‘We’re just gonna scribble it’: The affective and social work of destruction in children’s art-making with different semiotic resources

Abstract

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Semiotics of destruction: traces on the environment

“…Sakr (2017: 228) explores children’s destruction of their own artwork in order to develop an understanding of ‘the work that destruction can do, and the impact of different semiotic resources on destruction’. She looks at the materialities of destruction, ‘the physical actions that constitute destruction and the “stuff” that gets destroyed’.…”

“…From a social semiotic perspective, actions are judged as meaningful according to the impact they have on unfolding interactions between people (Kress, 2010; Van Leeuwen, 2005). According to this approach, destruction can be seen to be ‘as meaningful as an act that would typically be seen as creative or productive’ (Sakr, 2017: 228). As such, we argue that semiotic acts of destruction deserve more attention from research in multimodality and semiotics.…”