Image Grammatology and Gender Representation in Digital Illustrations on Honor Killing

Abstract

The qualitative semiotic study investigates if and how digital illustrations published in Pakistani blogs on honor killing construct identities of the victims and perpetrators of honor killing in Pakistan. Besides analyzing the patterns of the portrayal and representation of Pakistani men and women, it examines if and how this discourse allows only particular kind of seeing for those outside the cultural domain. The framework of image grammatology suggested by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) has been applied to study the visual grammar of ten digital illustrations selected from 8 different blogs published on the websites of 4 Pakistani newspapers including The Dawn, The Express Tribune, The Sindh Times and The Baluchistan Voices. The results show that women have been represented as victims, while men as perpetrators. Lack of research in this area, multimodal approach and implications of results for blogs, identity construction of Pakistani men and women, visual literacy and institutional education to address the issue make the study a useful contribution to the existing research on multimodality, gender and honor killing.