Abdel-Raheem Ahmed
University of Bremen, Germany.
Discourse Soc. 2023 Mar;34(2):147-174. doi: 10.1177/09579265221113028. Epub 2022 Jul 26.
Using a large-scale corpus of 706 coronavirus cartoons by male and female Arab artists, this study takes a fresh and more cognitive look at sexism in multimodal discourse. Specifically, it examines the role of salience and grammar (and hence of metaphor and metonymy) in gender bias and/or in discrimination against women. It argues that both men and women are vulnerable to the influence of stereotypical and outdated beliefs that create unconscious bias. But this raises the crucial issue of whether we can speak of 'overt' sexism in images. Issues around terminology and conceptualization are thus also investigated. Importantly, this paper makes the following contributions to feminist and cross-cultural pragmatics: (i) it brings a distinctly Arabic perspective to gender and language; (ii) it expands socio-cognitive pragmatics beyond spoken and written communication; (iii) it shows a close coupling between an Arabic grammar and other aspects of culture; and (iv) it has the potential for impact beyond academia, specifically in the sphere of coronavirus care or of health communication.
本研究使用了由阿拉伯男性和女性艺术家创作的706幅冠状病毒卡通画的大规模语料库，从全新且更具认知性的角度审视多模态话语中的性别歧视。具体而言，它考察了显著性和语法（以及隐喻和转喻）在性别偏见和/或对女性的歧视中的作用。研究认为，男性和女性都容易受到造成无意识偏见的刻板和过时观念的影响。但这就引出了一个关键问题，即我们是否能在图像中谈论“公然的”性别歧视。因此，围绕术语和概念化的问题也进行了研究。重要的是，本文对女性主义和跨文化语用学做出了以下贡献：（i）它为性别与语言带来了独特的阿拉伯视角；（ii）它将社会认知语用学扩展到口语和书面交流之外；（iii）它展示了阿拉伯语法与文化其他方面的紧密联系；（iv）它有可能在学术界之外产生影响，特别是在冠状病毒护理或健康传播领域。
