29 March 2011
Belonging as an area of study requires exploration into a text or different typesof texts to
establish how the concept of belonging comes out. The concept of belonging reveals itself in a text depending on how a person’s perceptions and ideas are directed by culture and history , and may be the social context of the writer . The field of belonging therefore tries to find how different aspects of belonging come out in from a person’s experiences in life taking into account the notions of identity and relationships.
Texts do show or rather depict belonging in different angles. A text can explore the ability of a person to challenge or enrich the community by giving it another aspect. A text may also show how attitudes of belonging are modified, can also show barriers to belonging and also choices not to belong. Different language modes, styles, features and structures are used to bring out the concept of belonging in texts.
There are different types of texts which can be used in languages .These are some of the different texts types or we can also refer to them as categories of texts: prose fiction which includes novels and short stories. poetry as a category includes verse(s). Film is another category of texts and it includes fictional and documentaries. Multimedia on the other hand includes websites, picture books and graphic novels. Media as a category includes television and radio. Nonfiction is another category of texts.
An example of two related texts are the ones that were given by Rachel Ives on 20/12/2010 on The crucible (Arthur Miller) and Othello (William Shakespeare) under ther category of drama. In the crucible, Athur Miller tries to find abase from the holy witch hunts of the 1962. Here agroup of ladies in this holy society were found dancing in the forest and because they wanted to take blame away from them they blamed women from a certain town to be the witches. This claim finally brings out issues that burst out of their hands. In this text, the concept of belonging comes out from the very identity of these ladies who were dancing in the forest and those from the other town. It bbrings identity. Also the possession of the masses that is those who were dancing and those who were blamed. Probably the language and the styles involved were the same.
Concerning Othello which was written by Shakespeare in 1603, this tries to explain one of the tragedies which Shakespeare faced. In it, Othello who is the main character, a soldier and dark in complexion gets married to Desdemona who is not of the same race. She is white while the husband is dark. Their family statuses are also far apart in that the father of Desdemona is aformer senator. Another soldier by the name Lago,is not happy with Othello and Desdemona’s marriage. He thus goes forth and swears to separate them. In this we can evidence several themes like racism, jealousy, among others like love against betrayal. From these themes the concept of belonging comes forth through the identity of the skin color which makes Lago not to be happy with Othello. A sense of belonging also shows itself fro the way Othello and Lago are described as soldiers.
In the first text, about the crucible, the written mode of language as well as the figurative laguage has been used to bring out the characters clearly. Also the use of structures like town has been used to conceptualise belonging
In the second text, the use of status simply shows how the society is stratified. Language styles like irony has been used to bring the concept of inequality in us yet we claim to be the same.
These texts are well structured and relevant in the literary studies. They help equip the learners with the the artistic skills to be creative show what happens in our societies in the best way possible.
Works cited
Arthur Miller. The crucible. London: penguin 1953 print.
James, B. the related texts. Nairobi: Nairobi university press 2003 print
William Shakespeare. Othello. Cambridge: cambridge university press 1603 Print..
