A Thematic Analysis of Graffiti on the University Classroom Walls - A Case of Iran
Abstract
The present study positions a research to analyze the university students’ graffiti on classroom walls to make a thematic analysis of the graffiti used in the Iranian higher education context. It is an attempt to investigate how university students voice their opinions and express themselves using graffiti on the university classroom walls. The study is based on the documentation and classification of more than 200 pieces of graffiti on university classroom walls in Isfahan, Iran. The analysis suggests different themes such as love and hatred, politics, religion, poem, class notes, signature, presence, date, complaint/despair, self-expression, drawings, etc. It is believed that this study is not only a sociological analysis of graffiti in the university context, but it may also be interesting to a wider audience like educators, administrators, teachers and parents.
Keywords
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Abel, E. L., & Buckley, B. E. (1977). The handwriting on the wall: Toward a sociology and psychology of graffiti. Westport, CT: Greenwood.
Arluke, A., Kutakoff, L., & Levin, J. (1987). Are the times changing? An analysis of gender differences in sexual graffiti. Sex Roles, 16(1-2), 1-7.
Ball, D. B. (2004). The nature and extent of desktop graffiti among U.S. college students: An exploratory study. Unpublished master thesis,Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Virginia.
Barnett, M. (2006). Bathroom sex: It happens here. Retrieved August 3, 2013, from http://www.gwhatchet.com/2006/03/27/michael-barnett-bathroom-sex-it-happens-here/.
Bartholome, L. and Snyder, P. (2004). Is it philosophy or pornography? Graffiti at the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. Journal of American Culture, 27, 86-99.
Basthomi, Y. (2007). An initial intimation of a yet banal discourse: Truck graffiti k@ta, 9(1), 34-48.
Beck, J. P. (1982). Graffiti: The Vulgar Blackboard's Wit. English Journal, 71(3), 73-74.
Blume, R. (1985). Graffiti. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Discourse and literature: new approaches to the analysis of literary genres (Vol. 3, pp. 137–148): John Benjamins Publishing.
Cole, C. M. (1991). Oh wise women of the stalls... . Discourse Society:, 2(4), 401-411.
Dombrowski, Q. (2011). Walls that talk: Thematic variation in University library graffiti. Journal of the Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science, 1(3), 1-13.
Dundes, A. (1966). Here I Sit: A study of American latrinalia. Kroeber Anthropoligical Society Paper, 34, 91-105.
Dupront, A. (1987). Pèlerinages et lieuq sacrés. In D. Sacré (Ed.), Croisades et Pèlerinages: Images et langages (pp. 403). Paris: Gallimard.
Farnia, M. & Tohidian, I. (2013). A thematic analysis of truck graffiti in Iranian context. Paper presented at the first national conference on research in teaching English, translation and linguistics (RTELT), 2-3 March, Islamic Azad university of Khorasgan, Iran.
Finders, M. J. (1997). Just girls: Hidden literacies and life in junior high: Education Resources Information Center (ERIC).
Forster, A. M., Vettese-Forster, S., & Borland, J. (2012). Evaluating the cultural significance of historic graffiti. Structural Survey, 30(1), 43-64.
Hanauer, D. I. (2004). Silence, voice and erasure: psychological embodiment in graffiti at the site of Prime Minister Rabin’s assassination. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 31(29), 35.
Haslam, N. (2012). Psychology in the bathroom: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gadsby, J. (1995). Taxonomy of analytical approaches to graffiti. Retrieved February 8, 2013, Retrieved from http://www.graffiti.org/faq/appendix.html
Grach, V. (1973). Graffiti. College English, 35(3), 285-287.
Green, J. (2003). The writing on the stall: Gender and graffiti. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 22 (3), 282-296.
Kan, J. A. W. (2006). A sociolinguistic analysis of graffiti in secondary schools: a case study of selected schools in Nyandarua. Unpublished master thesis, Egerton University, Nakuru, Kenya.
Klingman, A., Shalev, R. and Pearlman, A., 2000. Graffiti: A creative means of youth coping with collective trauma. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 27 (5), 299-208.
Koon-Hwee K. (2001). Adolescents and Graffiti. Art Education, 54(1),18-23.
Lindsay, J. (1960). The writing on the wall: An account of Pompeii in its Last Days. London: Frederick Muller Limited.
Matthews, N., Speers, L., & Ball, J. (2012). Bathroom banter: Sex, love, and the bathroom wall. Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, 15(17), pp. 1-11.
McMenemy, P., & Cornish, I. M. (1993). Gender differences in the judged acceptability of graffiti. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 77(2), 622-622.
Mueller, M. M., Moore, J. W., Doggett, R. A., & Tingstrom, D. H. (2000). The effectiveness of contingency-specific and contingency-nonspecific prompts in controlling bathroom graffiti. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 33(1), 89-92.
Nwoye, O. G. (1993). Social issues on walls: Graffiti in university lavatories. Discourse & Society, 4, 419-442.
Obeng, S. G. (2000). Speaking the unspeakable: Discursive strategies to express language attitudes in Legon (Ghana) graffiti. Research on Language and Social Interaction, 33(3), 291-319.
Otta, E. (1993). Graffiti in the 1990s: A Study of inscriptions on restroom walls. Journal of Social Psychology, 133, 589-590.
Peteet, J. (1996). The Writing on the walls: The graffiti of the intifada. Cultural Anthropology, 11 (2), 139-159.
Pietrosanti, S. (2010). Behind the tag: A journey with the graffiti writers of European walls. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.
Plesch, V. (2002). Graffiti and ritualization: San Sebastiano at Arborio. In J. Rollo-Koster (Ed.), Medieval and Early modern ritual: formalizaed behavior in Europe, China and Japan (pp. 127-146). Leiden, Boston, Köln: Brill.
Raymonda (2008). The sociolinguistics study of graffiti arts used in Surakarta. Unpublished master thesis, Muhammadiyah University, Surakarta, Indonesia.
Read, A. W. (1935). Lexical evidence from folk epigraphy in zuesiern Norlh America, a glossarial study of the low element in the English language. Paris: Olympic Press.
Reisner, R. (1974). Encyclopedia of graffiti. New York: Macmillan Publishing
Şad, S. N., & Kutlu, M. (2009). A study of graffiti in teacher education. Egitim Arastirmalari-Eurasian Journal of Educational Research, 36, 39-56.
Schreer, G. E., & Strichartz, J. M. (1997). Private restroom graffiti: An analysis of controversial social issues on two college campuses. Psychological Reports, 81, 1067-1074.
Stocker, T. L., Dutcher, L. W., Hargrove, S. M., & Cook, E. A. (1972). Social analysis of graffiti. Journal of American Folklore, 85, 356-366.
Tanzer, H. H. (1939). The Common people of Pompeii: A study of the graffiti. Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press.
Teixeira, R. P., & Otta, E. (1998). Restroom graffiti: a study of gender differences. Estudos de Psicologia (Natal), 3(2), 229-250.
Teixeira, R. P., Otta, E., & Siqueira, J. D. O. (2003). Between the public and the private: sex differences in restroom graffiti from Latin and Anglo-Saxon countries. (Working Paper No 03/007) Retrieved from University De São Paulo, http://www.ead.fea.usp.br/WPapers/2003/03-007.pdf.
Tracy, S. K. (2005). The graffiti method. Australian Midwifery Journal, 18(3), 22-26.
Trahan, A. (2011). Identity and ideology: The dialogic nature of latrinalia. Internet Journal of Criminology, 1-9.
Warakomski, J. (1991). The humour of graffiti. In G. Bennett (Ed.), Spoken in Jest (pp. 279-295). Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press Ltd.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.3n.3p.48
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
2012-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.
International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature
To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the journal emails into your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', check your 'bulk mail' or 'junk mail' folders.