Cultural Identity Consubstantially Negotiated in Cultural Assimilation: An Analysis of the Television Sitcom "Little Mosque on the Prairie".

This study seeks to explain how "Little Mosque on the Prairie" renegotiates cultural identity and whether cultural identity and assimilation theories can provide an effective lens for interpreting the show's rhetorical tactics of identity reframing. Specifically, I study how the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's television situation comedy "Little Mosque on the Prairie" utilizes the mass mediated medium of entertainment programming to present Muslim-Canadian cultural identity and assimilation in a way that employs stereotypical differences to highlight underlying similarities which renegotiate frameworks through which Muslim Canadian identity is understood. This paper considers specific ways the show renegotiates cultural identity and whether cultural identity and assimilation theories can provide an effective lens for interpreting the show's rhetorical tactics of identity reframing. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]