This corpus-based study examines adjectives and adjectival expressions used to describe characters in British children’s fiction. The focus is on diachronic variation, by comparing Victorian (19th-century) and contemporary (late 20th-century) children’s fiction, and on gender variation, by comparing the descriptions of female and male characters. I adopt a qualitative as well as a quantitative approach, and consider factors such as lexical diversity, adjectival density, collocation patterns, evaluative meaning, syntactic function and distribution across semantic domains. Most findings are related to a dichotomy set up between an idealistic and a realistic portrayal of characters. The study shows that an idealistic portrayal of characters is typical of the Victorian material and a realistic portrayal of characters typical of the contemporary material. Further, gender differences are much more pronounced, and reflect traditional gender role patterns more in the Victorian material than in the contemporary material. For instance, a pleasant appearance is typically described for Victorian female characters and social position for Victorian male characters. Moreover, descriptions of mental properties of Victorian female characters are conspicuously rare. Such gendered patterns are less distinct in the contemporary material, although appearance is still more extensively described for female than male characters. As regards how the qualities are attributed to characters, the descriptions of Victorian female characters were found to be the most formulaic compared to the descriptions of Victorian male, contemporary female and contemporary male characters.

I denna magisteruppsats undersöks Julia Donaldsons engelska bilderböcker i svensk översättning av barnboksförfattaren Lennart Hellsing. Huvudsyftet med denna studie är att avgöra om de svenska måltexterna även bär drag av Hellsings egen författarstil. För att kunna undersöka detta har Kårelands tidigare forskning (2002) om Hellsings litterära produktion använts för att ta fram stilvariabler. Dessa stilvariabler har sedan applicerats på måltexterna i denna fallstudie. Det teoretiska ramverket orienterar sig inom deskriptiv översättningsvetenskap och Tourys (1995) modell för rekonstruktion av översättningsnormer används. Detta möjliggör placerandet av källtexter (KT) och måltexter (MT) i en sociokulturell kontext. I den deskriptiva analysen jämförs KT med MT och översättning som begrepp förstås som något som omgärdas av översättningsnormer vid en viss tidpunkt och inom en viss kultur. Resultaten visar att Hellsings stil som författare återfanns i de översatta texterna och resultaten pekar även mot att översättningen av dessa texter kan ses som en acceptansinriktad praktik. / This master’s thesis looks at the translation of Julia Donaldson’s English picture books into Swedish by the Swedish children’s author Lennart Hellsing. The main aim of the study is to determine whether the translation of the original (source) texts involves the transference of Hellsing’s writing style into the translated (target) texts. Earlier research, carried out by Kåreland (2002), is employed in order to pinpoint Hellsing’s distinctive style as a writer. The style variables apparent in Hellsing’s own writing were thereby identified and these are applied to the analysed target texts in this case study. The theoretical framework is based on descriptive translation studies (DTS) and the use of Toury’s model (1995) for reconstructing translational norms allows the source texts (ST) and target texts (TT) to be put into a sociocultural context. By working within this framework a descriptive analysis is used to describe and compare the ST and TT and the concept of translation as a practice governed by certain translational norms at a certain moment in time and within a certain culture is applied. The findings show that Hellsing’s style as a writer can also be detected in his translations of Donaldson’s picture books. The results of this case study also indicate that the translation of these texts can be considered to be a target culture oriented practice.

This dissertation investigates meaning-making in children's joint-reading transactions with literary apps. The analysis of meaning-making focuses on embodiment as a central aspect of literary app's texts and their reading and on children's negotiation of agency in the act of joint-reading. Meaning-making is understood through a multimodal social semiotics perspective, which considers that meaning is realised in the dynamic transaction between reader, text and social context. Therefore, the dissertation integrates the analysis of the apps and of the children's responses to capture the dynamics of meaning-making in such transactions. Case studies were conducted with six families, who read the apps The Monster at the End of This Book (Stone & Smollin, 2011) and Little Red Riding Hood (Nosy Crow, 2013) in an English public library. The central method of data collection involved video-recorded observations of parent-child joint-reading events, complemented by graphic elicitation, informal interviews and a questionnaire. The video data was analysed through multimodal methods. The findings indicate that the participant readers used their bodies not only as a material point of contact and activation of the interactive features but also as a resource for meaning-making in their transactions with the apps. The reader's body was essential in their engagement with the material and interactive affordances of the apps, in reader's expressions of their responses, and in the sharing of the reading experience with the parents. The body of the reader, through spontaneous and interactive gestures, is a mode of communication in the multimodal ecologies of both the text and the reader's responses. Furthermore, the child readers constantly negotiated their agency within the constraints posed by the text, which include the narrative itself and its interactive features, and those posed by the joint-reading situation. The bodies of the readers played an essential role in this dual negotiation of agency. Children's agency was scripted, that is, the readers exerted their agency within the limitations of a script. The script, however, allowed readers to improvise, and their performances also involved resistance to the script through playful subversion. In the joint-reading event, children's agency was foregrounded, positioning the children as protagonist readers, who performed most of the interactions and lived the aesthetic experience of the text fully, to the expense of their parents, who mostly participated as supporting readers, transferring their agency to the children through scaffolding.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Humanities, Department of English, 2007. / Bibliography: p. 239-289. / Introduction -- Fantastic metamorphosis as childhood 'otherness' -- The metamorphic growth of wings : deviant development and adolescent hybridity -- Tenors of maturation: developing powers and changing identities -- Changing representations of werewolves: ideologies of racial and ethnic otherness -- The desire for transcendence: jouissance in selkie narratives -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Appendix: "The great Silkie of Sule Skerry": three versions. / My central thesis is that fantastic motifs work on a metaphorical level to encapsulate and express ideologies that have frequently been naturalised as 'truths'. I develop a theory of motif metaphors in order to examine the ideologies generated by the fantastic motif of metamorphosis in a range of contemporary children's and young adult fantasy texts. Although fantastic metamorphosis is an exceptionally prevalent and powerful motif in children's and young adult fantasy literature, symbolising important ideas about change and otherness in relation to childhood, adolescence, and maturation, and conveying important ideologies about the world in which we live, it has been little analysed in children's literature criticism. The detailed analyses of particular metamorphosis motif metaphors in this study expand and refine our academic understanding of the metamorphosis figure and consequently provide insight into the underlying principles and particular forms of a variety of significant ideologies. / By examining several principal metamorphosis motif metaphors I investigate how a number of specific cultural beliefs are constructed and represented in contemporary children's and young adult fantasy literature. I particularly focus upon metamorphosis as a metaphor for childhood otherness; adolescent hybridity and deviant development; maturation as a process of self-change and physical empowerment; racial and ethnic difference and otherness; and desire and jouissance. I apply a range of pertinent cultural theories to explore these motif metaphors fully, drawing on the interpretive frameworks most appropriate to the concepts under consideration. I thus employ general psychoanalytic theories of embodiment, development, language, subjectivity, projection, and abjection; poststructuralist, social constructionist, and sociological theories; and wide-ranging literary theories, philosophical theories, gender and feminist theories, race and ethnicity theories, developmental theories, and theories of fantasy and animality. The use of such theories allows for incisive explorations of the explicit and implicit ideologies metaphorically conveyed by the motif of metamorphosis in different fantasy texts. / In this study, I present a number of specific analyses that enhance our knowledge of the motif of fantastic metamorphosis and of significant cultural ideologies. In doing so, I provide a model for a new and precise approach to the analysis of fantasy literature. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / [12], 294 p