study examines how a lecturer in an online English-medium instruction (EMI) setting navigates the complexity of presenting the MATLAB programming environment to undergraduate aeronautical engineering students. While much EMI research focuses on linguistic challenges, this paper turns attention to the structuring of disciplinary knowledge in teacher discourse. Drawing on Legitimation Code Theory (LCT), the analysis uses two complementary tools: constellations and sequencing. Constellation analysis shows how sets of ideas, practices, or stances are selected from a broader semantic field and arranged into a particular pattern. The sequencing tool examines how short passages of discourse are combined into longer, cumulative sequences that enable knowledge-building. Together, these tools are used to show how the lecturer organises and layers complex meanings relating to the MATLAB environment across extended discourse. The analysis indicates that the lecturer adopts an aggregating strategy, clustering related ideas around key terms or categories rather than linking them through linear assembling sequences. This approach is enacted through sequencing moves, most notably cumulative sequencing, which condenses and integrates dispersed meanings into progressively stronger knowledge, in contrast to segmental sequencing, which partitions ideas without cumulative integration. The paper highlights how sequencing choices shape the pedagogic trajectory through a constellation of meanings, and how these strategies contribute to making complex disciplinary knowledge more accessible to students in EMI settings