Imagology

Abstract

Imagology, or the study of national and cultural images and stereotypes, is not a subdiscipline nor a method in the strict sense of the word, but rather a selection principle, a perspective through which discursive material is studied. Starting from a modern research view on translation as a broad text-modifying phenomenon that accepts the inevitability of change, variation in national and cultural stereotyping frequently occurs through translation. Despite globalization tendencies, assigning national and cultural group characteristics is a deeply ingrained way of categorizing human behaviour. Besides national characteristics, binary categories such as North-South, East-West, or centre-periphery often appear as stereotyping elements, but obviously vary in content and connotations in different languages, cultures, and contexts. Although imagology has mainly focused on literary discourse, journalistic texts and travel writing have also shown to be revealing material in translation. Independent of the genre or the type of discourse, an imagological analysis is a combination of a textual, a contextual, and an intertextual approach.