Semiotics of Toys and Games The Childhood Artefacts that Introduce Us to the World
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Theo van Leeuwen is Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Southern Denmark, Denmark.
Staffan Selander is Professor Emeritus in Education/Didactic Science at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Sweden.
<p>An intriguing look into children’s toys and games and the underlying views and ideologies <br />that inform them, their use and their rules.</p>
Arlene Archer, University of Cape Town, South Africa
Drawing on extensive research over more than two decades, this book focuses on toys and games as resources for play. It analyses their functionalities as well as their symbolic meaning potentials, exemplifying how they are used in different contexts, such as home and preschool, and how these uses are regulated by parental, pedagogic and marketing discourses.
Building on the work of semioticians such as Barthes, Baudrillard and Krampen, as well as on the social semiotics of Halliday, Hodge, Kress, and others, the book introduces a framework for the multimodal semiotic analysis of physical objects, and the ways in which they are digitally translated into words, images and sounds. It also introduces a multimodal framework with a focus on designs for and in learning. It then applies these frameworks to a range of toys and games for young children including teddy bears, dolls, construction toys, war toys and digital games. Throughout it shows how the toy and games industry contributes to changing the nature of childhood and the way children learn about the world.
Accessibly written, the book will not only be relevant to students and scholars of multimodality and semiotics, but also to early childhood educators and parents of young children.
List of Figures
Foreword
1. A Social Semiotic Approach to Toys as Resources for Learning
2. Baby Toys: The Alphabet of Objects
3. Teddy Bears: Affect in the Private and the Public Sphere
4. Small Worlds: The Imaginary Power of Miniatures
5. Barbie: Feminist Icon or Fashion Doll?
6. Building Toys: Elements of Construction and their Meaning
7. War Toys: Masculinity and the Politics of Warfare
8. Digitizing Children’s Stories: The Pedagogization of Enchantment
9. The Rules of Games and the Rules of Social Life
10. Conclusion: The Semiosphere of Toys and Games
Appendix: A Guide to the Semiotic Analysis of Objects
References
Index
Formerly Continuum Advances in Semiotics.
Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics publishes original works applying semiotic approaches to linguistics and non-verbal productions, social institutions and discourses, embodied cognition and communication, and the new virtual realities of the digital age. It covers topics such as socio-semiotics, evolutionary semiotics, game theory, cultural and literary studies, human-computer interactions, and the challenging new dimensions of human networking afforded by social websites.
Series Editor: Gregory Paschalidis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Editorial Board
Nicola Dusi, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
Zuanglin Hu, Peking University, Beijing
Yunhee Lee, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, China
Lambros Malafouris, University of Oxford, UK
Mihai Nadin, University of Texas at Dallas, USA
Kay O’Halloran, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Jef Verschueren, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Anne Wagner, Universite du Littoral Cote d’Opale, France
Ruth Wodak, Lancaster University, UK
Hiroshi Yoshioka, Kyoto University, Japan
Produktdetaljer
Biografisk notat
Theo van Leeuwen is Professor of Language and Communication at the University of Southern Denmark, Denmark.
Staffan Selander is Professor Emeritus in Education/Didactic Science at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Sweden.