The construction of cultural ideologies in award-winning Thai and Australian children's picture books (1987-2006)

Abstract

This thesis examines the role of children's picture books in constructing cultural ideologies. It aims to analyse the dominant cultural ideologies inscribed in Thai and Australian children's picture books, with specific emphasis on how such identities are constructed through verbal and visual language. The analysis focuses on the changes, if any, in the construction of cultural ideologies in Thai and Australian children's picture books that won national awards from 1987 to 2006, and how the changes correspond to the impact of social change. The corpus chosen for analysis consists of 60 children's books, comprising 30 from Thailand and 30 from Australia. The picture books have either won the Thai National Book Development Committee Award or the Picture Book of the Year Award given by Children's Book Council of Australia (CBCA). The thesis is structured around three themes based on the ideological construction of power in the books, including the construction of age relations, gender relations and community relations. Despite the fact that Thai society has undergone enormous change over the last two decades, the analysis shows that award-winning Thai children's books have been written mainly from a conservative point of view. They work by providing the foundations for social harmony and respect of order in a patriarchal and hierarchical society where all members are expected to know their proper place and live their lives in ways that contribute to the benefit of the whole community. Some slight changes can be detected in the way perspectives on those cultural ideologies have shifted at certain periods. These include the way of giving more emphasis to a child's self discovery over adult authority, the attempt to create non sexist picture books, and changes in the meaning and implication of unity and cohesion. Yet the analysis reveals that an ethos of conservative discourse still informs the books. It highlights the use of representation to control the overall appearance of idealised discourse in Thai society. In contrast, there is much variety and range in the way cultural ideologies have been constructed in award winning Australian children's books. While an ethos of conservative discourse can still be detected in the corpus, a number of books show that such ways of seeing the world can be challenged, questioned and even proved to be inadequate. Unlike the Thai books, the representation of patriarchal and hierarchical society can be overturned by giving more prominence to children's sense of agency and imagination and by portraying male and female characters in a more symmetrical way. In contrast to the depiction of the smooth and harmonious relationship between people of the same cultural and community groups in the Thai books, some recent Australian picture books emphasise the conflicts and disputes between different social groups. These changes are analysed in the context of the impact of social change. Social and political topics, such as the emancipation of women through the feminist movement and issues relating to contemporary politics including refugees, border control and cultural difference are taken into account. Show more