Gendering the nation: A case study on the postage stamps of Cyprus (original) (raw)

Gender and Ideology: Women on Postage Stamps in Serbia: 2006-2018

2021

In 2000 certain democratic changes happened in Serbia. They instilled hopes that everyday life will be more democratic in every segment, especially when gender equality is concerned (equality for the different, that is, women). The degree to which a society is democratic could be measured in different ways. One of them is the presence of visuals (drawings, etc.) or presence of any other form of material culture. The aim of this paper is to examine the degree of democratic changes in multinational, multi-confessional and multilingual Serbia during the last decade as it relates to the absence of linguistic codes, and using postage stamps to depict women (2006-2018). The corpus consists of all the postage stamps printed during the period, but only those depicting women were analysed. The analysis of the text on postage stamps opens up a theoretical question “What is text”? We here introduce the criterion of ‘implied knowledge’ as a measure for the understanding of the meaning of text o...

Veil or Evil? Spotlighting Women Portrayal through Semiotics Analysis

The phenomenon of woman and man portrayal has been discussed worldwide. Many viewpoints such as media, politics, health, cultural studies, gender concerned on this topic. However, only a few of them was trying to seek out the language features attributed for women representation. Accordingly, to fill in this gap, this research aims at describing semiotic sign analysis of woman portrayal in media. A number of four data of Serambi Indonesia column were analyzed based on two signification semiotics interpretations of Barthes (1967). The result eventually revealed that the language features attributed for women in the newspaper are woman as animal, as properties, as trigger of sins, as peaceful guard, those are considered as terms of denotative signification meaning. Meanwhile, the connotative meaning divided into two understandings; veil and evil, introducing positive and negative representation towards women. Finally, it is expected that for further studies involve systemic functional linguistics or corpus linguistics towards other discourses as media to further develop the conclusions drawn from Ika Apriani Fata

Ika Apriani Fata Veil or Evil? Spotlighting Women Portrayal through Semiotics Analysis

The phenomenon of woman and man portrayal has been discussed worldwide. Many viewpoints such as media, politics, health, cultural studies, gender concerned on this topic. However, only a few of them was trying to seek out the language features attributed for women representation. Accordingly, to fill in this gap, this research aims at describing semiotic sign analysis of woman portrayal in media. A number of four data of Serambi Indonesia column were analyzed based on two signification semiotics interpretations of Barthes (1967). The result eventually revealed that the language features attributed for women in the newspaper are woman as animal, as properties, as trigger of sins, as peaceful guard, those are considered as terms of denotative signification meaning. Meanwhile, the connotative meaning divided into two understandings; veil and evil, introducing positive and negative representation towards women. Finally, it is expected that for further studies involve systemic functional linguistics or corpus linguistics towards other discourses as media to further develop the conclusions drawn from this present study.

Maniou, Th. & Photiou, I. (2013). ‘Representation of gender relations in the Cypriot popular culture’. In Anabel Ternès (ed.), Communication: Breakdowns and Breakthroughts (pp.99-110). Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press.

Mass media concurrently shape and are shaped by social norms, in Cyprus as in all other cultures. Specific images, speech and/or actions are gendered in the media and such gendering is both linked to, and influential of, wider social and cultural norms, attitudes, and practices. This paper investigates gender and gender conflict as they are represented in two popular Cypriot media forms. The first, the Radio Sketch, is a radio entertainment programme that is unique in the media of Cyprus and which was one of the most popular media outputs in Cyprus from the 1950s until the late 1980s. The second mass medium considered in this paper is lifestyle magazines, one of the most popular contemporary Cypriot mass culture forms. This paper identifies and analyses specific features of the representations of gender relations that predominate in each of these media forms. As the entire spectrum of gender relations cannot be fully explored in a single project, we have chosen to focus our research to the investigation of how gendered images and characteristics manifest gender relations, and to explore the power relations conjured in and through these representations. Finally, we compare and contrast the findings from our studies of the Sketches and lifestyle magazines. This enabled us to reflect on the changes in gendered images, and thereby gender relations, in popular Cypriot media over the period from the 1970s until today, and to consider how social change might relate to the alterations in these gendered media representations. We view this review as a first step in a larger investigation of the representations of gender relations in the most popular Cypriot media.

A Social Semiotic Discourse Analysis of Gender Expressions in Selected Nigerian Newspapers

Peter O Makinde , 2022

Researches have been carried out on the understanding of sexism in communication. Sexism in communication also known as gender expression is a description of the manner in which languages inherently exclude a particular gender in discourse. This study investigates the nature of gender words in communication in selected Nigerian newspapers. The study adopts a qualitative research design. Data for the study are sourced from the Guardian, the Guardian Life Magazine and Daily Trust Newspapers, and websites-wps.org and katakata.org. The analysis was conducted through the application of Kress and Van Leeuwen's (1996:2006) visual semiotic which was drawn from Halliday"s (1978) Systematic Functional Linguistics approach to multimodal discourse analysis. It considers how an expression is composed of different modes in meaning making process. The first effort was to establish the direction of sexism in the Nigerian newspapers, which was observed to be female directed. Findings from the study show that there are still a good number of sexist expressions in Nigerian newspapers. It is also observed that the direction of the sexism is on the female gender.

Maniou, Th. & I. Photiou. (2013). "Representation of gender relations in the Cypriot popular culture: The cases of cypriot radio-sketch and lifestyle magazines". In Ternes, A. (ed.). Communication Breakdowns and Breakthrough. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary press, pp. 99-111.

Mass media concurrently shape and are shaped by social norms, in Cyprus as in all other cultures. Specific images, speech and/or actions are gendered in the media and such gendering is both linked to, and influential of, wider social and cultural norms, attitudes, and practices. This paper investigates gender and gender conflict as they are represented in two popular Cypriot media forms. The first, the Radio Sketch, is a radio entertainment programme that is unique in the media of Cyprus and which was one of the most popular media outputs in Cyprus from the 1950s until the late 1980s. The second mass medium considered in this presentation is lifestyle magazines, one of the most popular contemporary Cypriot mass culture forms. This presentation will identify and analyse specific features of the representations of gender relations that predominate in each of these media forms. As the entire spectrum of gender relations cannot be fully explored in a single project, we have chosen to focus our research to the investigation of how gendered images and characteristics manifest gender relations, and to explore the power relations conjured in and through these representations. Finally, we will compare and contrast the findings from our studies of the Sketches and lifestyle magazines. This will enable us to reflect on the changes in gendered images, and thereby gender relations, in popular Cypriot media over the period from the 1970s until today, and to consider how social change might relate to the alterations in these gendered media representations. We view the review we will present as a first step in a larger investigation of the representations of gender relations in the most popular Cypriot media.

Representation of Gender Relations in Cypriot popular culture: the cases of the Cypriot Radio Sketch and Cypriot lifestyle magazines

Mass media concurrently shape and are shaped by social norms, in Cyprus as in all other cultures. Specific images, speech and/or actions are gendered in the media and such gendering is both linked to, and influential of, wider social and cultural norms, attitudes, and practices. This paper investigates gender and gender conflict as they are represented in two popular Cypriot media forms. The first, the Radio Sketch, is a radio entertainment programme that is unique in the media of Cyprus and which was one of the most popular media outputs in Cyprus from the 1950s until the late 1980s. The second mass medium considered in this paper is lifestyle magazines, one of the most popular contemporary Cypriot mass culture forms. This paper identifies and analyses specific features of the representations of gender relations that predominate in each of these media forms. As the entire spectrum of gender relations cannot be fully explored in a single project, we have chosen to focus our research to the investigation of how gendered images and characteristics manifest gender relations, and to explore the power relations conjured in and through these representations. Finally, we compare and contrast the findings from our studies of the Sketches and lifestyle magazines. This enabled us to reflect on the changes in gendered images, and thereby gender relations, in popular Cypriot media over the period from the 1970s until today, and to consider how social change might relate to the alterations in these gendered media representations. We view this review as a first step in a larger investigation of the representations of gender relations in the most popular Cypriot media. 2

Gender Stereotypes in Cypriot Print Advertisements: a Comparison of Single and Relationship Portrayals

Paper presented at the 18th International Conference on Corporate and Marketing Communication, Salerno, Italy, 2013

The study discusses female and male role portrayals in Cypriot magazine advertisements. The first objective of the research lies in the examination of the interrelation of gender stereotypes with magazine type and product category. The second objective constitutes a comparison between single figure and gender relationship advertisements. A content analysis of 460 advertisements was conducted. The results show that stereotypical depictions of males and females are still evident in Cyprus magazine advertisements. In single advertisements, females tend to mostly appear in decorative roles whereas males are often displayed in decorative and authority roles. In relationship advertisements such portrayals report a decrease, followed by an advance of traditional and neutral depictions. The study suggests the existence of an association of gender stereotypes with magazine type and product category.

The masculine media discourse cyprus

This paper analyses the portrayal of women and femininity as a humorous object in the print media of North Cyprus within the broad context of political discourse. We aim to demonstrate how particular discourses embedded within a patriarchal ideology in the media become apparent in jokes and cartoons relating to the Cyprus issue. We have identified two interconnected patterns in the cartoons and jokes in the print media: 'femininity as a laughable subject' and 'Cyprus/the Cyprus issue represented as a woman'. We have studied our material through critical discourse analysis; in other words, we analyze the media through the lens of discourse. Discourse in the media constitutes a social world and is associated with a particular representation of certain social practices. Accordingly, we have examined the gendered character of the Cyprus issue via its social, political, and historical aspects.

Social Semiotics A social semiotic analysis of gender power in Nigeria's newspaper political cartoons

This paper is a critical examination of the ideological underpinnings of cartoons in Nigeria's socio-political milieu. The study seeks to unveil cartoonists' strategic moves to (mis)represent Nigerian women. The data comprise 10 political cartoons which were selected using a purposive-sampling method in line with the thematic concern of the study. They were analysed using Kress and Van Leeuwen's social semiotic approach to the analysis of multimodal texts along with insights from critical discourse analysis (CDA). Findings reveal that semiotic resources, such as pronominal choices, speech acts, labelling, visual metaphorisation, information value, salience/emphasis, and framing, play significant roles in cartoonists' commentaries on gender-related issues in Nigeria's socio-political domain. Viewed against the United Nations' global goal of gender equality by 2030, the study concludes that Nigerian newspaper political cartoonists' representation of women ideologically both (re)produces or resists (un)equal gender relations among Nigerian citizens.