Representing tradition: The construction of culturally-specific visual narratives in Chinese picture books and hand scroll paintings

Abstract

The picture book plays a fundamental role in the intellectual and social development of young children. While the simplest of picture books offer an accessible entry-point into basic literacy through the combination of printed word and an image of its referent, picture books in narrative form constitute a significant instrument of socialisation, as a source of both overt and covert ‘ideological’ messages about the world and about social values. This study establishes a referenceable method and framework for identifying the extent to which a given picture book produced for consumption within the Chinese market utilizes pictorial and narratological strategies that are understood to be historically accurate within - and emblematic of – Chinese society’s ideologies and cultural traditions. Ten recently-published picture books for children, each produced by ethnically Chinese authors and widely distributed in the Chinese market are scrutinized using quantitative, qualitative, semiotic and media analysis methodologies. Historic Chinese hand scroll paintings are presented as a useful point of comparison with these picture books, insofar as they provide an enduring example of culturally-specific pictorial conventions of composition, character depictions and interrelations, narrative context and the interplay of text and image. Drawing upon influential work on visual narratives by Painter, Martin and Unsworth, and the Multimodal Discourse Analysis approach, a basic grammar of Chinese visual narratives is established, with conclusions drawn regarding how these inform contemporary picture books for Chinese children.