scholarly journals Resistance and Representation: The Making of Chinese Identity in the Art of The Yiyanhui and the Equator Art Society in 1950s Singapore

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 13-27
Author(s):  
Emelia Ian Li Ong

This paper examines the social realist paintings of the art groups Yiyanhui and the Equator Art Society which emerged during the 1950s in Malaya and Singapore. Their works centred on the social functions of art and its subject matters featured the working class, the Japanese occupation and anti-British colonial sentiment. Their artworks are viewed here as cultural productions shaped by the negotiation between dominant-subordinate relationships within a postcolonial framework. It is argued that the artistic productions examined here may be viewed not only for its overarching “social realist” endeavours but, also as a struggle to rewrite the narrative of the Chinese in Malaya against of the prevailing static representations forwarded by the colonial campaign. The first part of the paper illustrates how colonial discourse in the local press propagated an image of the Chinese as inherently susceptible to communism, untrustworthy, and opportunistic. The second part of the paper shows how the artists resisted this essentialist image of Chinese identity and offered a more complex picture of a Chinese-Malayan identity. Through a combination of interviews, written artist’s statements, formal and contextual considerations of the artworks, as well as a cultural studies framework, I demonstrate how a different narrative is being offered by these artists through two related processes in identity construction: qualifications for authenticity and belonging, the articulation of ambivalence. Resistance thus, is explored as encompassing a network of strategies employed by these artists as a way to reject colonialist representations of otherness and gain authorial agency against the intellectual and ideological dominance of colonial discourse.

Author(s):  
Youssef A. Haddad

This chapter examines the social functions of speaker-oriented attitude datives in Levantine Arabic. It analyzes these datives as perspectivizers used by a speaker to instruct her hearer to view her as a form of authority in relation to him, to the content of her utterance, and to the activity they are both involved in. The nature of this authority depends on the sociocultural, situational, and co-textual context, including the speaker’s and hearer’s shared values and beliefs, their respective identities, and the social acts employed in interaction. The chapter analyzes specific instances of speaker-oriented attitude datives as used in different types of social acts (e.g., commands, complaints) and in different types of settings (e.g., family talk, gossip). It also examines how these datives interact with facework, politeness, and rapport management.


2020 ◽  
pp. 129-148
Author(s):  
Halyna Маtsyuk

The article is devoted to the formation of a linguistic interpretation of the interaction of language and culture of the Polish-Ukrainian border territories. The material for the analysis includes nomic systems of Ukrainian and Polish languages, which are considered as a cultural product of interpersonal and interethnic communication and an element of the language system, as well as invariant scientific theory created in the works of Polish onomastics (according to key theoretical concepts, tradition of analysis, and continuity in linguistic knowledge). The analysis performed in the article allows us to single out the linguistic indicators of the interaction of language and culture typical for the subject field of sociolinguistics. These are connections and concepts: language-territory, language-social strata, language-gender, language-ethnicity, social functions of the Polish language, and non-standardized spelling systems. Linguistic indicators reveal the peculiar mechanisms of the border in the historical memory and collective consciousness, marking the role of languages in these areas as a factor of space and cultural marker and bringing us closer to understanding the social relations of native speakers in the fifteenth-nineteenth centuries.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam Babaei Aghbolagh ◽  
Farzad Sattari Ardabili
Keyword(s):  

2007 ◽  
Vol 66 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-162
Author(s):  
Stefan Van den Bossche

Het menselijke tekort in het algemeen, het rampzalige van de oorlog, de sociale en  culturele aspecten van de Vlaamse beweging, het Vlaams kunstleven aan de IJzer, het activisme, het frontisme: al die geladen thema’s komen rechtstreeks of onrechtstreeks aan bod in de bijdrage van Stefan Van den Bossche over Jos Verdegem (1897-1957). Deze minder bekende Gentse schilder uit het interbellum kwam eerst in nauwe betrekking met de expressionistische dichter en journalist Wies Moens en met andere vooraanstaande Vlaamsgezinde kunstenaars. Verdegems (tijdelijk) verblijf in Parijs en zijn huwelijk met een Française leidde er uiteindelijk toe dat hij vervreemde van het Vlaamsgezinde milieu. Daarenboven droegen zijn hoekige karaktereigenschappen er toe bij dat hij “eerder berucht dan beroemd” werd.________"A quiet, ill-mannered working-class lad". Jos Verdegem (1897-1957), Wies Moens and "Ter Waarheid"This contribution by Stefan Van den Bossche about Jos Verdegem (1897-1957) deals directly or indirectly with a variety of very meaningful topics such as human failure in general, the calamity of war, the social and cultural aspects of the Flemish movement, Flemish art life on the IJzer, activism, and frontism.This lesser-known painter from Ghent from the Interbellum period first came in close contact with the expressionist poet and journalist Wies Moens and with other prominent Flemish nationalist artists. Verdegem's (temporary) stay in Paris and his marriage to a Frenchwoman caused his ultimate estrangement from the Flemish nationalist environment. Moreover, his awkward characteristics contributed to his becoming "infamous rather than famous".


1971 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 421-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Millicent E. Poole ◽  
T. W. Field

The Bernstein thesis of elaborated and restricted coding orientation in oral communication was explored at an Australian tertiary institute. A working-class/middle-class dichotomy was established on the basis of parental occupation and education, and differences in overall coding orientation were found to be associated with social class. This study differed from others in the area in that the social class groups were contrasted in the totality of their coding orientation on the elaborated/restricted continuum, rather than on discrete indices of linguistic coding.


2017 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 413-438
Author(s):  
Eszter Bartha

Abstract The article seeks to place the workers’ road from socialism to capitalism in East Germany and Hungary in a historical context. It offers an overview of the most important elements of the party’s policy towards labour in the two countries under the Honecker and the Kádár regime respectively. It examines the highly paternalistic role of the factory as a life-long employer and provider of workers’ needs for the large industrial working class which the regime considered to be its main social basis. Given that the thesis of the working class as the ruling class was central to the legitimating ideology of the state socialist regimes, dissident intellectuals challenging this thesis were effectively marginalized or forced into exile. After the change of regimes, the “working class” again became an ideological term associated with the discredited and fallen regime. The article analyses the changes within the life-world of East German and Hungarian workers in the light of life-history interviews. It argues that in Hungary, the social and material decline of the workers – alongside the loss of the symbolic capital of the working class – reinforced ethno-centric, nationalistic narratives, which juxtaposed “globalization” and “national capitalism”, the latter supposedly protecting citizens from the exploitation by global capital. In the light of the sad reports of falling standards of living and impoverishment, the Kádár regime received an ambiguous, often nostalgic evaluation. While the East Germans were also critical of the new, capitalist society (unemployment, intensified competition for jobs, the disintegration of the old, work-based communities), they gave more credit to the post-socialist democratic institutions. They were more willing to reconcile the old socialist values which they had appreciated in the GDR with a modern left-wing critique than their Hungarian counterparts, for whom nationalism seemed to offer the only means to express social criticism.


2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
FELICIA YAP

One of the most important minorities in the British colonial empire in Asia consisted of those of mixed European and Asian parentage and/or ancestry, or Eurasians, as they were widely known. It is perhaps surprising that despite the voluminous literature written about British colonial communities in the East, relatively little scholarly attention has been paid to Eurasians and their histories. A closer examination of the members of this marginalised colonial category is nevertheless crucial as they stood at the problematic boundaries of racial politics and identity, and are therefore vital to our understanding of the tensions of empire. The few existing studies of Eurasians in British Asia have tended to focus on the experiences of Eurasians either before or after the Second World War, neglecting the period of Japanese occupation as a significant epoch in the evolution of these communities. In reality, if we intend to unravel the multi-layered history of Eurasians in this region, we must examine the critical position of these colonial communities during this tumultuous period. The nuances of their intriguing wartime relationships with both the British and the Japanese also merit serious attention. With these aims in mind, this article will investigate the compelling experiences of Eurasian communities in Japanese-occupied British Asia, with an especial focus on those who were incarcerated by the Japanese in civilian internment camps in Hong Kong and Singapore.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (11) ◽  
pp. 15-20
Author(s):  
Irina N. Mysliaeva ◽  

The article examines the causes and directions of transformation of the social functions of the state. The role of liberal ideology in changing the forms and methods of state social policy in the context of globalization is determined. The interrelation between specific measures of social support of the population and the interests of large transnational capital in modern society is revealed.


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