Invitational Rhetoric and Humor: Making Audience Laugh, Inviting Them to Think

Humor is a resource for discourse dealing with the taboo. Through the use of humor, comedians can practice uninhibited use of free public speech because audiences expect to laugh in these situations. This inherent expectation creates an environment where expression, objective opinions, and otherwise offensive ideas can be shared in a public space without fear of persecution or repercussion. As such, humor message creators are free to push social boundaries to create a discourse necessary to address what would be offensive. This freedom is important to this work because of how comedians approach the use of stereotypical ethnic humor. The culmination of audience expectation and openness creates an environment readily available for analysis of ethnic humor messages by researchers. Using the lens of Invitational Rhetoric, we uncover rhetorical messages embedded in the humor that work to challenge negative stereotypes about identity.

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Pride parades and prejudice: Visibility of Roma and LGBTI communities in post-socialist Europe

Communist and Post-Communist Studies ◽

10.1016/j.postcomstud.2016.06.002 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 49 (3) ◽

pp. 269-277 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Aidan McGarry

Keyword(s):

Public Space ◽

Coming Out ◽

Group Identity ◽

Minority Groups ◽

Public Life ◽

Negative Stereotypes ◽

Marginalised Groups ◽

Pride Parades ◽

The One ◽

Minority Interests

This article argues that public space is important for marginalised communities in order to ensure visibility and presence in public life. Often minority groups are excluded from democratic procedures which favour majority interests and preferences. This is not to say that minority interests are incompatible with those of the majority but some marginalised groups are not anchored in public space, can suffer discriminatory treatment and lack the ability to control dominant, usually negative, ascriptions of group identity. This article explores two cases of marginalised communities and access to public space in post-socialist Europe: Roma and the LGBTI communities. Both communities have attempted to ensure their presence in public space through ‘Pride’ parades across Central and Eastern European capitals. The purpose of pride parades is to demand rights as citizens, such as equality and respect, and to ensure visibility in public life. On the one hand, visibility is important for LGBTI communities who remain relatively hidden and fear ‘coming out’. On the other hand, for Roma, who are highly visible, pride offers an opportunity to harness this visibility to challenge prevailing negative stereotypes through an affirmation of group identity.

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Representations of dementias in the press (2001-2010)

Sociologia Problemas e Práticas ◽

10.7458/spp2013732805 ◽

1970 ◽

Author(s):

Eduardo Cintra Torres

Keyword(s):

Public Space ◽

Media Coverage ◽

World Health Organisation ◽

World Health ◽

First Year ◽

Negative Stereotypes ◽

The Public ◽

Daily Newspapers ◽

Printed Media ◽

The Press

In the first year of the 21st century, the World Health Organisation added itsweight toWorld Mental Health Day, with a view to stimulating interest in mentaldisorders, particularly through media coverage. This paper presents the resultsof a quantitative study on representations of types of dementia in threePortuguese daily newspapers between 2001 and 2010. The author did not wantto limit the study to the articles in the health sections and therefore looked at thewhole of the newspapers. This revealed a regular coverage of the topic in every section of the papers, especially with regard to Alzheimer’s disease, and with alarge variety of sources, protagonists and specific subjects. It also demonstratedthe existence of an inclusive attitude that is concomitant with an objective handlingof the topic. As a whole, Portuguese printed media news about dementias isfree of negative stereotypes and tends to give readers enough information andto include dementia among the themes that are both consensual in and importantto the public space.

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The Art of Social Connection: Exploring Former Refugee and Host Society Integration via a Collaborative, Participatory Painting Project in Wellington City

10.26686/wgtn.17060420 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

◽

Amber Kale

Keyword(s):

New Zealand ◽

Public Space ◽

Ethnic Discrimination ◽

Policy Framework ◽

Social Connection ◽

Host Society ◽

Political Debate ◽

Negative Stereotypes ◽

Citizenship Rights ◽

Philosophical Foundations

In light of the global humanitarian crisis, a climate of fear has arisen around refugees which is often exacerbated by the media perpetuating misinformation and negative stereotypes. Such misrepresentation is problematic as a skewed perspective of refugees, compounded with ethnic and cultural barriers to belonging, is leading to discriminatory practices in New Zealand. Thus, there exists an incongruence between New Zealand’s non-discriminatory equal citizenship rights in law; and refugee and ethnic discrimination and marginalisation in processes of social integration. To begin to bridge this incongruence, this research explores how theories of social connection may be practically applied to enable more equitable social outcomes. A scholar activist orientation was employed, informed by a participatory action research epistemology. These philosophical foundations influenced a qualitative multi-method methodology consisting of painting workshops, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and public feedback. Within the workshops, former refugee and host society participants explored how concepts of home, belonging, and visibility within public space are imagined, normalised, and contested within everyday practices of inclusion and exclusion in Wellington. These themes were significant in enhancing understanding of participants’ unique experiences of displacement and place-attachment, and theorising how host societies might extend a more sincere welcome to newcomers. Applying a sociospatial relational framework to centralise participant interactions, I analysed how processes of social connection can begin to deconstruct negative refugee stereotypes, challenge normative conceptualisations of belonging, and enhance former refugees’ access to citizenship rights. As New Zealand prepares to raise the annual refugee quota, such democratic explorations and representations of place are crucial in informing a multicultural social policy framework to guide equitable integration praxis and critical political debate.

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Public Space in North American Cities

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.593 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Jessica Ellen Sewell

Keyword(s):

Public Space ◽

20Th Century ◽

19Th Century ◽

Public Spaces ◽

Public Parks ◽

Physical And Mental Health ◽

Late 20Th Century ◽

Public Speech ◽

The Public ◽

Wide Range

From 1800 to 2000, cities grew enormously, and saw an expansion of public spaces to serve the varied needs of a diverse population living in ever more cramped and urban circumstances. While a wide range of commercial semipublic spaces became common in the late 19th century, parks and streets were the best examples of truly public spaces with full freedom of access. Changes in the design and management of streets, sidewalks, squares, parks, and plazas during this period reflect changing ideas about the purpose of public space and how it should be used. Streets shifted from being used for a wide range of activities, including vending, playing games, and storing goods, to becoming increasingly specialized spaces of movement, designed and managed by the early twentieth century for automobile traffic. Sidewalks, which in the early nineteenth century were paid for and liberally used by adjacent businesses, were similarly specialized as spaces of pedestrian movement. However, the tradition of using streets and sidewalks as a space of public celebration and public speech remained strong throughout the period. During parades and protests, streets and sidewalks were temporarily remade as spaces of the performance of the public, and the daily activities of circulation and commerce were set aside. In 1800, the main open public spaces in cities were public squares or commons, often used for militia training and public celebration. In the second half of the 19th century, these were augmented by large picturesque parks. Designed as an antidote to urbanity, these parks served the public as a place for leisure, redefining public space as a polite leisure amenity, rather than a place for people to congregate as a public. The addition of playgrounds, recreational spaces, and public plazas in the 20th century served both the physical and mental health of the public. In the late 20th century, responding to neoliberal ideas and urban fiscal crises, the ownership and management of public parks and plazas was increasingly privatized, further challenging public accessibility.

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Pride Parades and/or Prayer Processions: Contested Public Space in Serbia #Belgrade Pride 2014

Journal of Empirical Theology ◽

10.1163/15709256-12341330 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 28 (2) ◽

pp. 204-225 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Danica Igrutinović ◽

Srdjan Sremac ◽

Mariecke van den Berg

Keyword(s):

Public Space ◽

Orthodox Church ◽

Religious Institutions ◽

Public Speech ◽

Nationalist Discourse ◽

Religious Ritual ◽

Sexuality And Gender ◽

And Gender ◽

The Church ◽

Insight Into

In post-Yugoslav countries, national identity seems to be increasingly defined by the formulation of a traditional discourse on sexuality and gender, culminating in a growing interference of religious institutions with national debates and policies onlgbt-rights. In this paper we aim to gain more insight into the discursive effects of such sexual nationalist discourse by exploring responses of the Serbian Orthodox Church to the 2014 Belgrade Pride parade. Drawing from theories on religious and sexual nationalism and queer geography, we will argue that while the Serbian Orthodox discourse on homosexuality is becoming more secular, this secularization of public speech is compensated by a strategy of reclaiming the streets of Belgrade through politically charged public religious ritual. As the church is in this way making its anti-lgbtattitude physical and visible, Serbian citizens are increasingly requested to agree to Church teachings on sexuality and gender as a prerequisite for religious participation, resulting in an increasing divide between those “within” and “without” the community of Orthodox Serbs.

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Mediating the Web as a Public Space

Nordicom Review ◽

10.1515/nor-2017-0245 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 26 (1) ◽

pp. 31-48 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Seija Ridell

Keyword(s):

Public Space ◽

Citizen Participation ◽

Local Level ◽

Academic Research ◽

Decision Makers ◽

Social Boundaries ◽

Public Communication ◽

Cultural Significance ◽

Experimental Project ◽

The Web

Abstract Amidst the commercial hype that has come to surround the internet in recent years, there has been much excitement about the democratic promise of the net and a growing wave of various e-democracy projects. It is thought that the ICTs and the world wide web in particular will enable more direct forms of citizen participation, especially at the local level, foster reciprocal interaction between citizens and decision-makers and create new spaces for public discussion and debate. Despite the claims of interactivity, the agenda for most online democracy projects has been set and their purposes of communication defined by institutionalized and powerful actors. The disparity between the rhetoric and the reality of web-assisted democracy is bound to persist unless the compartmentalized and hierarchic practices of public communication are challenged both theoretically and in practice. This article suggests that in order to tap the democratic potential of the web, we need to address the question of genre. As genres offer the cultural interfaces through which people make sense of and use the web, like other media, bottom-up alternatives to dominant online genres are needed in order to create more citizen-oriented spaces of public communication on the web. By drawing upon an experimental project where academic research co-operated with local grassroots citizen groups and actively mediated interaction on the web across social boundaries and power hierarchies, the article aims to demonstrate the socio-cultural significance of civic web genres.

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Desire lines and defensive architecture in modern urban environments

Urban Studies ◽

10.1177/0042098017732690 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 55 (13) ◽

pp. 2980-2995 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Naomi Smith ◽

Peter Walters

Keyword(s):

Social Movements ◽

Urban Environment ◽

Public Space ◽

Urban Environments ◽

Social Boundaries ◽

Public Realm ◽

Urban Populations ◽

Productive Force ◽

The City

Public space is being increasingly managed by defensive architecture, surveillance and other subtle filtering mechanisms to make it more palatable and attendant to the needs of capital. This reinforces social boundaries, making space inhospitable to those people whose presence is not welcome, and serves to ‘discipline’ city inhabitants into primarily consumption based modes of interacting with and in the city. However, disenfranchised urban populations still find ways to exist in and navigate these spaces. The purpose of this article is to highlight these ways by introducing the concept of ‘desire lines’ as a means of overcoming or re-imagining defensive space. We use Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of desire as productive force, combined with De Certeau’s notion of ‘walking the city’, to explore how individuals and social movements might practically, and in a metaphorical sense, create new collective paths, creating ‘desire lines’ of resistance and change within what is often an increasingly unforgiving and dominated urban environment, created by and for capital at the expense of a vibrant public realm.

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The Art of Social Connection: Exploring Former Refugee and Host Society Integration via a Collaborative, Participatory Painting Project in Wellington City

10.26686/wgtn.17060420.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

◽

Amber Kale

Keyword(s):

New Zealand ◽

Public Space ◽

Ethnic Discrimination ◽

Policy Framework ◽

Social Connection ◽

Host Society ◽

Political Debate ◽

Negative Stereotypes ◽

Citizenship Rights ◽

Philosophical Foundations

In light of the global humanitarian crisis, a climate of fear has arisen around refugees which is often exacerbated by the media perpetuating misinformation and negative stereotypes. Such misrepresentation is problematic as a skewed perspective of refugees, compounded with ethnic and cultural barriers to belonging, is leading to discriminatory practices in New Zealand. Thus, there exists an incongruence between New Zealand’s non-discriminatory equal citizenship rights in law; and refugee and ethnic discrimination and marginalisation in processes of social integration. To begin to bridge this incongruence, this research explores how theories of social connection may be practically applied to enable more equitable social outcomes. A scholar activist orientation was employed, informed by a participatory action research epistemology. These philosophical foundations influenced a qualitative multi-method methodology consisting of painting workshops, semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and public feedback. Within the workshops, former refugee and host society participants explored how concepts of home, belonging, and visibility within public space are imagined, normalised, and contested within everyday practices of inclusion and exclusion in Wellington. These themes were significant in enhancing understanding of participants’ unique experiences of displacement and place-attachment, and theorising how host societies might extend a more sincere welcome to newcomers. Applying a sociospatial relational framework to centralise participant interactions, I analysed how processes of social connection can begin to deconstruct negative refugee stereotypes, challenge normative conceptualisations of belonging, and enhance former refugees’ access to citizenship rights. As New Zealand prepares to raise the annual refugee quota, such democratic explorations and representations of place are crucial in informing a multicultural social policy framework to guide equitable integration praxis and critical political debate.

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Rehabilitacja starości. Glottogeragogika jako wyzwanie wobec ageizmu

Annales Universitatis Mariae Curie-Sklodowska sectio N Educatio Nova ◽

10.17951/en.2020.5.441-452 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 441

Author(s):

Dariusz Piechota

Keyword(s):

Social Structure ◽

Public Space ◽

Foreign Languages ◽

Negative Stereotypes ◽

Third Age ◽

The Public ◽

Teaching Aids ◽

The Social

The article is devoted to analysing and interpreting seniors as a new group of active students who learn foreign languages. Changes in the social structure confirm the thesis of sociologists that the 21st century will be the period of emancipation of seniors. Active nestors in the public space will become not only depositaries of history, culture and tradition, but also take an important voice in intergenerational discussion, breaking negative stereotypes shaping the attitude of ageism. The involvement and interest of modern seniors in the course of classes organized by Third Age Universities prove that they are able to use the life opportunities offered by the retirement period. Therefore, the challenge for contemporary glottogeragogues is to develop programs, textbooks and teaching aids for learning foreign languages, taking into account the needs and interests of seniors.

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