Towards Applying Socio-Historical Semiotic Approach: A Cross-Cultural Multi-modal Qualitative Study

Gender representation is a critical element of culture that is a key to understanding any society. 'Media' is an element closely related to gender representation. The terms 'gender' and 'media' are modern, but the concepts and symbols associated with them are not new. This book explores these ideas through a cross-cultural study of gender representation in Egypt and Japan. The book presents Socio-historical Semiotic approach. First, the book analyses modern media discourses related to the issue of female circumcision. Then, considering media from the past, the book deals with gender representation in two examples of popular literature (The Tale of the Heike and Srat al-Amrah Dht al-Himmah. These two literary works belong to the literature of war and include a historical character, thus placing them in realist literature. The book explores the two cases within their historical and cultural contexts, tracing how past and present gendered discourse systems and dynamics are similar or dissimilar within different contexts. The book aims to clarify the mechanisms and factors that shape gender representation discourses in the past and the present, as well as how these mechanisms and factors intersect. Moreover, the book seeks to deduce the semiotic sources that reflect these mechanisms and factors to contribute to developing a socio-historical semiotic analysis.