Abstract
This study examines how the Home for Children with Disabilities and disability identities were construed by Thai undergraduates in their website project through an analysis of metaphors. Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) was the framework for analyzing the use of metaphors and the participants’ enactment of identity and social representation. The critical analysis revealed four dominant themes: ‘JOURNEY’, ‘FAMILY’, ‘OBJECT’ and ‘HOPE’ all utilized to reproduce the Home for Children with Disabilities identity as a ‘warm’, ‘effective’ and ‘altruistic’ organization that provides their children with forms of care and compassion. The analysis, in addition, showed the participants’ representation of disability identity as a non-static and changeable entity. Children with disabilities were seen as ‘capable of becoming self-supporting’. Additionally, the semi-structured interviews conducted with the participants indicated that social oppression was believed to be the cause of disability-related issues and that true understanding was needed to terminate social discrimination.
Highlights
Identity is conveyed in a number of ways, directly, indirectly or symbolically and displayed in the form of language or symbols which function as an indicator of elements in the social context
Bearing in mind that an individual’s beliefs and linguistic resources are likely to tell us about identity construction and interpretation, this study attempts to embrace these two aspects in an analysis of how 13 fourth-year English-major students at a Thai university reproduced the identity of the Baan Nontapum Foundation (BNF) or the Home for Children with Disabilities, as well as disability in their website construction project through an examination of their use of metaphors
The metaphors analyzed in the three main stages: identification, interpretation and explanation of conceptual metaphors (Charteris-Black, 2004), on both Websites A and B were categorized into the following dominant themes: FAMILY (11 times), JOURNEY/PATH (8 times), OBJECTS (5 times), HOPE (4 times), POSITION (3 times), WATER GLASS (2 times), SERVICE (2 times), PART OF A THING (2 times), and BUILDING (1 time)
Summary
Identity is conveyed in a number of ways, directly, indirectly or symbolically and displayed in the form of language or symbols which function as an indicator of elements in the social context. Numerous studies have agreed that what defines a certain group of people or organizations can be justified in two major ways: (1) by examining how an individual’s beliefs and values are put into play through the construction of certain texts and (2) investigating how linguistic resources are employed by members of the group to establish their position in particular social activities (De Fina, 2006; Schiffrin, 2006; Georgakopoulou, 2006; Benwell and Stokoe, 2006). In addition to the critical analysis of metaphors used to construe identity on the participants’ self-designed websites, the participants’ perceptions elicited from the semi-structured interviews were analyzed in order to establish the relationship between the participants’ beliefs and the identity construction process
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