CP – Number 27 (2022)

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CP, Number 27

Section:

No. 27 (2022)

Abstract:

The position of women in society has always been a sensitive topic as women have had to fight for their rights and recognition for centuries and this fight, evidently, has not reached its (happy) end yet. There were many rules, norms and laws limiting the rights and roles of women in families and in society, in general, determining every aspect of the society and its hierarchy and thus, making women’s lives insecure. In adopting a comparative approach, the paper aims at deciphering and identifying any inclinations to or attempts at resistance against the injustice that was generally accepted as natural, and against the long-established and deeply rooted stereotypes. To this purpose, it presents the fictional world of literature represented by the works of Jane Austen, more particularly by the way her fictional female characters inhabiting the English countryside struggled with the hardships brought upon them by the rules and limitations women were subject to in the real world and Austen’s attempts at slipping in her own standpoints, which often did not conform with the generally accepted rules and views. This fictional world is then confronted with the real-world and personal experience of the writer Beatrix Potter who, though of a younger generation, had to fight hard for her personal and professional independence and recognition. The findings are briefly supported by references to other female writers by emphasizing the similarities in their lives.

Keywords:

laws, society, culture, class, struggle, independence, fiction, reality.

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CP, Number 27

Section:

No. 27 (2022)

Abstract:

The paper analyses the way in which Covid-19 memes were created during the first wave of the pandemic, paying particular attention to the intertextual links employed and to the ideology that is being put forward through those pieces of digital humour. The corpus for this analysis comprises 180 memes circulated on Facebook and Instagram in the period 13 March 2020 – 30 May 2020. The memes were first thematically categorized into several groups and the specifics of each group were reviewed. As people experienced more or less similar feelings when placed in isolation/under quarantine, these states are considered universal, and this particular study focuses on a sample of 54 quarantine/isolation-related memes circulated in the social media during the first wave of the pandemic. Using CDA and Multimodal Discourse Analysis the paper presents the main trends in their creation along with the established intertextual links and the ideas transmitted. Some of the conclusions reached are that memes employing images of celebrities or popular characters, be they international or local, are easier to decode, while the resort to culture-specific codes and images from movies might prove challenging and, to a big extent, depends on the background knowledge and interests of the recipients.

Keywords:

internet memes, ideology, intertextuality, Covid-19, CDA, multimodality.

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CP, Number 27

Section:

No. 27 (2022)

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The language of food is one of the most complex, profound and communicative languages in all communities. Semioticians such as Gianfranco Marrone have revealed that we use food to signify the world and to give different meanings to the world. The purpose of this research comes from this character of food, food as language, as communication practice which has specific codes and rites as Roland Barthes, Marcel Danesi, and Jean-Jacques Boutaud confirmed. We intend to place our approach in the field of tradition, in the field of cultural heritage as a form of cultural resistance. To this purpose, we will assess the cultural resistance through a semiotic approach, from the identification of the element of cultural heritage to its contemporary discourse. We will follow the food heritage route as a form of resilience through the eCultfood research project and heritage communication through the Romanian communication campaign entitled “100 fire recipes”.

Keywords:

cultural heritage, food, identity, cultural semiotics, resistance, cultural communication.

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CP, Number 27

Section:

No. 27 (2022)

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Social media’s members of the 21st century have been engaged in a variety of new forms of communication, among which, an important place is occupied by image memes. Memes represent an idea, concept, opinion and situation (López-Paredes & Carillo-Andrade 2022), incorporate diverse elements such as intertextual references, a joke or a critical message that refer to some aspect of the human experience, and are endowed with a significant discursive power (Wiggins 2019). The purpose of this study is to examine some of the memes that were created as a reaction to “Partygate” in 2021, criticizing the British Prime Minister. A qualitative content analysis was performed on a series of memes that started from Boris Johnson’s apology to the House of Commons (“I thought it was a work event”) for having attended a party in a period when such gatherings were forbidden (with the exception of work events) because of Covid-19 restrictions. The study aims to depict how these memes act as a form of resistance and criticism against the British Prime Minister, his deeds and apology.

Keywords:

memes, humour, British, cultural resistance, work event

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CP, Number 27

Section:

No. 27 (2022)

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan is probably one of the most famous and thought-provoking contemporary artists of Italian descent. She is the author of numerous poetry books and has recently started a parallel career as a painter. By focusing on her most recent poetry collection entitled When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021), this essay sets out to explore the strategies she has articulated to heal her individual and collective wounds (as an Italian American), while resisting the annihilation of her cultural background. Throughout her life, she has been compelled to cross several emotional wastelands, eventually managing to carve her own path to multiple places (both physical and imaginary) she could call “home”.

Keywords:

Homeland, Italian Americans, Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Resistance, Wasteland, When the Stars Were Still Visible

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CP, Number 27

Section:

No. 27 (2022)

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Michel Foucault’s conceptualization of space has often been associated with fields which study concrete, material spaces, such as Architecture. Nevertheless, if one believes in the reciprocal nation-fiction relation, Foucault’s definition of the heterotopia as a space between the real and the unreal can prove to be valuable for various fields of representation. Nowadays, as part of a globalized consumer society, we increasingly rely on social media to create, shape and change our perception of ourselves and of others. In this context, social media websites can be considered as heterotopias and this article will highlight how Instagram can be understood as an alternative space where female users exist in the real, localizable, world while simultaneously living in an imaginary bubble that is shaped by external societal expectations, shaping the audience’s perception of women outside of it. Additionally, this article will question whether and how the popularity of the #MeToo movement on social media affected the representation of women on the social media platform. To do so, in addition to Foucault’s six principles of heterotopia, new historicism will be used to analyse the issue.

Keywords:

Heterotopia, Instagram, Representation of women, #MeToo, New Historicism, Contemporary Feminist Movement

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CP, Number 27

Section:

No. 27 (2022) 

Abstract:

This article attempts to prove that the sense of English identity and English nationalism were two key factors in the UK’s decision to withdraw from the European Union and indicates the evolution of the Eurosceptic attitude in the UK to the point at which UK’s citizens were divided by the referendum in 2016 into two categories: Brexiters and Remainers. In adopting a socio-cultural perspective, it provides an empirical analysis of a survey made in 2012 by the Future of England regarding English nationalism and the way such attitudes as Euroscepticism, Britishness or Englishness affected the results of the 2016 EU referendum in the UK. It starts with the main features of nationalism in UK’s component countries (Black 2021) and ends with a few personal conclusions regarding the way the Eurosceptic attitude was used by the Brexiters’ campaign in order to achieve its purpose.

Keywords:

national identity, Englishness, Britishness, Euroscepticism, Brexiters, Remainers

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CP, Number 27

Section:

No. 27 (2022) 

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The use of non-standard language varieties in fiction is an effective writing technique, and at present, such varieties appear both in popular fiction and films or television series, incorporating specific linguistic, stylistic and cultural elements. The use of Scots in fiction and other cultural products is relevant to the study of the English language and culture, as there is an overlap between these varieties, due to their shared history and prolonged contact. There is much discussion on various websites on the use of Scots (and Scottish Gaelic) in the highly popular novel Outlander, by Diana Gabaldon, and its television adaptation. However, academic research conducted on the use of such language varieties in popular historical romance fiction is rather scarce. This study was conducted with a descriptive-analytical approach, performing a literature review on the topic of Scottish languages and their use in literature, and a comparative analysis of the selected first three chapters of the novel Outlander, the script for the first episode of the eponymous television series, and the episode itself. The use of Scots grammatical features and lexical items has been presented, and the use of Scottish symbols and other cultural elements in the selected texts and episode have been discussed. While the novel cannot be considered an authentic representation of Scottish identity and culture, the featuring of Scots in such a popular work of fiction and the internationally acclaimed television adaptation has generated interest in and discussion around the topics of Scottish languages, culture and history. Our intention throughout this article is to underline the role of Scots being used not only as an identity marker of its speakers but also as a form of resistance to the oppressive presence of the English on the Scottish territories.

Keywords:

language variety, Scots, resistance, popular fiction, adaptation

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CP, Number 27

Section:

No. 27 (2022) 

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Humour holds a significant role in our lives, making spirits bright and enabling people to overcome the obstacles of their plain daily existence. As a communication phenomenon that embraces countless forms and shapes, humour is widely believed to possess properties of releasing tension and creating good mood. It also operates like some kind of “ice-breaking” tool meant to relax and entertain people, being also connected with interpersonal attraction. For many people who have the capacity of finding humour even in the darkest details of their life, this is an efficient weapon to fight monotony, interpersonal confusion, aand misery (Shibles 1997). Moreover, humour is also a successful nonviolent strategy of resisting injustice and oppression. Thus, mocking the enemy as a way of fighting back has turned into a historic tradition materialised in the public exposure to caricatures, anecdotes, jokes, stand-up sketches in addition to the classic jestering and satire (Sorensen 2008). Exploited by both the mass-media and the film industry, especially in TV series, humour has the potential of responding to the audience’s need to either recognize themselves and their destiny in the fictional characters and plot or to escape from the daily pressures of their unfulfilled lives. Some TV series facilitate access to some performance that is liable to help spectators/viewers to forget about the quotidian worries or they inspire ways of fighting themselves against oppressive situations through humour. Dedicated mostly to youngsters and adapted from a literary work, Murdoch Mysteries TV series fulfils both roles by providing varied samples of humorous language and situations that that can approached from both traditional and modern, up-to-date perspectives. In line with the topic proposed for this paper, we will further review the main theories of humour to the purpose of projecting it as a social tool of resistance to different kinds of oppression.

Keywords:

humour, theories, resistance, oppression, Murdoch Mysteries, television series, jokes, laughter

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