Chapter 2: Interpreting children’s drawings from a social semiotics perspective

Chapter overview:

This chapter considers the use of social semiotics in an interpretative theoretical framework to understand meaning-making in children’s drawings. Examining aspects of multimodality, sign-making, and meaning-making, we explore the theoretical principles underpinning multimodal communication. We then focus our discussion on how children, as sign-makers and meaning-makers, use modes to create meaning. Emphasising the equal importance of all modes for meaning-making, we highlight transformative and translational dynamics that occur when modes interact. We conclude the chapter by discussing sign-making as a social, meaning-making process.