340638

The Image of Orientalism in India's Most Beloved Epic Tales: A Multimodal-Semantic Study in Context of the Ramayana

Article

Last updated: 15 Feb 2025

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Tags

Studies in Linguistics

Abstract

Orientalism is a movement based on colonial political goals in the first place, through which language, literature, religions, philosophy, history, arts, and Asian social laws were studied, especially the ancient ones.  Manifestations of Orientalism appear in the most famous Indian epics, including the Ramayana. This epic tackles the story of Rama's coronation, exile, and continuous wars against Ravan. Through this epic, the researcher tries to reveal the magic of the East and its influence on Western thought. The Ramayana sheds light on the colonial period and the intermittent wars between the East and the West by presenting an image of the continuous conflicts between gods (kings) and demons. As an accurate understanding of meaning helps in communicating messages clearly, and since the semantic study tackles knowledge of word meaning, sentence structure, discourse, and context, the researcher adopts style features from the semantic perspective. She employs Geoffrey Leech's seven types of meaning presented in his 1981 book The Study of Meaning and developed in 2020 by Sandra Yunira and Siska Fradind to illustrate how the meaning of a word in language can be known with the foundation of semantic science and to show the value of these kinds of meaning in getting beyond dialogues and revealing the real context or the symbolic dimensions of any literary work. Kress & Van Leeuwen's (2006) theory of visual design will also be effective for the study since visual elements in animated films are vivid and prosperous in a way that can entice viewers to go beyond words and explore meanings beyond nonverbal clues. The researcher hopes to identify the main symbols behind the selected epic through integration between images and dialogues.    

DOI

10.21608/tjhss.2024.260338.1234

Keywords

Kress and Van Leeuwen's theory of visual design, Kinds of Meaning, Orientalism, Indian epics, the Ramayana

Authors

First Name

Fatma

Last Name

Elzaghal

MiddleName

Tawakol

Affiliation

Faculty of Arts

Email

fatma.english88@gmail.com

City

-

Orcid

-

Volume

5

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

46559

Issue Date

2024-01-01

Receive Date

2024-01-03

Publish Date

2024-01-01

Page Start

160

Page End

202

Print ISSN

2636-4239

Online ISSN

2636-4247

Link

https://tjhss.journals.ekb.eg/article_340638.html

Detail API

http://journals.ekb.eg?_action=service&article_code=340638

Order

340,638

Type

Original Article

Type Code

1,087

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Transcultural Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

Publication Link

https://tjhss.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

The Image of Orientalism in India's Most Beloved Epic Tales: A Multimodal-Semantic Study in Context of the Ramayana

Details

Type

Article

Created At

25 Dec 2024