Exploring the Construction and Shift from Individualism to Collectivism: A Case Study of the 2016 Elections in Kuwait.

This study aims to investigate how political slogans and posters were used by political candidates to present themselves in the 2016 Kuwaiti National Assembly elections. To explore this, the researcher employed Bamberg’s positioning theory regarding identity construction. The dataset consisted of te...

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Publicado en:Arab Journal for the Humanities Vol. 43; no. 171; pp. 209 - 237
Autor principal: AlAjlan, Munirah Abdulkarim
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Kuwait University Summer2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: Exploring the Construction and Shift from Individualism to Collectivism: A Case Study of the 2016 Elections in Kuwait.
      aug:
        au: AlAjlan, Munirah Abdulkarim
        affil: Lecturer, English Language and Literature Department, College of Arts, Kuwait University, Kuwait.
      su:
        Political slogans
        Political campaigns
        Identity (Psychology)
        Power (Social sciences)
        Political candidates
        Solidarity
        Social reproduction
        Kuwait
      sug:
        subj:
          Kuwait
          Political slogans
          Political campaigns
          Identity (Psychology)
          Power (Social sciences)
          Political candidates
          Solidarity
          Social reproduction
      keyword:
        identity/ies
        Kuwait elections
        political slogans
        positioning
        التمثيل المجتمعي
        الشعارات السياسية
        الهوية الهويات
        انتخابات الكويت
      ab: This study aims to investigate how political slogans and posters were used by political candidates to present themselves in the 2016 Kuwaiti National Assembly elections. To explore this, the researcher employed Bamberg’s positioning theory regarding identity construction. The dataset consisted of ten randomly chosen political posters used in the electoral campaign in 2016. Besides employing Bamberg’s positioning theory to investigate the textual slogan of the posters, the Kress and van Leeuwen model was applied to the multimodal items found in the posters. The findings revealed how candidates shifted to the public mode to emphasize cooperation; that is, candidates tended to appeal to shared values and construct national identit(ies), creating momentum and promoting solidarity. In addition, the findings also showed that Kuwaiti politicians positioned themselves as agentive group members. Thus, social actors chose to construct themselves collectively with voters to persuade them to vote. This also showed how language allowed the reproduction of social realities to observe power relations and its connection to how they used language. In other words, the role of language in reproducing social realities was pivotal in highlighting the power dynamics embedded within the linguistic choices presented in the political posters. Additionally, the study revealed that while the use of political posters in Kuwait has a limited impact on voter decisions due to prevailing social and tribal affiliations, these posters and slogans nonetheless play a crucial role in shaping and positioning politicians’ identities, enabling them to articulate and construct their sense of self.
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    language: English
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          year: 2025
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