Multimodal Analysis of Verbal and Visual Elements in Children’s Picture Book The Day You Begin

Abstract

The objectives of this study were to identify the verbal and visual elements in the children’s picture book The Day You Begin (2018) by Jacqueline Woodson, illustrated by Rafael López, and to analyze how the intermodal couplings of these elements constructed the theme of diversity. This research employed a qualitative design with 14 selected data units, each consisting of one verbal excerpt and its corresponding visual illustration, purposively taken from 28 narrative pages of the book The Day You Begin (2018). The data were collected through several steps: reading the book, identifying pages that express diversity, selecting 14 units, transcribing the verbal text, describing the illustrations, and pairing them for analysis. The analysis, based on the frameworks of Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2014) Systemic Functional Linguistics, Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) Visual Grammar, and Painter et al.’s (2013) intermodal coupling, applied the stages of data condensation, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification to examine ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings. The findings revealed two key points: first, the verbal and visual elements consistently realized meanings of difference, belonging, and identity; second, their intermodal couplings predominantly showed convergent relationships, reinforcing the theme of diversity. The study concluded that the verbal and visual elements represented experiences of diversity and identity through metafunctional realizations, while their convergent couplings constructed the theme of diversity by emphasizing empathy, inclusion, and acceptance of difference.