Rethinking Ageing in the Children’s Picturebooks: A Multimodal Analysis of Age Representation in The Frank Show by David Mackintosh

This study examines how older adults are discursively represented in children’s literature through a case study of David Mackintosh’s The Frank Show (2012), adopting a linguistically grounded multimodal discourse-analytical perspective. Positioned at the intersection of discourse linguistics, children’s literature studies, and age studies, the paper aims to theoretically substantiate the role of multimodal discourse in shaping and transforming cultural perceptions of old age. The aim of the study is to identify the mechanisms through which older adulthood is constructed and reinterpreted, focusing on how verbal and visual semiotic resources interact in a contemporary English- language picturebook and determine how multimodal discourse in children’s literature participates in the early construction of age-related ideologies and how these discursive formations contribute to either the reproduction or transformation of ageist beliefs. To achieve this aim, the study addresses the following research objectives: 1) to examine how evaluative language used to portray Grandpa Frank shapes and transforms the narrative meaning; 2) to identify the narrative strategies employed; 3) to analyse visual elements and the depiction of an older adult and children as interactive participants as factors influencing the narrator’s perception of Grandpa Frank and older adults more broadly; 4) to explore how the interaction between text and image constructs a coherent discourse of ageing. The research methods include qualitative critical discourse analysis, narrative analysis, and multimodal analysis of visual components, such as framing, colour, posture, and spatial composition as semiotic resources that contribute to meaning-making. An interpretative analytical framework is applied to examine how verbal and visual modes function together within the cohesive semiotic structure of the picturebook. The findings of the study demonstrate that the perception of Grandpa Frank undergoes a significant transformation within the child narrator’s evaluative framework. In the opening sections of the narrative, lexical choices, evaluative expressions, and focalisation patterns position Grandpa Frank within culturally familiar stereotypes of decline, passivity, and generational distance. The repeated labelling of the character as “boring” discursively constructs old age as predictable, uneventful, and disconnected from the child’s contemporary social world. Visually, these meanings are reinforced through relatively static composition, subdued colour pallets, highlighting old age as predictable, uneventful, and disconnected from the child’s contemporary social world. These semiotic configurations align with dominant cultural ideologies that frame later life as a stage of stagnation and reduced social relevance. However, as the narrative progresses, a discursive reconfiguration of the character takes place. Through shifts in focalisation, the unfolding of adventurous storytelling, and increasingly dynamic visual transformations, Grandpa Frank is reconstructed as active, courageous, imaginative, and agentive. Simultaneously, the visual mode shifts towards more dynamic compositions, exaggerated perspectives, and vividly coloured illustrations that symbolically encode movement, risk, and adventure. This coordinated transformation across modes reconstructs old age as a life stage characterised by vitality, courage, and lived experience. A central mechanism in this discursive shift is the change in the child narrator’s evaluative stance, from embarrassment and distancing to admiration and pride. Thus, this picturebook demonstrates a gradual deconstruction of ageist assumptions and constructs an alternative discourse of ageing as a stage of vitality, creativity, experience, and intergenerational connection. The results confirm that multimodal discourse analysis provides an effective methodological framework for uncovering implicit ideological meanings in children’s literature and for highlighting its potential to challenge ageism and foster more positive attitudes towards ageing from early childhood.