Discourses Of Femininity Research Articles

The Female Body and the Body Politic in Sex Scenes of Lou Ye’s Film: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of <i>Summer Palace</i>

This article discusses the body politic of Yu Hong in the postsocialist Chinese film–Summer Palace (2006). Director Lou Ye places Yu Hong’s body in the sex scenes that metaphorically expresses a traumatic and sensitive political event, the “June Fourth Incident.” The portrayal of sexual intercourse, nudity, and this historical event is the unspeakable “secret” in mainland Chinese media. Therefore, the authors raise the question that, when sexual intercourse and the female body enter political discourse, how do we deal with the complex and dynamic power structures behind bodily attributes and the “anachronistic” historical objects that do not fit into the mainstream narrative and epistemological spaces? Drawing on body politic theory, feminist film theory, and a semiotic framework, we adopt multimodal critical discourse analysis to assess power relations and ideologies behind Yu’s body attributes in the sex scenes. The findings indicate that Lou constructs a complex communication system, using her body as a carrier of communication to express self-consciousness, constructing female subjectivity through the writing of feminine discourse, with the political purpose of seeking the freedom of the written word. Sexual liberation is sought by establishing a transgressive body that is not accepted by the mainstream and opposes the inherent power of government. Yu’s bodily pleasure is set up as an expression of narcissistic individualism through love, producing a vision of political ecstasy. Her melancholy body metaphor for the discomfort and confusion that preceded the student movement and the post-traumatic ambivalence. Using the female body as a site of political discourse and sexual liberation offers a new reading strategy for analysing the representation of the female body in film and other forms of media. In making the argument, the study contributes valuable scholarship to the film studies focused on sexual, gender, and political marginalised discourse.

Language and gender in a US reality TV show: An analysis of leadership discourse in single-sex interactions

This paper examines issues relating to language, gender and leadership in the debut season of the reality TV show The Apprentice (USA). In particular, it looks at the ways in which two male and two female project managers ‘do leadership’ through discourse in single-sex interactions. The analysis shows that these project managers display leadership styles which are by and large in accordance with the gendered norms and expectations. It is found that while their leadership styles are not evaluated entirely positively, the male managers receive both positive and negative comments for using predominantly masculine speech styles and the female managers who ‘do leadership’ by employing a largely feminine discourse style are perceived negatively. It is also argued that the singlesex contexts of interactions can be seen as being constructed intentionally in the TV show in order to capture the gender-stereotypical speech styles of ‘doing leadership’.

Murder and motherhood: transgressing femininity in Regarde la mer

ABSTRACT François Ozon’s Regarde la mer/See the Sea uses the generic codes of a psychological thriller in order to portray femininity in a state of flux. Although Ozon is one of the most established contemporary French auteurs, this film is often overlooked in studies of his work. This article explores Regarde la mer as one of Ozon’s many contributions to a specific genre. The ‘psychological thriller’ relies heavily on suspense and ambiguity in order to function, and much of the film’s ambiguities are built around a sense of ambivalent sexual tension. In addition to the analysis of genre, this article approaches this ambivalent sexual tension from a queer perspective. Many normative configurations of gender are transgressed in the film, and the article identifies how this is conveyed in its expressive visual style. Furthermore, the film interrogates traditional female roles, such as ‘wife’ or ‘mother’. As a result, Regarde la mer draws on the aforementioned generic codes in order to subvert normative discourses of femininity.

Virginia Woolf s A Room of One s Own: A Foundational Feminist Vision in Euro-American Thought

Virginia Woolf’s seminal work, A Room of One’s Own, published nearly a century ago, is reexamined in this study as not only a feminist manifesto but as a feminist vision that anticipated some of the key features addressed in subsequent Euro-American feminist philosophies. Divided into three sections, the research offers a close analysis of Woolf’s text and its prescient insights, discussing separately the particular focal concerns of British, American, and French feminism, and elaborating on the ways these were envisioned and addressed as early as 1929 in Woolf’s visionary text. The study utilizes Showalter’s typology to analyze Woolf’s text and to organize elaborations on the points Woolf addresses and envisions that became fundamental within subsequent Euro-American feminist criticism, including the correlation between economic and social conditions and intellectual freedom, the necessity of women’s inclusion in the literary canon, and the significance of feminine discourse and gynocriticism. By highlighting Woolf’s remarkable foresight, this research positions A Room of One’s Own not only as a foundational feminist text but also as a profound feminist vision that continues to inform feminist thought today. This re-examination of Woolf’s work contributes to on-going academic discourse surrounding feminist theory and literary criticism.

Witches, Sorcerers, and Demons in a Remote Corner of Northern Russia at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century

Ethnographic materials from Kargopol'skii region at the turn of the twenty-first century demonstrate that while paradigms of witchcraft and beliefs in the supernatural still existed, the paradigms had been somewhat narrowed when viewed within the historical context of the longue durée. Due to a reduction in the scope of bewitchments, entire communities no longer experienced epidemics of demonic possession brought about by the evil intent of an individual. Instances of bewitchment in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras became restricted to individuals who believed that they became ill because of the evil eye or a hex. The range of illnesses subsumed under bewitchment also decreased. Yet, depersonalization of witchcraft accusations did not occur. Kargopol'skii residents continued to identify individuals whom they or a family member believed were witches and sorcerers. The gendered feminine discourse of the nineteenth century had also been weakened somewhat. Finally, community violence against witches was not discernable in the Kargopol'sk discourse. In essence, these rural communities remained tied to a rhetoric of magic to explain imbalances within the social fabric caused by individual transgressions of boundaries, suspicions against individuals for causing illnesses, and other violation of norms that could only be corrected by way of counter-magic and the restoration of "the notions of social equality and social" harmony.

“The Place of Speaking for a Speaking That Has No Place”

Abstract The cultural environment of Charles V’s Spanish Empire, where Erasmianism met the Franciscan tradition, gave rise to an experimental quest for new religious practices that contributed to the diffusion of interiorizing meditative techniques. This essay focuses on mental prayer in the writings of Teresa of Avila, following the trail of Erasmianism and Franciscanism in spiritual literature. In order to measure the importance of such legacy, this research analyzes the relationship between the feminine discourse produced by Teresa of Avila and the male authority of different spiritual directors who watched over her camino de perfección. In particular, within a theoretical framework based on Michel de Certeau’s understanding of mysticism, it will be shown that Teresian practice is not structured as a rigorous method, but more properly as a real double bind between the need for regulated prayer and the impossibility to capture the mystical event.

Caracas Is Not Paris: The Moderate Modernity of Mestizaje in Teresa de la Parra’s Ifigenia (1924)

Abstract: Through her epistolary correspondence and her novel Ifigenia 1924, Teresa de la Parra (1889–1936) questions racial stratification systems reminiscent of colonial times and still present in twentieth-century Venezuela. Parra establishes the malleability of racial categories through a moderate racial discourse that intends to re-classify whiteness as the sole marker of economic wealth. Via its young and naïve protagonist, Ifigenia depicts how white elites reluctantly adapted to modernity’s significant socioeconomic changes, leaving previous racial stratification systems—and their whitening projects—obsolete. Parra’s moderate approach to race has been consistently overlooked by numerous scholars who often focus on Ifigenia ’s feminine discourse. However, Parra’s novel thrives in the nuanced juxtaposition between racial purity and mestizaje that mirrors the tension between Paris and Caracas as opposing geographical and racial spaces. Parra’s nuanced discourse reveals a moderate racial theory that underscores the importance of controlled racial mixing and intends to negotiate between a European ideal of racial purity and a Venezuelan mestizo reality at the turn of the twentieth century. Ultimately, her protagonist willingly sacrifices herself for the continuation of a national narrative where modernity has enforced an acceptance of mestizaje .

The Lady in the Overall: First World War Patriotism, Respectability, and Workwear of Upper-Class Munitionettes

Abstract This article offers new insights into the national market for utilitarian garments worn by British upper-class Munitionettes in the pursuit of essential First World War munition manufacture. There has been a resurgence in recent years in the interest of women’s workwear, but little dress historical research has been undertaken into the manufacture and consumption of these garments by upper-class women, which this article seeks to address. The numbers of women involved in munition production peaked in 1917 at almost 1,000,000 meaning the circulation of workwear in this industry alone, was in the millions. Workwear worn by upper-class women represents discourses of wealth, femininity, respectability, and patriotism. That such expensive and high-quality garments exist speaks to the cultural significance the women themselves recognized in these utilitarian garments. This workwear symbolized their contribution to the war effort, the political ambitions for suffrage and personal achievement. These garments were not worn outside the workplace as the fabric would have been contaminated with chemicals, thus would not have been pleasant to preserve. Crucially, it is through the material cultural analysis of rare extant high-end garments worn by upper-class women, that the extent of the market for workwear has been revealed.

Linguostylistic Stratifications in the Novels “Mayta” and “Araksia, or the Governess” by Srbuhi Tyusab

Key words: Srbuhi Tyusab, “Mayta”, “Araksia, or the Governess”, feminine discourse, trope, intertext, ellipsis, oxymoron This article is an attempt to examine the linguistic and stylistic stratifications, their features, and interpenetrations in the novels “Mayta” and “Araksia, or the Governess” by the Western Armenian writer Srbuhi Tyusab. The aim of the study is to identify the linguostylistic stratifications in the novels of Srbuhi Tyusab “Maita” and “Araksia, or the Governess” as a female writing technique, based on the study of the linguistic features of the prose of Western Armenian female authors of the second half of the 19th century. The problem of the study is to newly interpret the literary techniques and tools (comparisons, allegories, metaphors, oxymoron, ellipsis, morphological and syntactic tricks, etc.) used in the fiction works of Western Armenian women authors of the second half of the 19th century. In the novels of Srbuhi Tyusab, the female-male worldview and world-images are clearly emphasized. The material was analyzed in the context of the reciprocal connections and relationships between linguistics and literary studies. We used the method of comparative, linguistic, and literary anthropology, which we applied by the principle of umbrella: observing the linguistic stratifications of the mentioned novels of Srbuhi Tyusab as an identification of femininity, in one radius. The research is unprecedented as this kind of study has been done for the first time. It acquires its importance and relevance not only in terms of interdisciplinarity, but also in the context of the analysis of «women’s problems » in Armenology. In order to be faithful to the originality of the article, we used the originals of Tyusab’s novels and not the reprints.

Troubling White Women’s Desire for Innocence in Community-Based Social Work Practice: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis

Understanding the effects of White femininity on social work practice is a worthy endeavour provided the disproportionate numbers of White women that have built and occupied the professional role of social worker from the origins of colonization to present. Mainstream accounts of social work history narrate the profession to be a pursuit of well-intentioned middle- and upper-class White women, concealing the colonial operations that underpin the formation of social work as a White feminine project. While Whiteness and its effects within social work have been a subject of study, the intersection of gender and Whiteness has been minimally addressed, disregarding significant nuances that inform the relationship between the project of colonization and social work. This paper provides a detailed analysis of semi-structured interviews with eight White, woman-identified social workers who have practiced community-based social work for a minimum of two years in Alberta, Canada. Foucauldian discourse analysis is used to trace the ways the participants perform the dominant discourse of White femininity. The findings illuminate the social work profession's ongoing complicity with its colonial origins, which collude with White femininity and ultimately foster practices steeped in racism. A vital need to disentangle social work from its colonial and racist scripts is emphasized.

التصوير البديعي في ظلال الخطاب الموجَّه إلى النساء على ضوء ا لبيان النبوي؛ :تحليل وتعليل

The rhetorical fields depict the aspects of Prophetic miracle in his feminine discourse, which is distinguished by its artistic characteristics, and coordination of rhetorical witticism, at the peak of stylistic decorations, not neglecting their semantic purposes and linguistic characteristics, while arranging the resonant words to give attractive meanings of the bright ideas, known with the prophetic expression to serve as guidance and direction, argument and proof, wisdom and etiquette, in conformity with divine inspiration and generous revelation from ALLAH the Almighty, which has not been given to anyone before Him or after Him. This ranges from the splendor of eloquence, the quality of concept, the strength of meaning, and the strangeness of linguistic temper, until it became an immortal benchmark for all. This study analyzes scientific problems in view of discovering the way of renewal, that will help in establishing a new useful face, by following up on the linguistic and rhetorical advancement in our Arabic language and Islamic literature from the realm of the pure Prophethood. The importance of the article is imbibed in the analytical and applied methodology, heading towards the formation of the linguistic rhetorical divisions at the University of Muhammad, a great model that stimulated the mental and gustatory life, with a flexible formulation, a charming tenderness, in derivation and composition, arrangement and depiction, and describing its evidence in an accurate description, on the most brilliant verses that ignite the outlets of consciousness. Nonetheless, the perceptions of criticism and taste were expanded, by refining every naivety of circumstances decisively, and the level of eloquence became a wonderful phenomenon with new waves of illuminating and inexhaustible currents.

Fashion Versus Comfort: Exploring the Gendered Marketing Messages of Sport Team Licensed Merchandise

Sport team licensed merchandise plays an important role in sport fan experiences. Existing work has explored how consumers perceive these items, motivation and consumption habits, and intent to purchase. Extending upon the performative sport fandom framework, this study explores the marketing messages of sport fan merchandise, and the resulting implied gendered and fan performances. Employing a multimodal critical discourse analysis, we analyzed the top 20 T-shirts for men and women for five National College Athletic Association institutions on their official ecommerce sites. By examining the text descriptions, visual images, and messages perceived when combining text and visuals, we found that the marketing messages of clothing items rely heavily on traditional discourses of femininity and masculinity, placing gender performances as more relevant to fan performances for women. Atypical designs suggest alternative gender and fan performances but continue to indicate that gender identity is central to clothing appearance and messaging to consumers.

Memoir and Respectable Femininity: Shirani A. Bandaranayake's Hold Me in Contempt

ABSTRACT This paper is an exploration of Hold Me in Contempt: A Memoir by Shirani A. Bandaranayake, the first and only woman so far to have held the position of Chief justice in Sri Lanka, who was impeached from her position. It argues that while the memoir acts as testimony and enables female political activism and agency, revealing the liberatory possibilities of female memoir, it simultaneously reanimates gender stereotypes which it attempts to resist through a discourse of respectable femininity. Yet, the paper contends that while Hold Me in Contempt unravels the relationship between memoir, gender, and power, it offers spaces for investigating the nexus between respectable femininity and subversive feminism.

The infant/toddler teacher as willful subject: A critical narrative analysis of gendered discursive regimes in US-based early care and education

Dominant narratives of teacher emotion in early care and education rely on historical discourses of white femininity and white maternalism to position early childhood teachers as naturally adept and selfless caretakers of young children. Missing from these narratives, however, is the reality that emotion-display rules and norms are often enforced on teachers through surveillance and social control, and that teachers whose emotion displays veer outside the bounds of the dominant narratives experience punitive professional and personal backlash. This qualitative case study utilizes critical narrative analysis and post-structural feminist perspectives to explore the emotional experiences of Lauren, a white, female infant/toddler teacher, as she navigated the emotional experience of teaching during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA. The data is drawn from a larger study guided by the following research question: “What are the emotional experiences of early childhood teachers during the COVID-19 pandemic?” The findings in this article leverage Michel Foucault's concept of the “docile body” and Sara Ahmed's concept of the “willful subject” to interpret themes of discursive enforcement and teacher resistance to teacher emotion-display norms and rules. These findings problematize the dominant construction of the idealized emotional landscape of early care and education and present in its place a portrait of surveillance and resistance in a discursive struggle of power against emotional will.

Gender Discourse – Representation of Ideas about the Distribution of Gender Roles

The relevance of the study is conditioned by the insufficient level of investigation of gender discourse, in particular, in translation studies, understanding the feminine and masculine aspects when analysing the content of the text through the use of linguistic tools and techniques. The purpose of the study is a comparative analysis of two translations at the level of phonetic, morphological, grammatical, syntactic, and stylistic means, analysis of translation strategy in such aspects as the accuracy (adequacy) of reproduction of folk realia, the use of emotional and evaluative vocabulary, metaphorical and aphoristic thinking, the use of techniques of foreignization and domestication of language resources. The main method is a theoretical approach to understanding the concepts of gender, gender stereotypes, cultural turn, postcolonial development of literature and feminist discourse, and a comparative linguistic analysis of the linguistic tools used in both translations. This paper focuses on the intralingual and extralingual means of gender identity, reveals the main aspects of the study of masculine and feminine discourse through the use of various mechanisms at the language level to convey national realia, and examines the key aspects of the communication strategy of male and female translators. The materials presented in this paper would facilitate further research of gender issues in the context of the modern reading of literary texts, analysis of world influences on cultural space and language adaptation of translation with the selection of full and incomplete correspondences, and understanding the possibilities of a particular national language to reproduce the content and form of a literary work made in the original.

Feminine discourse in the works of Evgeniya Nekrasova

The authors deal with the issue of the gender aspect of modern prose. The problem of “women's prose” has existed for a long time, the controversy of the independent status of this concept also has its own history, however, has not received a final solution. The authors of the study propose their solution to this issue, highlighting several fundamentally important markers of feminine discourse, based on three basic foundations: the type of writing, the picture of the world, the image of personality. The analysis of the prose of the famous modern writer E. Nekrasova carried out in this study allows us to identify the differential features of this discourse: renomination, folklore techniques, rejection of binary oppositions, ellipticity of language and special poetry of artistic speech.

“The Harem Within”: The Complexity of Female Identity in Elif Shafak’s Black Milk

In a post-modern world where selfhood is defined by diversity and multiplicity, Elif Shafak’s Black Milk outlines how women’s experiences depict a tragic fate. In this memoir Elif Shafak writes about motherhood and authorship and the many stereotypes women face in a patriarchal society. For many women writers, motherhood became a burden, because they had to choose between being a “good” mother and a “good” author. This article aims to explore the complexity of women’s identity in Black Milk through a feminist perspective and also to analyse Elif Shafak’s feminine discourse and its empowerment process. Elif Shafak questions the norms of the patriarchal society, because it enforces a “given” identity for both women and men. Black Milk also outlines the anxiety women face when it comes to writing, motherhood and many other experiences, describing an enormous pressure put on women to reflect an ideal.

Chivalry, Reading, and Women's Culture in Early Modern Spain: From Amadís de Gaula to Don Quixote

Chivalry, Reading, and Women's Culture in Early Modern Spain: From Amadís de Gaula to Don Quixote

Louisa May Alcott’s Changing Views on Women, Work, and Marriage in Work

Louisa May Alcott’s intriguing and productive mix of fiction and auto-fiction suffuses the experience of the female protagonist of her Transcendentalist Bildungsroman Work (1873). The text, therefore, engages intersecting but distinct discourses of femininity, domesticity, and individual emancipation. The novel proposes a new direction by placing women squarely in the public sphere of labor and social relations, even though that move is qualified by normative and sentimentalist constraints for middle-class characters. Still, Alcott ably marshals reformist and Transcendentalist ideas to prove that the feminine Bildung requires self-growth, education, work and a variety of social and affective relationships.

NEGOSIASI WACANA FEMININITAS MELALUI FILM-FILM ANIMASI PUTRI DISNEY

Negotiation Discourse of Femininity Through Disney Princesses’ Movies. Femininity tends to be explained as a condition ‘to be a woman’, making it an ideology that gives limitations to women. Mills uses discourse theory to explain femininity, stating femininity is a process that is constructed and negotiated in every interaction. Disney Princesses show changes through times and each animation film, showing a negotiation of what defines femininity. The data collection was carried out by qualitative method narrative study, with Performativity of Gender by Judith Butler and Negotiation Discourse of Femininity theory by Sara Mills. Thirteen Disney Princesses were used as researched objects to show the slow changing of femininity. The results of this study show a change in Disney Princesses, through long negotiations based on the wave of feminism that occurred with the Disney Princess characters featured. Indications have shown through the Disney Princess characters who initially showed only stereotypes of feminine elements—such as being passive, gentle, not leaving their safe zone, becoming a Disney Princess who also showed stereotypical masculinity elements— such as being physically active, not easily afraid to discover new things, and showing bravery. This slow shift does not change the identity of Disney Princesses as a princess and as a woman.