Cultural Representations of Americans, Europeans, Africans and Arabs in American Soap Operas: A Corpus-based Analysis
Through the current world of multi-media, television has emerged as a crucial tool of both knowledge transaction and culture formation. Among various TV programs, soap operas are known to turn into one of the most culturally influential ones due to constant exposure of viewer during a long time s...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Lasting Impressions Press
2019-10-01
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| Series: | International Journal of English Language and Translation Studies |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://www.eltsjournal.org/archive/value7%20issue3/14-7-3-19.pdf |
| Summary: | Through the current world of multi-media, television has emerged as a crucial tool of both
knowledge transaction and culture formation. Among various TV programs, soap operas are known to
turn into one of the most culturally influential ones due to constant exposure of viewer during a long
time span. One of the current issues in media studies is the biased nature of media toward minorities
(Mastro, 2015). This study has been an attempt to view the way American soap operas reveal
Americans in comparison with three groups of minorities (i.e. Arabs, Europeans and Africans) in
American society based on the frequency of words and collocations used for their representations.
Using the Corpus of Contemporary America (COCA), this meta-analysis aimed at shedding light on the
perceptions expressed toward American culture and that of the selected minorities consulting with
Lewis (2006) model of cultural categorization. The results showed that America is presented as a place
of justice and pursuing dreams while the other countries are represented as one-dimensional nations
which should be known for their forgotten art and history, recreational and leisure concessions or
broken families; things which are peripheral in the real modern life. |
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| ISSN: | 2308-5460 2308-5460 |