|
|
Social Representations on Interethnic Conflict: From a Lexical Network Analysis Perspective |
HU Fawen, LI Liju, WANG Pei, HAN Zhongtai
|
1.Yunnan Provincial Institute for Ethnic Studies,Yunnan Minzu University,Kunming 650031,China; 2.School of Educational Science,Dali University,Dali 671003,China; 3.Department of Psychology,Shanghai Normal University,Shanghai 200234,China |
|
|
Abstract To explore social representations of interethnic conflict and its core elements, this article used a word-association test with interethnic conflict as stimulus to collect 220 college students’ free association responses. Then complex network analysis techniques including network visualization, k-core decomposition were used for analyzing the structures of the evoked words networks, and comparing the representational differences between Yi and Han ethnic groups. Results indicated that the social representations of interethnic conflict was a 5-core multilayer network organized by the two core nuclei: war and fight, and its global meaning generated from the following 14 shared core elements and their connections: Contradiction, war, struggle, conflict, peace, ethnicity, solidarity, racial discrimination, harmony, fight, discrimination, culture, bleeding, and profit. Apart from the similar structure properties in the two groups, Yi mainly represented the interethnic conflict as a nested hierarchical network model constructed on the core axis of the death (dispute) → fight (civil strife) → war (contradiction), emphasizing a causal associations among these levels, and focused on the ethnicity element. Whilst based on the category axis of the language (strife) → interest (tussle) → war (harmony), Han socially represented the interethnic conflict from the angle of teleology, stressing on the bleeding element. The conclusion suggested that the social representation of interethnic conflict is a multi-level network structure, existing discrepancy in ethno-culture context.
|
Received: 28 January 2018
Published: 09 January 2019
|
|
|
|
|
No related articles found! |
|
|
|
|