Gender representation in children’s literature is an established area of research, and the representation of sexuality increasingly so. Less established, however, is work on sexuality in picturebooks, in particular (a) the representation of gay co-parents, and (b) work with a linguistic or multimodal focus. Using a dataset of 25 picturebooks featuring two-Mum and two-Dad families, and focusing on ‘explicitness’ about their sexuality, we explore differences in the representation of the gay Mums and gay Dads. We look first at the book titles and co-parents’ names, using van Leeuwen’s Social Actor Network (1996, 2008) categories of Nomination and Categorization. Secondly, we look at the indexing of gay sexuality through the linguistic, visual and multimodal representation of physical contact, starting with van Leeuwen’s (2008) Visual Social Actor Network. Although the co-parents’ sexuality was shown in positive and diverse ways, Mums were more frequently constructed than Dads as co-parents, and Dads more frequently constructed than Mums as partners. Gender appears to interact with sexuality to produce these gendered representations of the gay Mums and Dads.
This article analyses reaction to the ideologically inspired murder of a soldier, Lee Rigby, in central London by two converts to Islam, Michael Adebowale and Michael Adebolajo. The focus of the analysis is upon the contrast between how the event was reacted to by the UK National Press and on social media. To explore this contrast, we undertook a corpus-assisted discourse analysis to look at three periods during the event: the initial attack, the verdict of the subsequent trial and the sentencing of the murderers. To do this, we constructed and analysed corpora of press and Twitter coverage of the attack, the conviction of the suspects and the sentencing of them. The analysis shows that social media and the press are intertwined, with the press exerting a notable influence through social media, but social media not always being led by the press. When looking at social media reaction to such an event as this, analysts should always consider the role that the press are playing in forming that discourse.
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