A Social Semiotic Approach to Childrenʼs Books: Focus on Persian Book of the First Grade of Primary School

Abstract

This study uses the framework of social semiotics of images proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen. In their visual grammar, the terms representational, interactive, and compositional, correspond, respectively, to Halliday’s terms ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions. 20 images of the Farsi book of the grade one were analyzed within the framework of the social semiotics of Kress and van Leeuwen. Analysing the ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions, the pictures demonstate and convey the dominant Iranian cultural patterns to children. In the images of this book human participants are presented more than non-human ones. All the represented participants are the normal members of society busy with usual occupations and daily choirs. Represented things are simple, without luxury and far from the modern technology. This, in fact, decreases the realism of the images. Additionally, the analysis shows that gender stereotyping and bias are widely shown and conveyed in the pictures. That is, men and boys are shown in various occasions with higher frequency.

Keywords

• social semiotics
• grammar of images
• representational meaning
• interactive meaning
• compositional meaning