Typographic design in Māori-English bilingual picturebooks: some educational implications

Abstract

The role of bilingual picturebooks in language learning has been explored recently by a number of authors who show their potential in normalising multilingualism (Naqvi, Thorne, Pfitscher, Nordstokke & McKeough, 2013; Zaidi, 2020), raising metalinguistic awareness and engaging parents (Sneddon, 2009), as well as raising language awareness (Kleker, Short & Daly, 2021). Hadaway and Young (2013) suggest bilingual picturebooks have a particular role to play in supporting the revitalisation of Indigenous languages. In New Zealand, the number of MāoriEnglish bilingual picturebooks is increasing, but there is very little, if any, research concerning their design or their use in educational settings. The design of bilingual picturebooks, as reflected in their linguistic landscape, has an important role to play in their pedagogical use (Daly, 2016; 2017), and in this article, we explore the typographic design of five bilingual Māori-English picturebooks with respect to the elements of typeface, type size, type colour and page layout. We discuss the design and audience implications of these factors for educational settings.