Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction

Contemporary discussions of literature have paid increasing attention to the ideologies pervading texts and to the ways in which creative literature represents the individual both as subject and as agent. "Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction" examines these matters in narratives written for children, with a special focus on language, since meanings are primarily constituted in language. "Language and Ideology in Children's Fiction" examines various fictional modes, including picture books and historical, realistic and fantastic fictions, ranging from first books up to books for adolescents and drawing examples from Britain, the USA, Australia and New Zealand.

It explores the ways in which children's fiction develops relationships between the ideology of text and the position of the individual human subject both as character within narrative and as implied reader.

In order to do this, John Stephens has developed an approach to fiction which links narrative theory and critical linguistics with analysis of ideology and subjectivity in an original way which discloses how fictions work variosuly to constrain or liberate audience responses.