Semiotic analysis of student works in the scope of visual arts lesson

The purpose of this research is to determine what kind of characteristics the student painting works analyzed with the semiotic analysis method have according to the socio-economic level and gender variable. This research was carried out with mixed research method. The work group of the research consists of 36 students studying at Halide Edip Adıvar Secondary School and Polis Amca Secondary School in the province of Ankara in the 2022-2023 academic year. The data of the research were collected through the painting application, semi-structured interview and a questionnaire created by the researcher to determine the socio-economic levels of the students. The interview data were recorded using a voice recorder. For the analysis of the data, Peirce's "image sign, symptom, symbol" schema, Barthes' "denotation and connotation" schema and Saussure's "sign, signifier, signified" schema were used. The students carried out two painting works on "nature" and "road" topics. As a result of the research; In the works on the road theme, it was concluded that the students at the lower socio-economic level used more visual indicators and symptoms, while the students at the higher socio-economic level used more symbols. On the other hand, as a result of the analysis of the works on the road made according to the "denotation and connotation" scheme; It has been determined that the students at the lower socio-economic level use more denotation, while the students at the upper socio-economic level use more connotations. As a matter of fact, in works on nature topic, it has been concluded that students from lower and upper socio-economic levels use indicator types, denotation and connotation at a close rate. In addition, in the works examined according to the gender variable, it was seen that the indicators used by the students were close to each other. In the analysis of the students' works according to the "signifier, signifier, signified" scheme, it was understood that there were differences according to the socio-economic level and gender variable.