Picturebooks
Metalinguistic Awareness and the Child’s Developing Concept of Irony
On 20, Dec 2015 | In Picturebooks | By Chris Vitale
Kummerling-Meibauer, Bettina. “Metalinguistic Awareness and the Child’s Developing Concept of Irony: The Relationship between Pictures and Text in Ironic Picture Books.” The Lion and the Unicorn 23.2 (Apr. 1999): 157–83.
Referrer: Carrie Hintz
Categories: picturebook, visual storytelling, semantics, metalinguistic awareness, nonliteral language, irony
Annotation:
The pictorial and textual elements of ironic narratives, more specifically picture books, is different than that of regular literary examples. Children have difficulty understanding irony. The ability to detect and understand nonliteral language has been coined “metalinguistic awareness.” Kummerling-Meibauer states that it is an accepted understanding that young children have the ability to foster this type of understanding when reading picture books. To Kummerling-Meibauer, there are four key patterns associated with this phenomenon: “semantic gap, contrast in artistic style, change in point of view, and sequential structure.” The relationship between text and illustration to infer meaning is explored in depth here.
