Book: A Multimodal Analysis of Picture Books for Children

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Title: A Multimodal Analysis of Picture Books for Children
Subtitle: A Systemic Functional Approach
Series Title: Discussions in Functional Approaches to Language

Publication Year: 2014
Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd
http://www.equinoxpub.com/

Book URL: https://www.equinoxpub.com/equinox/books/showbook.asp?bkid=553&keyword=multimodal

Author: Arsenio Jesus Moya Guijarro

Hardback: ISBN:  9781908049773 Pages: 316 Price: U.S. $ 100 Comment: £70
Paperback: ISBN:  9781908049780 Pages: 316 Price: U.S. $ 37.95 Comment: £24.99

Abstract:

A Multimodal Analysis of Picture Books for Children goes beyond the relation
between the representation of reality and language alone; instead, it aims to
analyze the intersemiosis between verbal and visual elements in a sample of
nine picture books. The chapters included in this book take the most relevant
systemic-functional and visual social semiotic theories a step further from
previous studies and apply them to the genre of children’s tales. Within the
frameworks of Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics and Kress and van
Leeuwen’s Visual Social Semiotics, the aim is to identify the verbal and
visual strategies available to the writer and illustrator (i) to convey
representational meanings, (ii) to set up interpersonal relationships within
the tale itself, as well as external relationships between writer and reader
and, finally, (iii) to create coherent tales. This is achieved by analyzing
and identifying the ideational, interpersonal and textual choices available to
the writer to make meaning in picture books, and comparing them with the
corresponding representational, interactive and compositional choices made by
the illustrator. The analysis reveals how the verbal and visual modalities
contribute to each other’s meaning and makes the potential of combining verbal
and non-verbal language in picture books evident.

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