CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter explains the research procedures used to investigate the use of literary techniques employed to represent Asia including its places, people and cultures through the Orientalist assumptions in American popular media in the 21st century. This chapter consists of subsections on research objectives, research design, sample data, research instruments, data collection, and data analysis.
Research Design
This study is a descriptive design which functions to explain in what ways literary techniques used in representing Asia including its places, people and cultures through the concept of Orientalism in American popular media in the 21st century.
Sample Data
The sample data of this study were selected from popular American media from 2001 to 2020 using the purposive sampling method. The sample data consists of four types of media including film: Rambo 4 (2014) and Aladdin (2019), television:
Fresh Off the Boat (2015-2020), The Big bang Theory (2018) and The Simpsons (2019), advertising: Target (2009) and Mountain Dew (2010) and comic books: American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (2006) and The Totally Awesome Hulk #15 by Greg Pak (2017).
Research Instruments
The instruments of this qualitative research were the list of 78 literary techniques by Matrix Education and Said’s Orientalism. Data for analysis were obtain by observing language use in form of literary techniques based upon the Orientalist point of view in the American media.
Data Collection
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The steps of data collection are described as follows:
1. Gathering for data: Various kinds of American media produced
between 2001 and 2020 were searched and collected for a comparison of popularity.
2. Selecting data: The four most popular media in America, namely film, television, advertising and comic books with portrayals of Asia and produced by Americans were selected.
3. Filtering data: The selected media mentioned previously are filtered as to search for representations of Asia based on Orientalist perspectives. Each media chosen for analysis must have high ratings in order to guarantee its popularity and great impacts towards a large number of audiences and reader worldwide. In terms of film, the American films grossing over $ 100 million were selected. For television, the American TV programs and advertising in which their episodes were available on YouTube with more than 1,000,000 views were selected. And for comic books, the American comic books with high ratings (more than 3 stars) in a website called
‘Goodread’, the world's largest site for readers and book recommendations, were selected.
4. Preparing data: The selected media were watched and read in order to understand their narrations and descriptions. Dialogues spoken using literary techniques in each of the media were categorized and prepared for the analysis.
Data Analysis
Qualitative data analysis
To begin with, literary techniques used in dialogues and conversations in the media relating to the representations of Asia based on the concept of Orientalism will be examined and discussed. This process is carried out by applying the functions of each literary techniques integrated with Said’s Orientalism as an analytical framework in order to understand the negative portrayals of Asia including its people, places and cultures which are constructed based on the Orientalist assumptions through the constructions of the language. To clarify, the term
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Orientalist representation refers to the ways in which the West constructs an image of the Eastern and Asian people based on the binary opposition that exists between the Occident and the Orient. Examples of this include the way that the Orient is shown as being ignorant, passive and backwards. This often stands in contrast to the way the West is shown as a “superior” entity and this is suggestive that the East is nefarious and harmful to Westerners.
Quantitative data analysis
The use of literary techniques used to represent Asia based on the concept of Orientalism were recorded and categorized in form of a table as to find out the most frequently-used techniques in those American popular media often employ in chronological order. Then those frequently-used techniques recorded will be taken into account in an effort to be discussed for describing possible racial and cultural factors which have a great influence on the Orientalist representations of Asia in the American popular media.
