A Multimodal Analysis Of Family Relations In Children’s Picture Books:A Systemic Functional Perspective

Children’s picture books are receiving wide attention from parents and educators in China because they educate children on literacy,literature,and social values.As typical multimodal discourses,picture books naturally attract attention from researchers in linguistics.However,explorations of family relations in picture books are still insufficient among these studies.Concerning their significant role in real life,this research aims to determine the family relations constructed in children’s picture books with different cultural settings.The research involved six English awarding-winning picture books and six Chinese award-winning picture books as the data sources,which were analyzed in the software Nvivo 20.The approach of systemic functional multimodal discourse analysis was adopted.Concerning family relations refer to the interpersonal interactions that occur and the feelings that exist among family members,the Transitivity system,the Mood type system,the Process system,the Proximity,Orientation,and Ambience options were integrated as the analytical framework for this research.The research discovered ten family relations in terms of interaction,i.e.,caring,educating,accompanying,descending,cooperating,mutual supporting,being a unit,encouraging,mutual thinking,and understanding;and eleven family relations in terms of feelings,i.e.,loving/affectionate,intimate,authoritative,tolerant,thoughtful,yearning/longing,trust,approval,filial pious,grief,and identity/solidarity.In terms of their distribution,the family relations of caring,educating,accompanying,and descending in the interaction-group are much more common than the other types,and the feelings of loving/affectionate,intimate,approval,yearning/longing,thoughtful,and trust are more common than the other feelings.In terms of their features,the research found that in the relation of caring,maternal devotion is more than paternal devotion;in educating children,parents perform better than grandparents in balancing outer world’s knowledge and children’s mental growth;in the relation of descending,not only genes but also memories and cultural rituals are descended across generations;in the feeling of authoritative,the elders tend to use more imperatives than the youth,and that the feeling of filial pious exists more in families with Chinese backgrounds.