A semiotic and multimodal study on localizations and settings in picture books which challenge gender stereotypes

Abstract

This article aims to identify which visual strategies are available for writers and illustrators to promote a progressive gendered discourse at circumstantial level (representational metafunction). The picture books selected for analysis are The Paper Bag Princess by Robert Musch and Michael Martchenko, Piggybook by Anthony Browne and I’m a Girl by Yasmeen Ismail. All three promote social inclusion and equality and are written in or translated into English.  For our aim, we analyzed whether the female characters always appear in the same settings or whether the same degree of circumstantial information is maintained in successive illustrations, options which may lead to a variation in the characters’ social status.  Halliday’s (1978) and  Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) approach to social semiotics, later readapted for the study of picture books by Painter, Martin and Unsworth (2013), were the models used to carry out this research. The results of the analysis show that the female characters in the three picture books evolve from interior to exterior settings or to new locations, which lead to their emancipation and independence.