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Images have the potential to both alienate and unite. Due to their ideological power, images can both create and clear misconceptions. To analyze the semiotic variation in the portrayal of women in contemporary art in relation to feminine identities and ideological representations, the study analyzes the choice of ideational signs in the contemporary Chinese and Pakistani paintings on the basis of the social semiotic approach of the grammar of visual design suggested by Kress and van Leeuwen. Considering diversity of themes and portrayal of women, 30 Pakistani and 30 Chinese paintings, painted by 17 Chinese and 17 Pakistani male and female painters were selected through an information-rich sampling technique. Results suggest that loneliness, waiting, leisure, and love for nature are the common themes related to Chinese and Pakistani women which the painters have creatively modeled. The images vary in the sense that Chinese women have been represented in constructive gender roles, such as working women, ballerinas, sports women, and hardworking farmers, etc., while Pakistani women have been represented in terms of resistance, oppression, victimhood, religiosity, and protection. The study has implications for gender studies, multimodal representations, and the way we comprehend, describe, and construct the interconnected yet fragmented fabric of our world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Art has the soft power to destabilize, subvert, and regulate certain behaviour patterns, identities, and choices. The study aims to explore and understand how men, women, society, and honor killings, in general, have semiotically been represented through visual signs in the paintings and what cultural themes and connotations regarding gender identities and honor killing be derived. The socio-semiotic approach of the grammar of visual design based on ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions suggested by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) has been applied to study the grammar of eight paintings with reference to gender roles, ideologies, and victimhood. Ideational signs including setting, actors, processes involved in the arrangement, relations between represented participants and their cultural connotations, as well as angle, shot, distance, colour schemes, and modality as interpersonal semiotic resources, and composition, salience, and placement as textual choices have been examined in detail. The analysis shows that women have been represented as marginalized and oppressed, while men as dominant and controlling. The study has implications for gender studies, communication studies, semiotics, honor killing, sociology, and gender-based violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What remains invisible in the discourse, contributes to perpetuating multilayered inequalities through discourse. Stereotypical representations, under-representations, hyper-representations, or misrepresentations regulate rape myths, and consequently, particular ways of seeing and behaving of those inside or outside the cultural boundaries. It has, therefore, been studied if and how rape victims and perpetrators have been visually represented and framed in the digital illustrations on rape in Pakistan. Discrepancies concerning identity construction of the rape victims and rapists as well as the depiction of multifarious socio-semiotic dimensions of rape have been analyzed. Thirty-five digital illustrations appearing in 32 blogs and news articles published on rape cases in Pakistan have been purposively selected and studied based on ideational metafunction suggested by Kress and van Leeuwen. Results reveal under-representation of rapists and perpetrators, law enforcement, survivors, and existing myths regarding revenge rape, child abuse, gang rape, marital rape, and gender-based victimhood. The study has implications for semiotics, rape studies, gender studies, and digital discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]