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Excerpted from my book Generally Speaking, this paper introduces "concept‐driven sociology," a special way of theorizing designed to reveal abstract social patterns. As such, it examines the methodological process by which we can "distill" generic patterns from the culturally, historically, and situationally specific contexts in which we encounter them. It thus champions a "generic sociology" that is pronouncedly transcontextual (transcultural, transhistorical, transsituational, and translevel) in its scope. In order to uncover generic, transcontextual social patterns, we need to collect our data in a wide range of social contexts. Such contextual diversity is manifested multi‐culturally, multihistorically, multisituationally, as well as at multiple levels of social aggregation. True to its message, the book illustrates generic social patterns by drawing on numerous examples from diverse cultural contexts and historical periods and a wide range of diverse social domains, as well as by disregarding scale. Emphasizing cross‐contextual commonality, concept‐driven sociology tries to reveal formal "parallels" across seemingly disparate contexts. The paper features the four main types of cross‐contextual analogies concept‐driven sociologists tend to use—cross‐cultural, cross‐historical, cross‐domain, as well as cross‐level—disregarding conventionally noted substantive differences in order to note conventionally disregarded formal equivalences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the visuals second grade students included in their own information book compositions during a science unit on weather during which multimodal science trade books on the topic of weather were read aloud. First, the multimodal nature of the information books used in the unit are described. Second, the teacher's talk about visual representations during read alouds of books on weather is presented. And third, the children's own information books about weather topics are examined for inclusion of labeled pictorial illustrations with accompanying captions and graphical representations. These analyses reveal that 1) information book authors vary in their use of visual information, 2) some graphics may be more salient for children, and 3) children's use of pictorial illustrations and graphical representations in their own compositions seems to be impacted by both teacher attention to particular types of visual representations and immersion in information book graphics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper begins with the premise that very often, in analysing or just talking about illustrated books, one uses the word ‘movement’, or ‘motion’, to express the characteristics of a picture or a series of them. In the research literature, remarks on movement link with the dynamics of a story, depicting action, alternating situations, and the liveliness and diversity of the book as a whole. In regard to both pictures and texts, however, the concept of movement remains rather abstract and vague; we mostly talk about an illusion, whose origin is difficult to express precisely. This article discusses the concept of movement first in the broader sense and then seeks an alternative viewpoint on analysing movement in illustrated children’s literature. It particularly emphasises movement in relation to the characters, inspired by ideas from modern dance. Examples are drawn from the illustrations and texts of the Moomin books by Finnish artist and author Tove Jansson. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]