Meaning and representation of home: A reading through the visual and written data of the illustrated children's literature

Home is the first place that a human being feels related to with his entire body and soul. It is also the first place that one acquires the images that create the basis of many meanings about world. A child gains his first experiences mostly visually. By bringing together many images, a prototype formed in the child's mind and every single image seen followingly is evaluated by comparing to this first prototype. The images acquired during the childhood years affect the child's adulthood and those images constitute the first representations of many notions. Despite that many studies in different disciplines like, psychological studies, cultural studies, morphological studies etc. have been conducted on home to investigate its meaning, there is no study made in the literature on how the meaning of home is created in the children's media. If it's thought that home is the first place subsequent to a child's body that he makes sense of the world by building relationships on it, and if it's known that the image of home is acquired through the children's media besides the child's own house; it is important to depicher the meaning of home through the children's media to understand how the home space is represented and formed in children's minds. The research is intended to be done with the idea that the written and the visual representations in the children's media are very influential for children in the formation of meaning and image of home. By examining the signs that pictures and texts in children's literature and children's magazines create, it is aimed to read the sub-meanings of the house and to reveal how home is represented through this media. In this context; children's picture books, picture book series and children's magazines are aimed to be analyzed by using semiotic narration. Under these sub-headings, books that are still being published and books that are from the most popular sources of their period are chosen. By using a semiological method, the meaning of home in these books is aimed to be depichered. This study consists of 5 main parts. In the introductory chapter; purpose, content, and the method of the study are mentioned. The second part of the study focuses on the concepts of image of home and children. In this chapter; theories on the meaning of home, changes and innovation of home over the centruies, and a child's process of interpretation and meaning formation on home are discussed. In the third part, the concepts of media and representation are handled, and the relationship between popular culture, children's media and semiology, which constitute the theoretical base of the thesis, is tried to be established. In the fourth chapter, a brief information about the visual children's literature is given. Then from the children's picture series; "Ayşegül", "Ece & Yüce" and "Berenstain Ayı Ailesi", from the children's picture books; "Where The Wild Things Are", "Goodnight Moon", "Ira Sleeps Over", and "Bedtime For Frances" and from Turkish children's magazine; "Çocuk Haftası", "Doğan Kardeş", "Milliyet Çocuk", and "Hürriyet Çocuk" are examined. The foreigners of the selected series are the most popular and read publications of their periods and their translations are published in many different countries. The picture books that are chosen are among the most popular hundred children's book in 20th. century all over the world. The reason for the selection of the magazines is their long-term nature of the publishing periods and their wide range of contents. In the last part of this study, the thesis is finalized with a brief discussion on the data obtained as a result.