Communicative functions of visual metonymies in picture books targeted at children in two different age groups. A multimodal analysis

Abstract

This article aims to examine how visual metonymies, in combination with verbal language, contribute to the representation of characters in a sample of six picture books written and illustrated by Anthony Browne and intended for children in two different age groups: 0–6 year-olds (also known as early readers) and children over six years of age. Social semiotic (Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 2006 [1996]. Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London: Routledge; Painter, Clare, James Martin, and Len Unsworth. 2013. Reading visual narratives: Image analysis of children’s picture books. London: Equinox), and multimodal cognitive approaches (Forceville, Charles. 2009. Metonymy in visual and audiovisual discourse. In Eija Ventola and Arsenio J. Moya-Guijarro (eds.), The world told and the world shown: Multisemiotic Issues, 57–74. Basingstoke & New York: Palgrave Macmillan; Forceville, Charles, and Eduardo Urios-Aparisi. (eds.). 2009. Multimodal metaphor. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter) have been adopted to carry out this research. The results reveal that the proportions of metonymies and complete representations are significantly different across the tales intended for 0–6 and 7–9 year-old children. In addition, the analysis shows that source-in-target metonymic depictions (Ruiz de Mendoza, Ibáñez, F. J., and Velasco O. I. Díez. 2002. Patterns of conceptual interaction. In René Dirven and Ralf Pörings (eds.), Metaphor and metonymy in comparison and contrast, 489–532. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter) are essentially used by illustrators to highlight some essential aspects of the characters and the plots.