Based on the results from a Swedish research project, this paper investigates young children's meaning-making in relation to moving images in a preschool context. The specific focus of the paper is to look at if – and how – two year-old children can be said to make meaning during the screening of a series of short animated films at their preschools. What kind of meanings are made and how are they communicated by the children? How do the films become resources for childrens meaning making and to what extent can social interaction with peers and preschool teachers be said to influence childrens meaning making during the screening of the films? The results presented are based on analyses of both interaction in front of the TV screen and of the animated films.

The theoretical framework is based on a social semiotic (Hodge & Kress, 1988; Kress, 2003; van Leeuwen, 2005) and multimodal (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001; Jewitt, 2009) approach, which implies a view of communication and representation as a social process of signmaking. Both theories are united in a common interest in understanding how people communicate and make meanings with a wide range of resources, or modes. Semiotic resources are used both to produce and interpret texts, in the same way as signs are made both externally and internally. The analyses of both interaction and of the animated films were guided by the theoretical assumptiom that all texts simultaneously construct different types of meanings through three metafunctions (Jewitt & Oyama, 2001; Iedema, 2001; van Leeuwen, 2005). They represent some aspect of the world (the ideational metafunction); represent and construct relations between represented and interactive participants (the interpersonal metafunction); and are organised as coherent texts (the textual metafunction). Meanings are made through the use of various modes in relation to these different aspects.

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