The representation of male characters in three challenging picture books: A multimodal study

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse how visual metonymies contribute to the challenging of gender stereotypes in a sample of three picture books. Multimodal social semiotic (Kress & van Leewen 2006, Painter, Martin & Unsworth 2013), and cognitive approaches (Forceville, 2009 and Pinar, 2015) have been adopted to carry out this research. The discourse functions of part/whole representations are determined by analysing how their source domains are projected onto their targets in the context where they are to be construed. The results reveal that metonymic representations are essentially used in the picture books featuring boys to ascribe negative qualities to characters, put the reader on the side of the main male characters and, finally, create expectations at important moments in the plot.

Keywords

• multimodality
• part-whole /metonymic representations
• picture books
• gender.