scholarly journals Children’s ‘eye views’ of an archaeological site: A multimodal social semiotic approach to children’s drawings

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 334-351 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sophia Diamantopoulou ◽  
Dimitra Christidou
Keyword(s):  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Educational Programme ◽  
Children's Drawings ◽  
Children’S Drawings ◽  
Semiotic Approach ◽  
Educational Task ◽  
Semiotic Perspective ◽  
Embodied Engagement

This paper presents eight-year-old children's ‘eye views’ of the archaeological site of the Agora in Athens, Greece, based on drawings made during an educational programme on site. Complementing a significant body of research on drawings, we introduce a multimodal social semiotic perspective to explore drawings as ‘designed’ accounts of children’s ‘eye views’. We argue that each account arises as an agentive response to their interests and prompts in the environment framing their experience, such as features of the site and the educational programme. Based on four drawings, we identify salient elements of children’s experience in their representations which we analyze as material realizations of (i) their interests and agency, (ii) their visual and embodied engagement with the archaeological site, and (iii) the framing of the educational task and overall programme. Our findings contribute to research on the importance of visual in learning.

scholarly journals Engaging with children's graphic ensembles of an archaeological site: A multi-modal social semiotic approach to learning

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (41) ◽  
pp. 81
Author(s):  
Sophia Diamantopoulou
Keyword(s):  
Learning Experience ◽  
Archaeological Site ◽  
Social Semiotics ◽  
Approach To Learning ◽  
Children’S Learning ◽  
Heritage Site ◽  
Semiotic Approach ◽  
Semiotic Perspective ◽  
Interpretative Framework ◽  
Children's Learning

Children’s drawings have been widely used in the field of museum education as indicators for learning, as well as means for evaluating the teaching that takes place in a museum or a heritage site. This paper employs social semiotics and multimodality as tools for introducing a different perspective when it comes to building a descriptive and an interpretative framework for analysing children’s production, as representative of their learning. The insight into their work is based on the assumptions that learning can be multi-modally mediated through a particular pedagogy and further be made accessible to us through the material realisation of children’s production across multiple modes. The paper aims to explore the implications of this position for generating knowledge about children’s learning. The main argument discussed here is that engaging with a child’s graphic ensemble through a multimodal and social semiotic perspective can enable us, hypothetically, to recover children’s meanings about the archaeological site as well as the aspects of their overall learning experience. Viewing their graphic ensembles as constructions that are interest driven and multi-modally realized could open up more possibilities for accessing the agendas and interests that guide their learning. The paper further uses this visual material as an opportunity to argue that when engaging with children’s learning, multimodality can work not as a theory on its own means, but as the framework that conditions a theory (e.g. social semiotics and discourse) into a direction of encompassing more possibilities for reading their understanding of the world.

Depicting emotions for a male or for a female audience: Do children adapt the content of their drawings to the audience gender?

2021 ◽  
pp. 016502542110316
Author(s):  
Claire Brechet ◽  
Sara Creissen ◽  
Lucie D’Audigier ◽  
Nathalie Vendeville
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Contextual Cues ◽  
Children's Drawings ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Facial Cues ◽  
Audience Control ◽  
Children’S Drawings ◽  
Explicit Mention ◽  
Female Audience ◽  
Therapeutic Settings

When depicting emotions, children have been shown to alter the content of their drawings (e.g., number and types of expressive cues) depending on the characteristics of the audience (i.e., age, familiarity, and authority). However, no study has yet investigated the influence of the audience gender on children’s depiction of emotions in their drawings. This study examined whether drawing for a male versus for a female audience have an impact on the number and type of emotional information children use to depict sadness, anger, and fear. Children aged 7 ( N = 92) and 9 ( N = 126) were asked to draw a figure and then to produce three drawings of a person, to depict three emotions (sadness, anger, fear). Children were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions: they were instructed either to draw with no explicit mention of an audience (control condition) or to draw so that the depicted emotion would be recognized by a male (male audience condition) or by a female (female audience condition). A content analysis was conducted on children’s drawings, revealing the use of seven types of graphic cues for each emotion. We found numerous differences between the three conditions relative to the type of cues used by children to depict emotions, particularly for anger and fear and particularly at the age of 7. Overall, children used facial cues more frequently for a female audience and contextual cues more frequently for a male audience. These results are discussed in terms of their implications in clinical, educational, and therapeutic settings.

scholarly journals White men and electric guns: Analysing the Amazonian dystopia through Shipibo-Konibo children’s drawings

2021 ◽  
pp. 204361062199583
Author(s):  
Thaís de Carvalho
Keyword(s):  
White Men ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Children's Drawings ◽  
Children’S Drawings ◽  
Racial Dynamics ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Andean Countries ◽  
The Village ◽  
Dual Capacity

In Andean countries, the pishtaco is understood as a White-looking man that steals Indigenous people’s organs for money. In contemporary Amazonia, the Shipibo-Konibo people describe the pishtaco as a high-tech murderer, equipped with a sophisticated laser gun that injects electricity inside a victim’s body. This paper looks at this dystopia through Shipibo-Konibo children’s drawings, presenting composite sketches of the pishtaco and maps of the village before and after an attack. Children portrayed White men with syringes and electric guns as weaponry, while discussing whether organ traffickers could also be mestizos nowadays. Meanwhile, the comparison of children’s maps before and after the attack reveals that lit lampposts are paradoxically perceived as a protection at night. The paper examines changing features of pishtacos and the dual capacity of electricity present in children’s drawings. It argues that children know about shifting racial dynamics in the village’s history and recognise development’s oxymoron: the same electricity that can be a weapon is also used as a shield.

Visual affect in films: a semiotic approach

Semiotica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 (239) ◽  
pp. 99-124
Author(s):  
Yi Jing
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Visual Media ◽  
Meaning Potential ◽  
Action Film ◽  
Semiotic Approach ◽  
Semiotic Perspective ◽  
Affective Meanings ◽  
Live Action

Abstract This study investigates affective meanings expressed in facial expressions and bodily gestures from a semiotic perspective. Particularly, the study focuses on disentangling relations of affective meanings and exploring the meaning potential of facial expressions and bodily gestures. Based on the analysis of over three hundred screenshots from two films (one animation and one live-action film), this study proposes a system of visual affect, as well as a system of visual resources involved in the expression of visual affect. The system of visual affect makes a further step in the investigation of affective meanings afforded by facial expressions and bodily gestures, and can provide methodological insights into the examination of affective meanings expressed visually. The system of visual resources provides a more meaning-motivated framework for systematic tracking of the visual resources, which may be applied to the analysis of other visual media apart from films.

The Usefulness of Children's Drawings in the Diagnosis of Headache

PEDIATRICS ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 109 (3) ◽  
pp. 460-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. E. Stafstrom ◽  
K. Rostasy ◽  
A. Minster
Keyword(s):  
Children's Drawings ◽  
Children’S Drawings
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