Verbal Violence in Children’s Books

Abstract

Books that are read during childhood play an important role in the preparation of the individual for life as well as for the family and friends' surroundings. In books prepared for children, part of real life needs to be reflected. It is expected that these reflections can include not only positive but also negative messages, situations and events so the child should be prepared to deal with adverse situations in real life and will be able to learn to cope with them. One of these negative aspects is verbal violence that an individual may encounter in different settings. In this framework, attempts have been made to detect examples related to verbal violence in children's books. The need for such a study on literary quality books for children is due to the lack of an independent research in Turkey on the reflections of verbal violence. The research was supported by document analysis. In the study, fourteen books were examined in the form of stories and novels prepared for children, which contained reflections of verbal violence in the curriculum. The reason why the story and the novel are examined is that it is highly possible to find fiction-based expressions in these species rather than in other literary genres. Documents examined in the study were obtained by taking expert opinion and read without any written notice. Subsequently, the works were first subjected to content analysis to obtain more in-depth data after descriptive analysis. It has been found that all the books examined in the study on the reflection of verbal violence in children's books contained examples of verbal violence. These are among the consequences of working with threats from a wide range of people, ranging from nicknames to disdain. Nevertheless, it was observed that verbal violence performers are more male characters while female characters rarely resort to violence, and many reasons were effective in practicing violence. The results show that examples of verbal violence should be included in children's books which are thought to be effective on child's self-preparation for life. It was found that the fact that violence is not justified as a solution to the problem and that the characters who conduct violence must not be confirmed are among the essential qualities that should not be forgotten when children's books are written.