Rubrics for Girls in Arab Children’s Magazines: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Approach

Abstract

The present study aims at examining the semiotic modes used in the rubrics for girls and the topics they reflect in Arab children’s magazines. To this end, eight girls’ sections were extracted from two Arab children’s magazines, namely Majid (active) and Hatem (non-active). We adopted Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) visual grammar in our data analysis. We focused on representational, interactive, and compositional metafunctions. The results show that although both publications used a variety of semiotic modes to express meaning, there are some differences between them. That is, Majid is richer than Hatem in terms of layout, the use of pictures, and vibrant colors. The findings also indicate that the two periodicals discuss similar topics, mainly recipes, fashion, and etiquette, but they vary in the attention given to each topic. While Majid concentrates on fashion and beauty, Hatem places much more focus on recipes and handcrafts. These results suggest that the variations in focus on specific topics could be related to the socio-economic contexts in which the two magazines are published.