图像符号与意义建构：一项城乡儿童读图的民族志研究

Visual Symbols and Meaning Making:Ethnography of Picture Reading of Rural and Urban Children

图像是儿童最早接触、最熟悉的符号系统。读图时代的图像符号更强有力地建构了儿童的意义系统,全球化时代共享的图像符号却可能造成意义的分化。为了揭示儿童的图像世界及其意义建构,通过挑选、整合英语教材插图和儿童绘本,形成家庭空间、礼物和亲情三个图画主题,对城市儿童、流动儿童、村小儿童三类群体进行了儿童读图的参与式观察。研究发现:图像在生活方式、感情表达和父亲角色三个方面不同程度地塑造了偏物质—消费、西方—城市的价值取向;儿童与全球化图像符号的距离与行政距离相似,城市儿童的认同度最高,流动儿童的压迫感最强,乡村儿童的解释保有能动性。

Visual symbol is the early-buih and most-familiar symbol system for children. In this era, visual symbols strongly construct children＇s meaning system, but the shared visual world in globalized era may end up with classification in meaning making. By selecting and integrating textbook pictures and picture books into three themes - ＂household space＂, ＂gift＂and ＂family＂ - the participant observations were carried in two field sites,one in Beijing and one in ethnic remote area of urban children,migrant children and rural children. This paper reveals that the dominant pictures shape meanings about life style, love expression and fatherhood in materialism-consumerism and western-urban value orientation;the distance to globalized visual symbol is similar to the distance to the political center, in which urban children share most identification ,migrant children are the most underpressure and rural children still holds agency in picture reading.