ABSTRACT
“Semiotic work” (Kress, 2010b) is a powerful concept that encapsulates succinctly a theory of how people communicate. Valuing signs however they are made, and with a focus on agency, effort, and resourcefulness rather than acquisition, coded replication, and competence (Kress, 1997), this term has profound implications for how texts, text-making, and text-makers are approached and understood. Children’s investment of “work” can be readily demonstrated when they draw and write on a blank page, but what about when their representation is constrained by tightly stipulated requirements? Is semiotic work precluded, or does this theoretical notion hold irrespective of what is done? If, as Gunther Kress suggests, meaning-making is unremitting, then what is unremarkable, even unnoticed, in everyday, seemingly mundane text-making entails semiotic processes. Rather than dismissing the ordinary as “nothing of interest,” this approach demands that seriousness is given to whatever children do, however small, and however seemingly trifling. This chapter investigates the semiotic work of 6-year-olds completing a structured worksheet that entailed “just” gluing, colouring, a brief drawing, and copied writing.
