“ IT CAN CRY , IT CAN SPEAK , IT CAN PEE ” : MODALITY VALUES AND PLAYING AFFORDANCES IN CONTEMPORARY BABY DOLLS ’ DISCOURSE

Baby dolls have been in the toy market for more than a hundred years, since French irm Jumeau entered the toy industry in the nineteenth century and started producing “bébés”, considered the greatest phenomena of the toy market (Fleming, 1996). he aim of this analysis is to shed some light on the multimodal properties provided by the aural, verbal and visual texts of the packages of Brazilian baby dolls through a careful look at their textual and contextual meanings, anchored on Kress & Van Leeuwen’s (2006) subsystem of modality (reality value), within the interpersonal visual metafunction. he analyses of the baby dolls’ packages point to roles suggested to young girls from a very early age, varying from parenting roles they are asked to fullill later in life as future mothers to medical abilities they are encouraged to master in order to care and nurture for their “children”.


Introduction: Baby Dolls
he history of baby dolls dates back to the late nineteenth century, when the French toy irm Jumeau took the leadership by introducing the irst Bébé Jumeau, whose physical features were quite distinguishable from those ubiquitous now in the twnty-irst century.At that time, baby dolls were mostly cherished by adult collectors, as bébé dolls had a strong relationship with French Haute Couture (Peers, 2004).Besides, bébés were oten dressed in adult female clothes although Peers (ibid.)does report that "the whole bébé phenomenon evaporated in Haute Couture […] under pressure from commercialisation and mass production" (Peers, 2004, p. 70).
According to her, the origins of the baby doll are core to provide a better understanding of the history of the fashion doll boom, as the "the French bébé as a genre proves a particularly rich prehistory to the issues of branding and marketing" (Peers, 2004, p. 71) nowadays experienced by fashion dolls.Be that as it may, the truth is that throughout the nineteenth century the baby doll Bébé Jumeau was virtually everywhere: in pamphlets, engravings, lithographs, children's stories as well as in adult's print media (Peers, 2004).
he most important public service of such doll, as Peers (2014) contends, was possibly the regulation of womanhood, as young girls' negotiation to be given a bébé as a reward for their "appropriate feminine behaviour", not only encouraged them to comply with certain pre-established social roles but also "permitted a pre-industrial revolution division of gender roles within the family, where female labour (…) made a positive and necessary contribution to the overall economic viability of the family unit" (Peers, 2004, p. 78).

Modality Values
As objects appealing to both children and adult's markets, baby dolls, since their industrial expansion in late nineteenth century, have been following two tendencies pinpointed by Fleming (1996), named tactile and harder representationality, which account for features that pertain to our present days.he irst is related to the lexibility and sense of cuddliness of some dolls initiated with the Teddy Bear production in 1903, whereas the second is associated to the high degree of realism of baby-like dolls which started with the Jumeau'bébés' and culminated in the reborn baby doll phenomenon observed in contemporary times.he latter are highly naturalistic dolls made from vinyl or silicon, with the skin painted in many translucent layers to achieve a mottled baby skin tone, including the appearance of veins and capillaries, birthmarks and scratches.he dolls look and feel like real babies, with bodies weighted to match the het of a live infant.hey have mohair (or real hair) rooted in their heads in individual strands, and a magnet in the mouth to hold a magnet paciier.Some artisans make dolls with a heartbeat and a raising and falling chest that simulates breathing.(William, 2011, as mentioned in Knafo, 2017) he degree of compatibility between what we see represented and what the object is in real life is referred to by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) as modality or reality value, which accounts for the level of proximity between a given representation and what we see with the naked eye.
Indeed, naturalistic modality is deined on the basis of congruence: the greater the correspondence with the real object, the higher the naturalism of an image.One of the ways to grade such congruence is through colour, as it exerts a great inluence on naturalistic modality.
Another variable that afects the level of naturalistic modality in a representation refers to its contextualization, its background.Generally speaking, the presence of background in an image increases its modality from a naturalistic perspective whereas the absence of background lowers it.
In the case of toys like the baby dolls hereby analysed, they deserve to be interpreted according to "various dimensions of tactility, maybe including weight: the more an object that represents some other object feels and handles like that other object, the higher its modality" (Machin and van Leeuwen, 2009, p. 58) .
here are four main categories within the system of modality: naturalistic (or real), sensory (or fantastic), scientiic and abstract modality, as can be visualized in Figure 5 that follows.Just as important as understanding that the concept of modality relies on a gradation system based on variables that help deining how naturalistic a representation may be, is the understanding that a represented image should also be looked at from the perspective of the context where it is inserted.
hat requires sensitivity on the part of the analyst, who should consider, as Ravelli (2013) contends, taking coding orientation into account: how 'real' something is depends entirely on from whose point of view this is presented […] It might be high modality from a scientiic coding orientation, where you want to emphasise the credibility and factuality of the information.Or it might be high modality from a naturalistic coding orientation […] or it might even be high modality from a fantasy coding orientation.(p.236-237) Besides the naturalistic values of a given representation are its sensorial values -named sensory (or fantastic) modality by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006).hey are directly associated to the way a given representation afects its viewer: the higher the impact, the higher its sensorial level of modality.Images with a high level of sensory modality are depicted so as to evoke subjective feelings from the viewer (Machin and van Leeuwen, 2009).
While applying these concepts to children's toys, like toy guns, in their multimodal analysis of contemporary war toys, Machin and van Leeuwen (2009) have concluded that although their visual modality may be regarded as very high -as some toy guns might look like real replicas of actual guns -on the tactile and aural level, these toys' modality level is actually very low, as they may be surprisingly light in terms of weight, therefore being far from the real thing and somehow amusing in terms of their sound efects, in that they "sacriice verisimilitude for pleasure and sensation [through] bright colours, lickering lights, quasi-musical sound" (Machin and van Leeuwen, 2009, p. 58).
Apart from the naturalistic and sensorial features of a representation are the images characterized by a high scientiic level of modality, which leave out background, thus simplifying detail.In such representations, colour and depth are regarded as superluous (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006).
Last but not least, the coding orientation that modulates the abstract modality is based neither on verisimilitude nor on impact, "but on how things are in general and regularly, or according to some deeper, hidden truth" (Jewitt & Oyama, 2001, p. 151).
Table 1 depicts a brief view of the system of modality within the interactive metafunction by summarising what has hitherto been described: Next, I will approach the concept of playing afordances in order to check out how the values elicited by contemporary baby dolls are related to the roles society expects them to fulill.

Playing Afordances
Regarded as transitional objects by psychologists like Winnicott (1971), toys have also been assigned the role of miniature versions of the objects children will handle as adults (Machin and van Leeuwen, 2009).herefore, the meanings they carry are believed to anticipate real life practices they will deal with in the future.
he question that remains is whether baby dolls foster creativity in playing or if , through their pre-established props, they end up limiting children's imaginative potential in relation to playing.In other words, does baby dolls' realism enhance the ixing up of little girls' identity as future mothers? he scripts -or playing possibilities -ofered by toys' representations are described by Brougère (2014) as afordances, linked to the structures for the play that are proposed by its design, shape, colours, etc.In this respect, Peers (2004) states that the more lifelike a baby doll is, the more prescriptive it becomes.She adds that [Later] in the 20 th century, plastic baby dolls were modelled as genitally complete, and sold with umbilical binding and identity tag, as if the child who received it had recently given birth to it, in a further move to realism in representing babies.(p.105) I was surrounded by baby dolls that all conveyed the same message that having a baby is the greatest experience of a woman's life, and every girl should want a baby more than anything else.hese dolls did not teach about the importance of travel and adventure; they taught about the importance of maternity and domesticity.hey also conveyed the completely unrealistic message that babies are all a woman (or a girl) needs for complete bliss.Lessons like this can lead many girls to have babies while still teenagers, thinking that children are enough to ill someone's life with joy.(Sherrie, A. Inness, 1999, as mentioned in Peers, 2004, p. 80) By bringing Inness' (ibid.)perception to the forefront of discussion, Peers (ibid) believes that just like Barbie, who has historically been a source of critical and cultural analysis, baby dolls should also be de-constructed insofar as their general assumption of "naturalness, beneicence and neutrality" are concerned, for they, too, carry important messages to be discussed.
One of these messages is related to their lovability, 1 as the word "love" has become a rather recurrent term in these dolls' packages, advertising catalogues and other promotional media venues such as websites and advertisements, although the connotations it carries may assume any of the following four meanings suggested by Varney (2002): (2) substitutional love, aimed at minimising working parents' feeling of guilt for not spending enough time with their children as a consequence of the pressures of modern life; (3) obligatory and (4) romantic love, regarded as strongly gendered, as toys contributing to a concept of love as obligation train girls for a motherhood role that ensures they will be emotionally as well as physically equipped (extracted and adapted from Varney, 2002, p. 03) [my italics].
he selling of what Varney (2002) has described as love in toytown has made toys to be structured around love themes which underpin the marketing interests of today's toy makers.hrough a process regarded as "privatisation of playing" (Varney, 1999), the appeal of loving toys has modiied the concept of socialization in toy-playing by promoting the idea that the companionship of a child no longer needs to be another child but a toy.Toy manufacturers have of course beneited from this trend and made good use of it, by explicitly ofering Best Friend Teddy Bears or My Puppy Loves Me lines to substitute for real human friends or companions.
he turning of toys into imaginary companions has been claimed not only to strengthen children's attachment bonds with these toys but also to "signify the emotional experiences of imaginary friends and family relations" (Kline, 1993, p. 259).One of the ways this can be connoted is through the child's tactile relationship with the toy, a bond of love which is expressed through "kissing, hugging, and constant companionship" (ibid.).
In a compendious survey carried out by Kline (1993), aspects of doll-playing such as children's potential to negotiate the meanings ofered by dolls' media marketing were investigated, mainly triggered by the question "Who or what is the child identifying with when playing with media-marketed toys?" (mentioned in Fleming, 1996, p. 29-30).
While reporting his results, Kline (ibid.)explained that his respondents tended to fall into two categories.he irst one composed of the extreme pessimists, who contended that identiication with media-marketed toys such as GI Joe and Barbie generally occurs on the basis of (…) simplistic, male-dominated perspectives, reliant on violence to solve problems or glamour-doll objectiication, primping and posing for the invisible watcher who is always assumed to be there -whether Daddy, boyfriend or envious other girls.(…) (Kline, mentioned in Fleming, p. 30) In other words, pessimists tended to view the opportunities for meaningmaking negotiation as "too tightly scripted in advance to allow any genuine imaginative activity" (ibid.), as according to them, "all that the child can do is copy the formulae" (ibid.).
On the second category were the optimist ones, who believed on children's "inherent capacity to transcend such pre-imposed limitations to use given identiications and opportunities as starting points, as resources to be imaginatively reworked" (ibid.).
Be that as it may, whether children are either constrained by toys' ofered "narrative universe" (Kline, 1993) or whether they are able to transcend it, the active role of the child-imaginer is essential to challenge the suggested identities so that s/he can create his/her own ictive scripts, wherein toys like baby dolls can acquire new dimensions as efective media for children's socialization and expression of reality.

Contemporary Brazilian Baby dolls
To study baby dolls' representations as visual communication enables us to check how the child its into society by means of a material culture.
In line with Peers' view (2004), Brougère (2014) also believes that research in the direction of toys' meaning-making potential as an object that "talks" directly to the child has been quite scant, as attested in 20 years of the conference of the ITRA -the International Toy Research Association -whose emphasis has been frequently given to toys' educational use, play and efects but rarely to their multimodal analyses as material properties.
According to him, (ibid), toys can be regarded as visual communication inasmuch as they communicate an image to the child, the image of the world where the child can play.In one of their studies devoted to toys' multimodal aspects, van Leeuwen & Caldas-Coulthard's (2000) investigate the iconography of pram rattles as baby toys, by pursuing a deeper interpretation of their given motifs -or "visual pointers" (ibid.)-as clues to the meanings that these toys' symbology features.
We already know that baby dolls' representations frequently imply motherhood duties, as the realism of a life-like infant usually conduces little girls to develop nurturing, homemaking and medical abilities.Kline (1993) points out that we are not exposed to seeing a baby doll in advertising as "a warrior, or a dump truck used to take baby for a walk" (p.251) although this may easily happen at the child's private, domestic sphere.His main contention is that certain toys are more prescriptive than others, and that baby dolls may fall into this category.In Kline's own words, symbolic design is the process marketers use to narrow the representational ields of the toy (product design, advertising, programming) to depict a speciic role portrayal in a speciic social universe.(p.251) his may be related to what Brougère (2014) describes as toys' afordances for playing.He gives the example of the Barbie doll, who, though revolutionary in terms of historical meanings, remains conservative at the level of her playing afordances: Nevertheless, in their aforementioned study on the potential meanings elicited by toy guns and their multimodal properties, Machin and van Leeuwen (2009) have stated that the interrelation between war toys' representational function and their playing afordances may not be so clearcut, as children playing with them seem to know how to distinguish the "good guys" from the "bad" ones, to recognize what guns are for and therefore may not necessarily desire to become soldiers themselves (p.59).
Having made these points clear, I now turn to the analysis of the multimodal properties veriied in the packages of Brazilian baby dolls, with a view to providing a discussion of their embedded meanings.
During an ethnographic visit to a toy store in northeastern Brazil on Brazilian Children's Day on 12 th October 2016, a total of 10 (ten) baby doll packages were photographed: Bebê Banhinho, Nenezão, Minha Dodoizinha Gessinho, Cheirinho de Bebê, Bebê Fraldinha, Baby Alive, Analu Sorinho, Betsy Doll, Nina and Nino's Baby, among which 5 (ive) will be used for the purpose of this study: Coleção Nino's Baby, Minha Dodoizinha Gessinho, Nina, Betsy Doll and Analu Sorinho, for these speciic representations seem to better illustrate my theoretical assumptions.hese dolls will be analysed in relation to their multimodal aspects, which includes their modality (or reality) values, i.e., the degree of realism fostered by their representations.hat involves the visual and verbal texts of the packages as well as the aural, tactile and olfactory elements of the dolls' representations.he indings will be placed in relation to their contextual clues, among which are the roles that baby dolls seem to suggest to young girls.Which roles are these girls expected to assume and how do they relate to women's position in contemporary society?Have these roles changed over the past years?How is this being relected in toys like baby dolls' representations?
In terms of reality values, it is true to say that the appeal of contemporary toys has been constructed to the extent of surpassing their functionality as the market has been investing large amounts of money in making visual and sound efects tantalise every possible sense of the consumer, probably as a way to resort to what Varney (2002) has described as the obligatory and/or romantic kind of love.
By exerting a sensory attraction on the child, the toy ends up "hypnotizing" him/her and efectively transposing him/her from his/her immediate reality (Fleming, 1996).Some of these toys are designed to scent like lowers, fruits or other lavours, while lighting and sound efects are maximised across the full spectrum of toys, a phenomenon that has been described by Varney (1999) as the "technocracy of sensuality" (p.20).
hat appears to be related to Kress and van Leeuwen's (2006) sensory -or fantasy -coding orientation for modality, whose gradation goes from high to low, depending on how subjectively a representation afects its viewer (+/sensorial) and how distant or near that represented object is from reality (+/naturalistic).
Assuming that most baby dolls analysed have been designed to smell, weigh and sound like real babies, we can say that from a tactile, olfactory and aural point of view, the naturalistic degree of their modality is generally targeted at being maximised, although from a visual perspective, when compared to the new reborn line of baby dolls -which have not been the object of this analysis -the modality level of mainstream babies found in toy stores can be regarded as low.
Indeed, from a multimodal perspective, the multimodal resources used in Brazilian baby dolls like Coleção Nino's 2 (Figure 7) seem to embody what Varney (1999) has named technocracy of sensuality when it is stated, right in the package, that not only does the baby doll inside the box weigh like a real baby, but it also sounds and smells like a real one: ("Com cheirinho de bebê e peso de um bebê de verdade" 3 ).In other words, these dolls are produced to appeal to every possible sense.he baby doll of Coleção Nino's comes in a package emulating a cradle with a cardboard stork placed inside together with a birth certiicate, which the childmother is expected to ill out while playing with the doll. he package is coloured in shades of pink, beige and mauve, commonly associated to babyhood.Around the baby doll, in the outside part of the package, realistically depicted as photographs, is a set of four images at the let-hand side, portraying a very young girl caressing and caring for her little baby.At the bottom right-hand side of the box, we can visualize the photograph of a cute real baby, which increases the modality of the package from its naturalistic perspective.he verbal text adds to that by informing the consumer that the weight of the baby doll is just like the one of a real infant ("Seu peso é igual de um bebê de verdade").he baby doll weighs around 2,4 kilograms and comes in two versions: with the eyes open and with the eyes closed, sleeping.
Also, by pressing the middle part of the package, the child/consumer is invited to hear sounds that emulate real baby ones ("Aperte aqui e escute os sonzinhos de um bebê" 5 ): the baby doll babbles, giggles and cries, which ends up increasing the toy's level of details as far as its naturalistic modality is concerned.he structure "de verdade" ("like a real one") gets repeated several times in the package of Coleção Nino's as a way to remind the viewer that the baby doll is extremely realistic: it makes sounds, weighs and smells like an actual baby. he same structure "de verdade" appears in the package of baby doll Minha Dodoizinha Gessinho 6 (Figure 8) 7 , which features right at its upper part that the doll's tears are for real -"Lágrimas de verdade" -as the child/consumer is guided through a sort of reading path (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006) to go through six realistically depicted photographs of a little girl aged around 3-5 years old, pictured in great salience in the package, establishing a sort of "dialogue" with the child/consumer.She exempliies -both verbally and visually -tasks which the child-mother is supposed to carry out, taking care of the baby, checking the doll's temperature, applying injections, taking of and putting the plaster, etc. Inside the box, besides the baby doll, there is a set of items like a plastic stethoscope, a plastic pair of scissors, a thermometer, a syringe and a package of band-aid (sticking plaster), all of which aimed at making the child familiar with irst-aid vocabulary.
Instructions on how the child should carry on such medical duties are given both at the verbal and the visual level, as the realistic nature of the activities described: the baby cries out real tears when you apply the injection (Você aplica a injeção e o neném solta lágrimas de verdade"), you may take of and put on her little plaster ("Você pode tirar e colocar o gessinho 9 "), her heart beats like a real one ("Vamos ouvir o coração do neném? 10") and she needs real care because her arm is broken ("Quebrei meu bracinho, preciso de cuidado 11 ").Here again, the verisimilitude of the baby gets emphasized by means of verbal and visual resources highlighting the high naturalistic modality with which the doll has been designed, due to its attempted congruence with reality.
Moreover, the text of Brazilian baby doll Minha Dodoizinha Gessinho is constructed in order to create a sense of solidarity with the child, in that interpersonal closeness is instantiated by means of direct interaction through the use of questions that invite him/her to carry out nurturing responsibilities, such as "Let's check if the little baby has a fever?"and "Can we hear her heart?".
he same medical appeal seems to happen in baby doll Analú Sorinho's package (Figure 9), 12 whose box clearly reads: "Agora você pode brincar de médica de verdade" (Now you can play the doctor for real).
attaches an anthropomorphistic feature to these dolls' transforming features, by making them become more humanised or rather "made to look like children in a process of pedomorphism" (Brougère, 2014, p. 249), assigning the dolls with a children-like form.
In multimodal terms, both their naturalistic and sensory modality are maximised at a high level (Figure 10): In these dolls' boxes, their texts reinforce that their cheeks turn red when they get exposed to sunlight rays: "Suas bochechas icam rosadinhas quando expostas ao sol 16 " (Nina Baby); "A boneca ica com as bochechas vermelhinhas quando toma sol 17 " and "Debaixo do sol o rostinho dela ica vermelho 18 ".
At the instructional level, the visual text of Betsy Doll further elucidates to the child through an illustration of a young girl in bathing suit that it is essential not to forget to wear a protection hat, as this doll's designers seem to have opted for attaching an educational aspect to its discourse.
All in all, what the multimodality contained in the discourses of these ive Brazilian baby dolls under analysis has demonstrated is that producers seem to be increasingly narrowing down children's meaning-making potentials by telling them both at the verbal and the visual level, how to play and what to expect in terms of the playing afordances reinforced by these dolls' material properties.
hrough an increasingly high degree of representation in the baby dolls I am found available in the toy market, we are led to believe that their messages are clear insofar as gender roles are concerned.

Figure 5 :
Figure 5: he modality system within the whole structure of the VG (adapted from Kress & van Leeuwen, 2006)

Figure 8 :
Figure 8: Multimodal features in the package of Brazilian baby doll Minha Dodoizinha Gessinho 8 [Photo:author]

Figure 10 :
Figure 10: Multimodal features in the package of Brazilian baby dolls Nina and Betsy Doll [Photos:author] his article has attempted to look at the multimodal properties -including the aural, verbal and visual aspects of the representations of 5 (ive) Brazilian baby dolls -anchored on Kress & van Leeuwen's (2006) subsystem of modality (reality value), within the interpersonal visual metafunction of their Grammar of Visual Design.