Book contents
- The Discourse of History
- The Discourse of History
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Building Historical Knowledge through Language: A Systemic Functional Linguistic Perspective
- 2 Cultivating a Critical Gaze: Managing Technicality in Ancient History Teaching
- 3 Cultivating the Value of Democracy in History Teaching
- 4 Interpreting History: Valuing Events in a Postcolonial World
- 5 Coordinating Meaning: Scaffolding Teaching/Learning in Pedagogic Discourse
- 6 Explaining What Happened: Logical Metaphors in Spanish History Textbooks
- 7 Negotiating Values through Historical Evidence
- 8 Historical Empathy: Learning to Care about Others’ Suffering through Film
- 9 History in the Arts: Exploring the Past to Cultivate Students’ Gaze
- 10 Describing and Taxonomising the Phenomena of a Glorious Past
- 11 Representing Minority History in a Multi-Ethnic Country
- 12 Expressing Attitudes in Ancient Chinese History
- References
- Index
8 - Historical Empathy: Learning to Care about Others’ Suffering through Film
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 May 2024
- The Discourse of History
- The Discourse of History
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Preface
- 1 Building Historical Knowledge through Language: A Systemic Functional Linguistic Perspective
- 2 Cultivating a Critical Gaze: Managing Technicality in Ancient History Teaching
- 3 Cultivating the Value of Democracy in History Teaching
- 4 Interpreting History: Valuing Events in a Postcolonial World
- 5 Coordinating Meaning: Scaffolding Teaching/Learning in Pedagogic Discourse
- 6 Explaining What Happened: Logical Metaphors in Spanish History Textbooks
- 7 Negotiating Values through Historical Evidence
- 8 Historical Empathy: Learning to Care about Others’ Suffering through Film
- 9 History in the Arts: Exploring the Past to Cultivate Students’ Gaze
- 10 Describing and Taxonomising the Phenomena of a Glorious Past
- 11 Representing Minority History in a Multi-Ethnic Country
- 12 Expressing Attitudes in Ancient Chinese History
- References
- Index
Summary
This chapter explores the development of empathy as a particular kind of historical sensibility that relates others’ historical experiences to interpreter’s affective semiotic processes. The chapter analyses negotiations of meaning about historical films in a university course to describe students’ affective involvement and moral engagement with the history of others. Learning about others’ history entails engaging in semiotic work to reconstruct past experiences which creates affordances for the past to become relevant in the present in axiological and affective terms. The chapter shows how through response papers and discussions about a film that depicts traumatic historical events, students display their positioning and the construction of axiological communities that connect past and present. The discourse analysis draws on the SFL concept of interpersonal meanings as construed through attitudes (Martin & White, 2005) and point of view (Unsworth, 2013) realising affective and moral orientations to others’ experience. The findings of this study offer some insights into Spanish interpersonal meaning-making resources and the potential of historical film as a tool to develop historical sensibility.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Discourse of HistoryA Systemic Functional Linguistic Perspective, pp. 181 - 196Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024