Bouvier, Gwen
(2018)
Clothing and meaning making:
a multimodal approach to
women’s abayas.
Visual Communication, 17 (2).
pp. 187-207.
ISSN 1741-3214
Abstract
This article takes a multimodal discourse approach to women’s fashion in
the Middle East. It places the Islamic abaya in the UAE in the context of the
wider literature on fashion and identity, exploring the way in which clothing
features and forms can prescribe ideas, values and attitudes, and framing
this discussion within newer ideas on globalization. As Roland Barthes
argued, it is not so much personal choice or diversity in fashion that is of
interest, but the kinds of values and expected behaviours that they imply.
The abaya, on the one hand, represents a more newly arrived idea of traditional,
local and religious identity, linking to some extent to an imagined
sense of a monolithic notion of Islamic clothing. But, on the other hand, this
is itself reformulated locally through international representations, ideas and
values, and integrated with newer ideas of taste.
| Item Type: |
Article
|
| Keywords: |
abaya; clothing semiotics; discourse; fashion; globalization; identity;
Islamic fashion; Middle East; multimodality; semiotics; |
| Academic Unit: |
Faculty of Arts & Humanities > School of English, Media & Theatre Studies > Media Studies |
| Item ID: |
11865 |
| Identification Number: |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1470357217742340 |
| Depositing User: |
Gwen Bouvier
|
| Date Deposited: |
25 Nov 2019 10:13 |
| Journal or Publication Title: |
Visual Communication |
| Publisher: |
SAGE Publications |
| Refereed: |
Yes |
| URI: |
|
| Use Licence: |
This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available
here |
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