Images and various visual representations accompany funeral celebrations and a process of mourning in various cultures: in the past as well as today. This article focusses on ways in which burials and funerals are celebrated in contemporary Ghana and discusses various relations functioning between mourning and visuality. Based on ethnographic data collected during fieldwork in Brong-Ahafo region (central Ghana) the author analyses visuals used as well as produced during funerals: photographs and videos made during celebrations, images printed in funeral booklets, invitation letters and obituaries. Additionally a visual presentation of a dead body during the laying-in-state-ceremony is discussed as a symbolic image of a dead person. Funeral images popular in contemporary Ghana seem to be designed as if opposing the concept of death as the end of life. Pictures ‒ abundantly produced and distributed on the course of long-lasting funeral celebrations ‒ represent a dead person as an embodiment of success, vitality and wealth.
Verbal aggression and insults constitute an increasingly important topic of contemporary linguistic analysis. The aim of this article is to present a simple analysis of linguistic insults in the framework of the force dynamics theory as presented by Talmy [1988]. The force-dynamic theory describes different relations of physical, psychological, social, intertextual causation by means of interaction between two entities of force (Agonist and Antagonist). Selected categories of insults are analyzed by means of force-dynamic models. These categories include successful insults, unsuccessful insults, redirected insults, intensifying insults, and insults chains. I intend to demonstrate that the theory of force dynamics is a viable candidate for providing a convincing framework for the analysis of linguistic insults. The article concludes with some suggestions concerning the future research into the field of verbal aggression in connection with the theory of force dynamics.
In one of the most important churches in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), there is a panel containing several paintings. They are exact copies of photographs showing Emperor Haile Sellasie I during the war against Italy (1935-1941). The paintings were copied from frequently published, and thus wellknown, photographs, which served imperial propaganda to show the Emperor’s role in fighting for Ethiopia’s independence. Using the paintings as source material, it is the aim of this article to discuss specific propagandistic methods applied in Ethiopia under Haile Sellasie to transmit a message about power and history, and to present the intended image of the Emperor to his subjects.
The aim of the study is to analyse the images of the epidemic of tertian fevers in Topografía hipocrática o descripción de la epidemia de calenturas tercianas intermitentes malignas, continuo-remitentes, perniciosas complicadas (1795) by Félix Ibáñez (ca. 1738-1808), one of the most comprehensive studies dedicated to malaria in the 18th century Spain. They are examined from the perspective of the importance of visual representations of the illness in the 18th century, related to a radical transition from a logocentric to a visually dependent culture, which took place in the field of art and medicine in theEnlightenment.
This paper focuses on analyzing visual representations of Don Quixote in Central and Eastern European films produced during the Soviet and post-Soviet periods: the animated cartoon Don Kihote created in 1961 by Croatian director Vlado Kristl: a TV episode, Don Quixote and His Bodyguard, by Viktor Shenderovich (1995); and the feature film Don Quixote Returns by Vasiliy Livanov (1997). The image of Don Quixote is interpreted in the paper as a cultural myth used as a symbol both of resistance and of totalitarianism. This ambivalence of the quixotic myth is studied through the prism of trauma theory. The approach suggested by the author of the paper explains the popularity of Cervantes’s character in totalitarian and post-totalitarian culture and reveals the complicated dynamics of liberation from slavery and the search for freedom in Central and Eastern Europe.
The article deals with the graphic design of the “Ukrainian Calendar” – an annual publication that was issued by the Ukrainian community in Poland in the period 1957–1988. Different communication and stylistic constructions were designed to represent national identity in a number of ways. Folk art patterns would illustrate a rich tradition, adding a ‘peasant’ connotation at the same time. Traditional costumes from Central Ukraine, Cossack in particular, would communicate the idea of national unity. Graphic quotations from manuscripts and early printed books as well as historical forms of the Cyrillic alphabet would describe Ukraine’s great history and cultural development through the centuries. Motifs from Kyiv Rus and Cossack art would remind viewers of the tradition of state-building. Concerning the overall style of the publication, there were symmetrically balanced and pattern-decorated layouts as well as the dynamic positioning of stylized elements. Several issues of the Calendar demonstrate attempts to modernize the national image. With ‘op-art’, ‘pop-art’ and ‘international style’ designs they shape Ukrainian identity as being contemporary and global. Generally, the publication illustrates the tensions between the traditional and modern; it is also a ‘hybrid’ between Diaspora and Soviet periodicals of the time.
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