Search

VISUAL SEMIOSIS IN THE CHILD’S PAINTING ACTIVITY // ΠΡΑΞΗMΑ. Journal of Visual Semiotics. 2021. Issue 2 (28). P. 63-80

Among the multiple examples of visual semiosis in culture, particular attention is paid to painted (or drawn) objects such as pictures, book illustrations, separate items and some compositions in design and ads. There is a lot of evidence to recognize painting as the means of communication in the cultural space and as a visual language. Still, it should be noted that, from a semiotic perspective, painting has been discussed less than writing in literature. The question “What should be recognized as a sign in a painted object?” is still open. The issues of the main semiotic features of the visual sign, its structure and semantic components, as well as its pragmatic meaning are still debatable. In the current study, visual semiosis development is the main topic of discussion. The theoretical background of this study includes the culture-historical theory of Lev Vygotsky, the culture semiosphere concept of Yuri Lotman, and some conceptual arguments about the visual semiosis stated by Charles Sanders Peirce, Roland Barthes, and Winfried Nöth. In children’s subculture, painting is a highly attractive and frequent activity. There is a plenty of evidence that children’s painting activity is usually communicatively oriented, and this is an essential point of the pragmatics of visual semiosis. Following Lotman, the authors divide children’s visual communication into the Self-Other and I-I types. Visual communication is highly represented in both of them. In fact, the given communication types are relevant to personal and cross-cultural communication. The latter one means a dialogue between the child and the adult culture. The current study is based on multiple research publications about the development of children’s pictorial language and on the authors’ own data. The study addresses the genesis of structural, semantic, and pragmatic features of the visual sign. From the perspective of the modern neuroscience studies, the authors discuss the extent of the imaginative and objective iconicity of visual signs. From the perspective of the semantics of visual sign analysis, the authors discuss the relation between separate elements of the visual sign and the relevant semantic features; the visual sign is recognized as a syntactic unit. The comparative analysis of the data of Russian and other cultures reveals many similar features of visual signs. To sum up, the authors suggest the concept of the triple nature of children’s painting activity semiosis; on the one hand, it is a derivation of the adult culture; on the other, it is a product of children’s subculture; finally, it is a language for a dialogue with the adult culture.

Keywords: painting activity, children, communication, self-communication, visual semiosis, children’s subculture