scholarly journals Tale of Two Cities: Historical Narratives in the Russian and Chinese Urban Landscapes

2020 ◽  
pp. 78-85
Author(s):  
Chen Fachun ◽  
Olga Leontovich
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Urban Narratives ◽  
Big City ◽  
Intertextual Connections

The present paper is part of a broader research "Language of a Big City: Media Urban Discourse in Russia and China". Its theoretical basis is situated in the contact zone between narratology, critical discourse analysis, semiotics and urban communication studies. The investigation is carried out on the example of two big non-capital cities – Volgograd and Tianjin, which represent the social processes typical of modern urban communities. The research model used for the study includes the following dimensions: 1) types of urban narratives; 2) narrator; 3) audience (reader / listener / viewer); 4) plot; 5) time; 6) space; 7) types of semiotic signs; 8) intertextual connections. The investigation proceeds from the idea about the textuality of the human mind, as well as the narrative ways of reality and identity construction. Multiple narratives can provide different urban history interpretations. Politicians use narratives to appropriate or reshape the past and the present as a common form of manipulation. A specific feature of urban historical narratives is that they do not possess fixed temporal boundaries and change due to the dynamics of urban social life. We argue that the stories that shape memories in the minds of general public are condensed versions of historical narratives based on the most intensely remembered facts, coloured with emotions and intensified by visual images, impressions and intertextual links. This idea emphasises the social responsibility of the creators of modern urban narratives in their different forms. The perspective of the research is to investigate the connection of these processes with Russian and Chinese mentality, values, logic of meaning-making and linguistic expression.

scholarly journals Translating Semiotic “Polyphony” of Texts as a Culture-Formative Creation

Tertium ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-169
Author(s):  
Caterina Squillace
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Literary Work ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
The Social ◽  
Roman Jakobson ◽  
The Master And Margarita

“The Master and Margarita” is generally considered Mikhail Bulgakov’s literary masterpiece. It is a “melting pot” of literary genres, motives, themes, imagery and intertextual references. All these elements cooperate in creating a “polyphonic” novel, in Bakhtin’s sense of the word, not only when it comes to the different nature and “voice” of single characters but also with reference to the “poly-structured” construction of the text itself. The paper will illustrate the peculiarity of Bulgakov’s novel and the semiotic and semiosic character of his creation. The adjective “semiosic” derives from “semiosis” as defined, among others, by C.S. Peirce, who stresses the meaning-making “power” of some semiotic processes. The paper aims also at answering the question why this novel has been translated several times into Polish and Italian since 1967 (when the first edition of the novel was published in Western Europe). Due to the very specific construction of the plot and of the formal aspects of the novel, translators had to deal with a significant number of problems of “untranslatability” that they could solve only by using their creative potential. It was Roman Jakobson who through his linguistic analysis reached the conclusion that for the untranslatable—poetry for example—“Only creative transposition is possible”. Using creativity translators were also able to discover further interpretations of Bulgakov’s literary work and to perform a culture-formative act as their efforts offer new points of view on reality and its perception, wider knowledge of the social life not only in Soviet times but in a more universal perspective as well as new models of text and literariness. That’s why a novel like Bulgakov’s masterpiece has been translated so many times and it is still translated in the two languages selected for the purposes of this research and all over the world. And this is also the reason why it can be considered a meaning-generative and culture-formative text even if its first edition appeared in 1940.  

scholarly journals Actually-Existing Success: Economics, Aesthetics, and the Specificity of (Still-)Socialist Urbanism

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 907-937 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michał Murawski
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Social Goals ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Urban Landscapes ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Economic Stratification ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Critical Overview

AbstractA quarter century following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the people's democracies, many of the dwellings, utilities, and public spaces built by these regimes continue to be cherished by their inhabitants and users. This has only increased as post-socialist urban landscapes undergo an ever-intensifying process of neoliberal “re-privatization,” de-planning, and spatial as well as economic stratification. Scholars, however, continue to produce accounts emphasizing how socialist cities and buildings, as well as the audacious social goals built into them, failed. This article provides a critical overview of recent literature on built socialism and identifies a tension between two parallel ethnographic and historical narratives. One argues that built socialism failed, because it was too obsessed with the economy and industry and neglected every other aspect of social life. The other pins the blame for failure on built socialism's alleged fixation with aesthetic or discursive realms and its corresponding neglect of the economy. The article closes by suggesting pathways for comparative scholarship that consider built socialism in terms of not only collapse and disintegration, but also success and endurance; not simply ofeithereconomyoraesthetics, but also of their reciprocal inter-determination and co-dependence. We must look beyond the lens of imported theories and consider “vernacular” or “emic” concepts rooted in the specificities and singularities of the socialist city itself.

scholarly journals Perancangan Komunikasi Visual Guna Memberi Edukasi bagi Remaja Pecandu Mobile Online Games

DeKaVe ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
LAMBANG HERNANDA
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Online Games ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Online Game ◽  
Surrounding Environment ◽  
New Findings ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Creativity ◽  
The Individual

The rapid development of science and technology brings changes in all walks of life. Human creativity is growing so as to encourage the acquisition of new findings in the field of technology that is used as a means of improving the welfare of humanity. One product of human creativity is an online game. As a media, internet games are very influential on the human mind which is absorbed through the two senses, namely seeing and hearing.Online gaming is a new lifestyle for some people in every age group. In the perspective of sociology, people who make online games opium, tend to be egocentric and put forward individualism. This is dangerous for the social life of the individual, they naturally move away from the surrounding environment and it is possible to marginalize themselves so that they assume that their life is in cyberspace and their social environment is only where they play the game. From the problems above, we need a solution that is expected to reduce, manage the level of addiction to mobile online games for adolescent behavior. This design is expected to be able to contribute to the prevention and management of mobile online games addiction for teenagers so that the future of the nation's next generation is more qualified.

scholarly journals Descriptive Accuracy in History: The Case of Narrative Explanations

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 283-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonidas Tsilipakos
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social

This article discusses the issue of the conceptual accuracy of descriptions of social life, which, although fundamental for the social sciences, has in fact been neglected. I approach this task via an examination of Paul Roth’s recent work, which recapitulates reflection in analytic philosophy of history and sets out a view of the past as indeterminate until retrospectively constructed in historical narratives. I argue that Roth’s position embraces an overly restricted notion of historical significance and underestimates how anachronistic descriptions vitiate central historiographical tasks. I contend that the importance of conceptually accurate descriptions for history and the social sciences cannot be overstated.

Rethinking the Context of Language in the Schools

1997 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 219-230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dana Kovarsky ◽  
Madeline Maxwell
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Ethnography Of Communication ◽  
Relational Frames ◽  
Natural Processes ◽  
Communication Problems ◽  
Academic Fields ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human World ◽  
Embodied Action

When taken together, the involvement strategies that operate on sound and meaning, coupled with the historical, spatial, thematic, and relational frames that make up the human world, help form an intricate web that displays how language and context mutually constitute one another. These ideas are not new and have been articulated in various ways through different academic fields of study concerned with the relations between language and social life, including the ethnography of communication, conversation analysis, and systemic linguistics. The location of talk in communities of practice recognizes that language is embodied action that is accomplished within fields in habits of expression and provides a framework for using empirically discovered, natural processes to highlight (rather than disembed) meaning-making resources. That language and context cannot be separated from one another when seeking to understand communication and meaning is a theme that weaves it way throughout the ideas of the authors presented here. Language is more than a tool. It is a primary way of being human and transforming experience in the construction of social reality: "To be human is to be an understander, which is to engage in processes of coherence building or sense making, processes that occur communicatively and that enable humans to constitute, maintain, and develop the worlds we inhabit" (Stewart, 1995, p. 115). By the same token, language incompetence and disorder are socially constituted and manifest themselves by the degree to which they marginalize, alienate, and disassociate individuals from the social world. This does not mean that the grammar and the dictionary of language are unimportant for those seeking to amend communication problems faced by students in schools; rather, they must be contextualized as part of a set of resources for building coherence, participation, and reality in the human world.

Material Culture

Sociology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence E. McDonnell ◽  
Kelcie Vercel
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Institutional Characteristics ◽  
Sociology Of Culture ◽  
The Social

Beginning with many of its earliest writings, sociology has a long tradition of theorizing the role of objects and material culture in social life. In the middle of the 20th century, these themes were taken up again by major sociological and anthropological thinkers who inspired a resurgence of interest in the study of objects. The sociology of culture and art began to address the production and reception of objects, while scholars from anthropology, cultural studies, and media studies began to develop a robust body of work around material culture. These two fields have somewhat different takes on the study of objects. Sociological accounts tend to be people focused, examining how institutional characteristics of art worlds shape the objects produced, and focusing explanations of meaning-making on the social position of the audience more so than the symbolic qualities of the object. Alternatively, material culture approaches tend to be object focused, engaging objects as symbols that help explain how people organize subcultures, create solidarity through exchange, or express social status. A turn toward materiality, originating from anthropology but taken up more recently in sociology, privileges the material qualities of objects and how they shape the use and symbolic meaning of objects. This work on objects raises the question of how sociologists should incorporate objects into accounts of action. This question has sparked an ongoing cross-disciplinary debate about whether objects have agency. Research in science and technology studies, alongside studies of craft and sport, have brought attention to how objects act back, shaping how knowledge is produced. Objects have also been understood as mechanisms of power, by shaping categories and morality, ritualizing icons, stabilizing social relations as instruments of the states and institutions, and structuring action through the built environment. These robust and vibrant areas of research make a strong case for the incorporation of objects into theories of power and knowledge.

scholarly journals The Role of Discourse and Text in the Construction of Organizational Identity

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-98
Author(s):  
Davide Bizjak
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Organizational Identity ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social World ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Social Aspects ◽  
The Social

Functional approaches and practices can be seen as loci of knowledge production and preservation. The present paper provides a comprehensive reflection on the former by discussing in detail the concept of discourse and discourse analysis applied to organisational contexts. Indeed, language and discourse are the principal means by which institutions and organisations create their own social reality. With the aim to clarifying how the social world is constructed and construed through actions of intersubjective meaning-making processes and to avoid the emphasis placed only on micro-linguistic elements, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was introduced to raise the attention on the macro-social aspects of discourse within organisations.

Kondisi Ideologis dan Derajat Keteramalan

2015 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 153
Author(s):  
J. Haryatmoko
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Multidisciplinary Approach ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Abuse Of Power ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Praxis

Abstrak: Analisa Wacana Kritis (AWK - Critical Discourse Analysis) dewasa ini menjadi metodologi yang banyak dipakai untuk penelitian di bidang media dan masalah-masalah sosial, budaya dan politik, terutama untuk membongkar bentuk-bentuk dominasi, ketidakadilan, diskriminasi atau ketidakbebasan. Wacana sebagai praksis sosial mencerminkan kehidupan masyarakat yang diwarnai retorika, manipulasi dan penyesatan. Karena itu, AWK mau menganalisis praksis wacana yang mengonstruksi masalah ketidakberesan sosial tersebut dan meneliti bagaimana ideologi dibekukan dalam bahasa agar akhirnya bisa mencairkannya. Menurut penulis, AWK mengandung tiga kelemahan epistemologis yang cukup mendasar: pertama, posisi metodologis yang mendorong agar peneliti memihak kepada korban dan mereka yang membutuhkan perubahan berimplikasi pada kondisi ideologis pendekatan ini. Kedua, pendekatan multidisiplin, tanpa disertai syarat-syarat rigoris dalam penggunaan teori-teori lain, menempatkan derajat keteramalan AWK dipertanyakan. Ketiga, rigoritas ilmiah dianggap tidak ketat karena para pionernya masih menggunakan konsep yang beragam untuk menunjuk fenomen yang sama. Kata-kata Kunci: Wacana, ideologi, teks, intertekstualitas, interdiskursivitas, praksis sosial, konstruksi, keteramalan, rekontekstualisasi, genre dan gaya. Abstract: At present, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is widely used as the preferred methodology for research in domain of media as well as in sociological, cultural and political fields. This method serves as an instrument of deconstruction for injustice, discrimination, abuse of power, and limitation of freedom. Discourse as social praxis reflects the social life embedded by rhetoric, manipulation and misleading. Thus, the task of CDA is to analyze the discourse praxis that constructs social problem and to investigate how ideology has been frozen firmly in language and how to unfrozen it. In my opinion, CDA risks to be trapped in three epistemological weaknesses that consist of, first, the methodological standpoint that encourages reseachers to take a position in favor of the victim or those who need a change, tends to be bound by ideological condition. Second, the need for multidisciplinary approach without requiring rigorous conditions in adopting theoretical references entails the weakness of its predictability. Third, there is a lack of scientific rigorism as indicated by the use of different concepts by the CDA pioneers to point to a similar phenomenon. Keywords: Discourse, ideology, text, intertextuality, interdiscursivity, social praxis, construction, predictability, recontextualization, genre and style.

scholarly journals The reconstruction of Arab women role in media: a critical discourse analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Abdul Hamid ◽  
Abdul Basid ◽  
Isma Nida Aulia
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Arab Women ◽  
Al Jazeera ◽  
Arab Media ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Media

AbstractArab women and the patriarchal culture are two things that cannot be separated. The influence of globalization and the rate of information and the Arab Spring revolution have such a profound impact on the identity of Arab women. The issue of discrimination and emancipation as a manifestation of the effort to re-actualize the identity of Arab women is widely reported in the media that we can see its progress day by day. This study shows how the media represents the identity of Arab women in Midan Al-Jazeera, Al-Ittihad, and mawdoo3 which contain problems in the social life of Arab women. As for the social reality of Arab society, women are positioned as individuals who can begin to actualize themselves. The data were analyzed by combining the concept of critical discourse analysis approach by Norman Fairclough and Teun A. Van Dijk who divided the analysis into three dimensions: text (micro), practical discourse (meso), and sociocultural (macro). The results show that the articles in Arab Media represent the re-actualization of Arab female identity using a specific discursive strategy in each of the articles. Through the texts in the article, Arab women are represented as free individuals, regardless of the role of wife and mother, and to have an active contribution to the social and autonomous sphere. It is under the conservative Arab government agenda toward a more moderate country in the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals A Social Critique of Behavioral Approaches to International Law

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 248-252
Author(s):  
Sungjoon Cho
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Legal Analysis ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
State Action ◽  
The Social ◽  
Interpretive Mode ◽  
Blind Spots

Behavioral approaches have been successful in challenging the rational actor model of international legal analysis and supplementing that model with empirical evidence. Yet observing a set of features about the world requires ignoring or bracketing others. Behavioral approaches retain their own inevitable blind spots, which are not necessarily products of flawed experimental design, but stem from the paradigmatic traits of these approaches. These blind spots derive from an emphasis on methodological individualism, positivism, and experimentation. This emphasis may obscure the social aspects of international legal decision-making. For example, behavioral approaches to international law often use experimental data to describe cognitive tendencies. In doing so, these approaches may not seek and likely will not have tools to discover the meaning of a state action, or the human actions that produce that state action. That latter inquiry requires “historical, ethnographic and other sociological methods that analyze social life outside of the experimental setting.” In sum, behavioral approaches pursue both theoretical and empirical concerns different from those pursued in an interpretive mode of meaning-making.

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