Character, Culture and Identity (PHDCCI005)

This practice-based research will investigate how the use of viewpoint in cultural narratives contributes to a sense of cultural identity. The intersections between dominant modes of language in both media and literature and their inevitable resulting artistic representations will be explored in terms of their possible effects on cultural identity.

Modes of language will refer especially to point of view, written or staged, and in particular to the subjective position of a central character - a narrator either reliable or unreliable.

This will include examination of the use of linguistic conventions or experiments to create this subjective place, such as the use of the first person singular or variations on it (e.g. free indirect third person) in written narratives, and the use of dialect, accent and the vernacular to render ‘the demotic’ i.e. the politically or emotionally or aesthetically charged narrative.

It will also include the examination of filmic/televisual/theatrical conventions or experiments to create the same position of subjectivity, which might include multiple story-lines, parallel narrative threads, and more than one character whose story is told through his/her own ‘lived’ experience. The media language of camerawork, sound and editing will be analysed for its contribution to ‘the demotic’ filmed narrative. The language and subjectivity of theatre will be similarly examined.

The research will range across Scottish media, theatrical and literary genres from their origins to their most contemporary versions, seeking and establishing international connections through narrative links e.g. similarities with Norse/Viking legends, folk tales and moral concerns in contemporary crime fiction.