Heroes and villains: multimodal identity construction in children’s wartime visual narratives

2022 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tiyasha Sengupta
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
West Bengal ◽  
Social Semiotics ◽  
Visual Narratives ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
The Social ◽  
Visual Literature ◽  
Bengali Language ◽  
Discourse Historical Approach

Abstract The article investigates the Self and Other binaries in wartime visual literature published in Bengali-language children’s periodicals in West Bengal, India during the Bangladesh Liberation Struggle 1971. The study applies a critical multimodal framework using the Social Actors Approach and Social Semiotics within the Discourse-Historical Approach. The binaries are defined by the representation and subsequent differentiation of physical, linguistic, and cultural features of the Bengali and non-Bengali social actors and through their actions in the plots. The representation of social actors in the texts conforms to as well as deviates from typical wartime propaganda.

scholarly journals An exploration of discoursal identity: The rhetoric of narrative writing

XLinguae ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-168
Author(s):  
Inna Livytska
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Narrative Discourse ◽  
Narrative Writing ◽  
Social Semiotics ◽  
Writer Identity ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Cultural Choices ◽  
Semiotic Process

The paper aims at disclosing the process of writer identity enactive construal in narrative writing. Three constituent parts of identity discoursal construction in the narrative are social semiotics as a reflection of the social environment, cultural identity theory as the embodiment of cultural choices and preferences, and pragmatics (Charles S. Peirce). The following research questions have been formulated: (1) What is the nature of identity construction? (2) What rhetorical factors influence identity construal in narrative discourse? By providing a step-by-step analysis of thematic structure, the paper conducts a discourse analysis of narrative episodes in terms of Agent, Process, and Medium triad (Halliday, 1973), reflecting the mechanisms of reader’s manipulation with information as a dynamic semiotic process of interpretation, limited by a final interpretant.

scholarly journals The construction of self and others: A study of the identity construction in I am Malala

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 597-610
Author(s):  
Asifa Qasim ◽  
Sage Lambert Graham
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Autobiographical Narratives ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Social Customs ◽  
The Social ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
Construction Of Self ◽  
Religion And Ethnicity

Autobiographical memoirs incorporate personal experiences of an individual and the cultural structures for recognizing lives and identities. They mediate between actions and point of view of an author to display the identity of self and others. The language of autobiographical narratives situates characters in relation to one another to distinguish between self and other. This study examines the approach adopted by Malala for her identity construction in her autobiography, explicating the ways she maintains or challenges the social customs through these ideologies. It analyses linguistic features employed by Malala for identity construction and ideological distinctions between the victims and the perpetrators, stigmatized and non-stigmatized in her story. Malala appears in her tales as an author with authority, as well as a victim of intolerance and abuse, according to the findings; however, her identity is often fluid and changing through acquiring the roles of victim, figure, and author, and depicting her characters in parallel roles. She positioned characters in her story by making overt and covert contrasts within reported events. Her narrative shows a contentious case of discrimination in which both the victim and the perpetrator are Pashtun Muslims from Pakistan of the same race, religion, and ethnicity.

Entanglements between Agency and Vulnerability in the Phenomenon of Birth. Reflections on Children’s Expressions about ‘Being Born’

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2-2020) ◽  
pp. 135-146
Author(s):  
Catrin Heite ◽  
Veronika Magyar-Haas
Keyword(s):  
Social Studies ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
Cultural Embeddedness

Analogously to the works in the field of new social studies of childhood, this contribution deals with the concept of childhood as a social construction, in which children are considered as social actors in their own living environment, engaged in interpretive reproduction of the social. In this perspective the concept of agency is strongly stressed, and the vulnerability of children is not sufficiently taken into account. But in combining vulnerability and agency lies the possibility to consider the perspective of the subjects in the context of their social, political and cultural embeddedness. In this paper we show that what children say, what is important to them in general and for their well-being, is shaped by the care experiences within the family and by their social contexts. The argumentation for the intertwining of vulnerability and agency is exemplified by the expressions of an interviewed girl about her birth and by reference to philosophical concepts about birth and natality.

“Sou Inglesa! Sou Inglesa!”: Memórias de uma Menina Anglo-Portuguesa (1907-1930)

2017 ◽  
pp. 141-155
Author(s):  
Miguel Alarcão
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social History ◽  
Travel Literature ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Self And Other ◽  
Cultural Encounter ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Times

Textualizing the memory(ies) of physical and cultural encounter(s) between Self and Other, travel literature/writing often combines subjectivity with documental information which may prove relevant to better assess mentalities, everyday life and the social history of any given ‘timeplace’. That is the case with Growing up English. Memories of Portugal 1907-1930, by D. J. Baylis (née Bucknall), prefaced by Peter Mollet as “(…) a remarkably vivid and well written observation of the times expressed with humour and not little ‘carinho’. In all they make excellent reading especially for those of us interested in the recent past.” (Baylis: 2)

scholarly journals The Meaning of the Matrix: Towards a Cybernetic Critical Theory of Capitalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Shay Hershkovitz
Keyword(s):  
Social Systems ◽  
Theoretical Concept ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
System A ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Entity ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Critical Approaches ◽  
Operational Logic

Marxist criticism is most discernible; despite the oft-repeated claim that it is now irrelevant, belonging to an age now past. This essay assumes that criticism originating in the Marxist school of thought continue to be relevant also in this present time; though it may need to be further developed and improved by integrating newer critical approaches into the classic Marxist discourse. This essay therefore integrates basic Marxist ideas with key concepts from ‘social systems theory’; especially the theory of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann's. In this light, capitalism is conceptualized here as a ‘super (social) system’: a meaning-creating social entity, in which social actors, behaviors and structures are realized. This theoretical concept and terminology emphasizes the social construction of control and stability, when discussing the operational logic of capitalism.

scholarly journals Anti-migrant Islamophobia in Europe. Social roots, mechanisms and actors

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (53) ◽  
pp. 25-40
Author(s):  
Fabio Perocco
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Internal Structure ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Social Origins ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Muslim Immigrants ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Mass Media

Abstract During the last two decades of rising anti-migrant racism in Europe, Islamophobia has proven to be the highest, most acute, and widely spread form of racism. The article shows how anti-migrant Islamophobia is a structural phenomenon in European societies and how its internal structure has specific social roots and mechanisms of functioning. Such an articulate and interdependent set of key themes, policies, practices, discourses, and social actors it is intended to inferiorise and marginalise Muslim immigrants while legitimising and reproducing social inequalities affecting the majority of them. The article examines the social origins of anti-migrant Islamophobia and the modes and mechanisms through which it naturalises inequalities; it focuses on the main social actors involved in its production, specifically on the role of some collective subjects as anti-Muslim organizations and movements, far-right parties, best-selling authors, and the mass-media.

scholarly journals Sociology’s Role in the Teaching of Organizational Behavior in Higher Education. The Case of Hospitality Management

Societies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jorge Ferraz
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Behavior ◽  
Work Conditions ◽  
Hospitality Management ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Organizational Structuring ◽  
Hospitality Organizations ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Productivity Gains

Teaching in universities, especially in management schools, is today orientated to solving-problems and operational skills’ development, short-term productivity gains and to a vocational perspective. This represents an impoverishment of a deeper learning, an obstacle to the development of competences in a broader and integrative sense and the absence of a critical thinking practice. These are important tools to enhance in students and future managers, as specific social actors, abilities to act in a conscious, autonomous and long-term efficacious manner in society. This essay’s objective is to problematize the role that sociology could assume in the overcoming of that impoverishment, namely within the curricular unit of organizational behavior in two ways. First, teaching the social and macro dimensions that contribute to explain organizational structuring and behavior. Secondly, enhancing reflexivity and contextualization on the practices and discourses of all social actors involved and disassembling the dominant ideological, naturalized and simplistic individualized view on the reality of labor, employment and organizations. This is especially relevant in hospitality management studies because the dominant discourse about hospitality organizations hide, under a hegemonic paradigm of naturalized and individualized explanations, the macro-social dimensions of its organizational culture, work conditions, employees’ behaviors, management styles and market labor.

scholarly journals Thai Gender Ideology: A View from Representations of Social Actors in Crime News Headlines

MANUSYA ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-49
Author(s):  
Phennapha Klaisingto ◽  
Wirote Aroonmanakun
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
Gender Identities ◽  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
The Social ◽  
Crime News ◽  
Study Power ◽  
News Headlines

This study examines the linguistic structure used for uncovering gender ideologies through crime news headlines. It’s based on the idea that languages represent reality and different linguistic choices indicate different points of view of reality. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Fairclough 1990,VanDijk 1995, Simpson 1993) is used in this study. The main objectives of the study are 1) to study the differences of representation between male and female social actors (Van Leeuwan 2008) in crime news headlines and 2) to study power relations, gender identities and the reproduction of patriarchal society through crime news headlines. Samples of 1,815 crime news headlines are analyzed in this study. The result shows that Thai crime news constructs gender identities based on gender ideology. Thai crime news headlines convey a variety of linguistic meanings which allow for varying forms of representation of social actors, including exclusion and inclusion of social actors. The exclusion of male social actors in headlines may be ideologically motivated by obscuring the responsibility of male actors for negative actions, whereas the exclusion of female social actors does not have the same effect because their referents can be inferred from the headline context. In addition, the inclusion of social actors varies according to the social actor’s sex. Male actors are usually referred to using a functionalization form or an appraisement form, whereas female actors are usually referred to using an identification form. These representations reflect the role of masculinity and femininity among men and women in the society.

Pierre Bourdieu, the ‘cultural turn’ and the practice of international history

2008 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER JACKSON
Keyword(s):  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
International History ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
Cultural Orientations ◽  
Structural Environment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Collective Actors ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Turn

AbstractThe rise of the ‘cultural turn’ has breathed new life into the practice of international history over the past few decades. Cultural approaches have both broadened and deepened interpretations of the history of international relations. This article focuses on the use of culture as an explanatory methodology in the study of international history. It outlines the two central criticisms often made of this approach. The first is that it suffers from a lack of analytical rigour in both defining what culture is and understanding how it shapes individual and collective policy decisions. The second is that it too often leads to a tendency to exaggerate the importance of the cultural predispositions of individual or collective actors at the expense of the wider structures within which policymaking takes place. The article provides a brief outline of the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu – which focuses on the interaction between the cultural orientations of social actors and the structural environment that conditions their strategies and decisions. It then argues that Bourdieu’s conceptual framework can provide the basis for a more systematic approach to understanding the cultural roots of policymaking and that international historians would benefit from engagement with his approach.

Alcohol norms and their enforcement: an assessment from a socio-legal perspective

2010 ◽  
pp. 92-112
Author(s):  
Franco Prina
Keyword(s):  
Implementation Process ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Protection Time ◽  
Legal Perspective ◽  
The Social ◽  
Alcoholic Drinks ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Different Cultures ◽  
The Relationship

The socio-legal perspective on the alcohol legislation, including the norms concerned with the relationship between individuals and alcoholic drinks, helps answering some essentials questions: what was/is the "social construction" of the alcohol problem in different eras and different cultures and, consequently, which objectives are deemed to be worthy of pursuit through the creation or amendment of legislation? Which social actors have the ability, in a given period of time, to inscribe the relevance of innovative alcohol legislation on the political agenda and what kind of dialectic is used among those who champion points of view, competences and above all, different interests? Which interests and values would appear to meet with legislatory protection time after time? What tools, of the ample range available, are chosen to achieve the aims set out? To what extent is legislation implemented (or not implemented), and why? Which aspects of the implementation process prove to be most significant, i.e. define the actual content of the legislation "in force", and are therefore tangibly experienced by the law's end target? How much of an impact does legislation have on behavior which is subject to regulation or on problems which stem from such behavior?

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