How binding and bonding communicate interpersonal meanings in a children’s museum to address Jordan’s energy and water challenges

Bibliographic Data

ID10739744
AuthorsAhmad El-Sharif (0000-0002-7567-5147, Al al-Bayt University , Mafraq , Jordan, corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume2023
Issue250
Pages43-66
Publication date2023-03-28
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSemiotica (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0037-1998 • E-ISSN: 1613-3692
PublisherWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/sem-2022-0019
OpenAlexW4317697488
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited17

Museums’ structures, spaces, and exhibits are understood as semiotic resources that make spatial texts that communicate a discourse defined by the authorities of the museum or its curators. The current study follows a social-semiotic approach in analyzing the spatial discourse of the Children’s Museum in Amman. It demonstrates that interpersonal meanings are semiotically communicated to children visitors in the Museum by firstly establishing a “comfort-zone” and secondly by aligning children visitors into groups with shared qualities, attitudes, and dispositions of affiliation and solidarity, and thirdly by providing abstract and material representations of the real world that encompasses participants, processes, events, and places. These interpersonal meanings produce a pedagogical discourse that semiotically addresses Jordan’s energy and water challenges, and that can “charge” the Museum’s role as a “Bonding Icon” that stands for shared communal ideals that Jordanians might identify with, or rally around

Aesthetics · Art · Icon · Interpersonal communication · Interpersonal relationship · Linguistics · Political science · Semiotics · Sociology · Solidarity · Communication · Computer Science · Digital Storytelling and Education · Museums and Cultural Heritage · Philosophy · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Social Psychology

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