Detecting semiotically-expressed humor in diasporic TV productions

Author(s):  
Giuseppe Balirano ◽  
Marcella Corduas

AbstractIn this article, we suggest a semiotic approach to the study of visual humorous texts. Our method is based on the multimodal script analysis, which is a useful tool for examining not only verbal texts but also more complex texts, which combine the presence of images and sounds with verbally expressed humor. The resulting framework highlights how some visual comic mechanisms may enhance a different perception of semiotically expressed humor. Moreover, we present a statistical model in order to detect and measure how the resolution of some incongruities may also be determined by specific variables, which help to establish the existence and the strength with which the appreciation of humor varies according to the ethnic group of origin. In particular, the study analyzes the clip ‘Jodhpur Station, 1947’ from a very popular British Asian sketch-show, Goodness Gracious Me (GGM). The sketch shares some similar features with the narrative strategies typical of joke-tellers and is characterized by a complex humorous apparatus depending on different levels of understanding relating to encyclopedic, cross-cultural, and even diasporic knowledge of the world.

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. BB135-BB154
Author(s):  
Marleen Rensen

Biographies for children have always been popular among young readers, but they are becoming an increasingly important part of children’s literature in the twenty-first century. Most prominent are the collections offering short life-sketches of historical and contemporary figures who can serve as positive role models for young readers from diverse backgrounds. This article discusses the international bestseller Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Tales of Extraordinary Women (2016) from a feminist, transnational perspective. Focusing on the authors’ narrative strategies, it investigates how tropes of agency are used to make aware of women’s struggles and successes across time and space. Further, it examines how girls are actively encouraged to continue these legacies. Ultimately, the analysis shows that Goodnight Stories establishes connections between women from diverse countries and continents, and at the same time reveals cross-cultural differences in how the book has been received in different corners of the world.


2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 112-119
Author(s):  
VLADIMIR GLEB NAYDONOV

The article considers the students’ tolerance as a spectrum of personal manifestations of respect, acceptance and correct understanding of the rich diversity of cultures of the world, values of others’ personality. The purpose of the study is to investgate education and the formation of tolerance among the students. We have compiled a training program to improve the level of tolerance for interethnic differences. Based on the statistical analysis of the data obtained, the most important values that are significant for different levels of tolerance were identified.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-56
Author(s):  
Feruza Mamatova ◽  

The present paper aims to compare the principles of choosing a marriage partner and analyse the status of being in the marrriage in the frame of family traditions that are totally inherent to the both of the nations: English and Uzbek. It is known that interconnection and cross-cultural communication between the countries of these two nationalities have been recently developed. The purpose to give an idea about these types of family traditions and prevent any misunderstanding that might occur in the communications makes our investigation topical one. The research used phraseological units as an object and the marriage aspects as the subject


2021 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2110081
Author(s):  
TJ Thomson

This study uses news photographs and interviews with journalists to explore how Australia’s unprecedented 2019–2020 bushfire season was depicted for Australian and non-Australian audiences in order to extend transnational understanding of iconicity’s tenets and how news values vary across contexts. It does so first by examining the Sydney Morning Herald’s coverage over 3 months and then by contrasting this with international coverage that began in early 2020 once the issue spilled onto the world stage. Australia’s coverage focused intensely on human actors involved in the disaster while the vast numbers of affected animals were virtually absent. In contrast, international media visually depicted the disaster as an environmental and ecological issue with global consequences. The results suggest a need for a definition of iconicity that is inclusive to non-human actors and to inanimate forces that are personified. It also extends our cross-cultural understanding of the visual expression of news values.


Author(s):  
Arnoud Arntz ◽  
Marleen Rijkeboer ◽  
Edward Chan ◽  
Eva Fassbinder ◽  
Alp Karaosmanoglu ◽  
...  

Abstract Background A central construct in Schema Therapy (ST) is that of a schema mode, describing the current emotional-cognitive-behavioral state. Initially, 10 modes were described. Over time, with the world-wide increasing and broader application of ST to various disorders, additional schema modes were identified, mainly based on clinical impressions. Thus, the need for a new, theoretically based, cross-cultural taxonomy of modes emerged. Methods An international workgroup started from scratch to identify an extensive taxonomy of modes, based on (a) extending the theory underlying ST with new insights on needs, and (b) recent research on ST theory supporting that modes represent combinations of activated schemas and coping. Results We propose to add two emotional needs to the original five core needs that theoretically underpin the development of early maladaptive schemas (EMSs), i.e., the need for Self-Coherence, and the need for Fairness, leading to three new EMSs, i.e. Lack of a Coherent Identity, Lack of a Meaningful World, and Unfairness. When rethinking the purpose behind the different ways of coping with EMS-activation, we came up with new labels for two of those: Resignation instead of Surrender, and Inversion instead of Overcompensation. By systematically combining EMSs and ways of coping we derived a set of schema modes that can be empirically tested. Conclusions With this project, we hope to contribute to the further development of ST and its application across the world.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003802292110146
Author(s):  
Ananta Kumar Giri

Our contemporary moment is a moment of crisis of epistemology as a part of the wider and deeper crisis of modernity and the human condition. The crisis of epistemology emerges from the limits of the epistemic as it is tied to epistemology of procedural certainty and closure. The crisis of epistemology also reflects the limits of epistemology closed within the Euro-American universe of discourse. It is in this context that the present essay discusses Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. It also discusses some of the limits of de Sousa Santos’ alternatives especially his lack of cultivation of the ontological in his exploration of epistemological alternatives beyond the Eurocentric canons. It then explores the pathways of ontological epistemology of participation which brings epistemic and ontological works and meditations together in transformative and cross-cultural ways. This helps us in going beyond both the limits of the primacy of epistemology in modernity as well as Eurocentrism. It also explores pathways of a new hermeneutics which involves walking and meditating across multiple topoi of cultures and traditions of thinking and reflections which is called multi- topial hermeneutics in this study. This involves foot-walking and foot-meditative interpretation across multiple cultures and traditions of the world which help us go beyond ethnocentrism and eurocentrism and cultivate conversations and realisations across borders what the essay calls planetary realisations.


Author(s):  
Mohammad Paydar ◽  
Asal Kamani Fard

More than 150 cities around the world have expanded emergency cycling and walking infrastructure to increase their resilience in the face of the COVID 19 pandemic. This tendency toward walking has led it to becoming the predominant daily mode of transport that also contributes to significant changes in the relationships between the hierarchy of walking needs and walking behaviour. These changes need to be addressed in order to increase the resilience of walking environments in the face of such a pandemic. This study was designed as a theoretical and empirical literature review seeking to improve the walking behaviour in relation to the hierarchy of walking needs within the current context of COVID-19. Accordingly, the interrelationship between the main aspects relating to walking-in the context of the pandemic- and the different levels in the hierarchy of walking needs were discussed. Results are presented in five sections of “density, crowding and stress during walking”, “sense of comfort/discomfort and stress in regard to crowded spaces during walking experiences”, “crowded spaces as insecure public spaces and the contribution of the type of urban configuration”, “role of motivational/restorative factors during walking trips to reduce the overload of stress and improve mental health”, and “urban design interventions on arrangement of visual sequences during walking”.


Human Affairs ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-163
Author(s):  
Břetislav Horyna

AbstractLeibniz was not the one to discover China, as far as Western culture was concerned. His historical contribution lies in the fact he presented Europe and China as two distinct ways of contemplating the world, as fully comparable and resulting in types of societies at the same high institutional, economic, technological, political and moral level. In this sense he saw China as the “Europe of the Orient” and as such susceptible to investigation by the same tools of natural philosophy which Leibniz knew from the environs of European scholarship. He was the first representative of the classical school of European philosophy to knowingly reject Eurocentrism. Leibniz followed the intentions of learned missionaries in his understanding of the Christian mission as a cultural and civilisational task, a search for mutual agreement and connections, in favour of a reciprocal understanding.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0887302X2110127
Author(s):  
Kim H. Y. Hahn ◽  
Gargi Bhaduri

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, people from around the world made numerous homemade masks for themselves and their community due to shortage of medical masks as well as to stop the spread of COVID-19. The purpose of the current study was to conduct cross cultural exploration of the reasons for making masks, self-construal and wellbeing associated with masks making by collecting data from residents across US, India, and China. The finding of this study presented different reasons for making masks as well as self-construal, and wellbeing in people who made masks versus those who did not. Differences were also observed among three different cultural groups. This study offers a unique contribution to the public health research engaging in craft making related activities to gain a better perspective of the state of health of a population and the understanding of cross-cultural study of craft making behavior during the pandemic.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document