Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Gender Stereotypes In Illustrations In Preschool Children’s Picture Books

Children’s picture books play a crucial role in the shaping of children’s gender perceptions and socialization.Although many researchers have committed themselves to the gender issues in the children’s picture books,few of them have attended to the gender stereotypes in the illustrations.In a few studies exploring gender stereotypes in visual images,they fail to present a thorough visual analysis for most of them focus on one or two layers of meaning in visual grammar.To fill the gap,the study aims to examine whether males and females are stereotyped in illustrations in preschool children’s picture books.The research data are sampled form eighteen Chinese children’s picture books which are from six national first-class publishing houses.The current study draws upon three layers of meaning in visual grammar proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen(2006)as the theoretical framework,exploring whether males and females are visually represented and whether there are gender stereotypes.The findings of the research are as follows:(1)The analysis of transitivity processes suggests that gender-stereotyped behaviors dominate children’s picture books.When females act as actors,goals are always children and housework activities,which foregrounds their dominant roles for childcare and household chores.Male actors have few opportunities to take care of children and do the housework and even when they do participate in these activities,a clear gender division of labor is shown.Such depiction is consistent with the traditional gender stereotype,breadwinning men and homemaking women;(2)The investigation of interactional meaning and compositional meaning shows that personality traits of males and females depicted in these picture books are suffused with gender stereotypes.Males are portrayed as active,powerful,significant,superior and strong,whereas women as passive,insignificant,powerless,caring for physical appearance,inferior and weak.The study presents a relatively thorough visual analysis based on visual grammar theory and can provide reference for further studies.Besides,the study contributes to improving the gender awareness of readers,especially parents and book producers,helping them better choose picture books for children so that children can grow up under a healthy gender perception.