Where Do I Come From? Metaphors in Sex Education Picture Books for Young Children in China

ABSTRACT

This study examines the types of verbal, pictorial, and multimodal metaphors in the genre of sex education picture books for young children in Mainland China. Although being an educational discourse genre that is essentially concerned with transmitting scientific facts, sex education picture books employ a range of metaphors that categorize and construe the biological knowledge of human reproduction in a way that not only facilitates young children’s understanding of scientific concepts but also instills in them particular values and moralities that are socioculturally conditioned. An examination of the source domains from which the metaphors are drawn and the target domains onto which the metaphors are mapped reveals three types of metaphor, namely, personification, domestication, and cross-experience metaphors. The analysis of seven sex education picture books for pre-school children suggests that these types of metaphor are used purposefully for addressing pedagogical as well as ideological concerns in the introduction of sex-related knowledge in Mainland China.

Acknowledgments

Permission to use Figures 2(a & b) and Figure 4 from Bama zenme youle wo (How did Mom and Dad Have Me) has been kindly granted by Zhejiang People’s Fine Arts Publishing House. Permission to use Figure 3 from Xiaowei xiangqianchong (Where Willy Went) has been kindly granted by Beijing Yuanliu Classic Culture Ltd.

Funding

This work is supported by the Project of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Education, People’s Republic of China [Grant No. 14YJC740047].

Notes

¹ Answers 2 and 3 are based on the character of Monkey (Sun Wukong) from Journey to the West (Xiyouji), a classic novel in ancient China and yet still many children’s favorite nowadays.

² Texts 1 to 7 are: (1) “Story of the Pee-pee”; (2) “Dad and Mum, How was I Born?”; (3) “How was I Born?”; (4) “My Story: Boys”; (5) “How did Mum and Dad Have Me?”; (6) “Where Willy Went”; (7) “Where did I Come from?”

³ Text 7 is published in Hong Kong by the Family Planning Association of Hong Kong and can be purchased from the following website: http://www.famplan.org.hk/sexedu/B5/resource/Resource_details.asp?reID=5. All the other six books are easily accessible in Mainland China.

⁴ An intermediate language system that young children use in order to learn Chinese characters.

⁵ The name, which is translated from “Willy,” literally means “little powerful” in Chinese and is commonly used as boys’ name.

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the Project of Humanities and Social Sciences, Ministry of Education, People’s Republic of China [Grant No. 14YJC740047].