Borders Bookshop: Quaker Bridge Mall, Mercer

County

Images taken March 2008

Magazines

Parenting, pregnancy, family & health: likely target audience - mothers

Women’s fashion & lifestyle: likely target audience – women from teens to 30s

Business, finance, current affairs: likely target audience – adult men

Parenting magazines close-upFeature articles foreground gender, place, intelligence, knowledge about babies

Reader addressed as ‘you’. Ambiguous reference to fathers – addressee or object?

Signs simultaneously subdivide the space and the discursive field of CLLD

Parenting books

‘Expect’ books also popular in Australia.

Lots of images of naked babies.

Inclusive re race and hearing impaired

Emphasis on the first year as one in which parents might panic and will require ‘week by week’ guidance.

Pregnancy and Infancy

Parenting books – problematic childrenMedical/psych labels to name problems – ADD, bipolar, autism

Medical/spiritual echoes of ‘healing’

Images of the problem in family terms (parent-child conflict) & of the solution (happy families)

Multiple constructions of expertise & authority

Early learning materials

Diverse & hybrid text types, modalities and technologies – cards, stickers, DVDs, computers, etc

Cross-media links

Range of price points with discounting, ‘bargains’ and loyalty schemes to encourage purchase & repeat business. Encourages parents to think of CLLD resources as ‘consumables’.

The dominant visual vocabulary of primary colours and media characters creates a sense of sameness in these materials. However, the language hints at tensions in the theories of CLLD that are promoted.

The ‘Step into reading series’ is underpinned by developmentalism with focus on stages and specifically the stage of ‘readiness’. It is implied that all children progress in a similar way.

On the other hand ‘Hooked on Phonics’ refers to readiness as something that has to be produced and offers a ‘guarantee’. The image suggests that black mothers are particularly targeted for this message.

‘Baby Einstein’& similar are based on an accelerated learning discourse with a focus on grasping the earliest opportunity to build competencies. It implies that the children of those who ‘wait’ will not be as successful. It is ‘never too early’ but soon it may be too late!

Learn to Read – I Can Read

Progression from learning to mastery or is that a jump?

The age of the reader and the nature of competence shifts between and within texts

Images of parents with children

Mothers mostly appear in dyads, reading or just being close. Fathers more often appear with whole family groups in texts related to behaviour & discipline. Parents also appear as authors/experts.

Smart families producing smart children

Absences

• Languages other than English

• Images of ethnicities other than Anglo/White & African-American

• Images of fathers engaged in literacy with children

• References to particular places/localities