This study focuses on analysing Mexican children’s representations of death inasmuch as children are perceived as social actors that have an active role in constructing and giving meaning to social reality. The importance of analysing children’s representations about death is that it provides an opportunity to know how children give meaning to a notion that intersects with personal experiences, emotions, religious beliefs, and a sociocultural context. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyse, visually and verbally, the ways in which children - from 8 to 9 years of age - in a Mexican primary school represent their understanding of death through their drawings and their oral descriptions of them, which may unveil their opinions on the subject. The research material consists of the drawings and interviews of primary school children in Mexico. The girls and boys, who were in third grade, were selected from a school population based on a convenience sampling (Bryman 2016, p.187). The method of analysis is a combination of thematic analysis and Rose’s visual discourse analysis I. The main findings are that the participants represented their understanding of death in terms of realistic, fantastic and afterlife narratives according to their experiences. Most of the participants’ visions of death were represented with archetypal symbols of death, such as death personified. Contrary, the representations of the few participants who had a personal loss were realistic, except for one of them. In this sense, children’s representations of death draw on discourses imbued in visual media, religion, morality, and culture. Children's emotions about death varied according to their experiences, although most participants said that they do not fear death. Regarding life after death, most participants recognize a duality between body and soul. While the body dies, the soul lives and the place where the soul goes was perceived mainly in moralistic terms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:liu-152774 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Téllez Duval, Dulce Karenina |
| Publisher | Linköpings universitet, Tema Barn |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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