We investigate the patterns and evolution of cultural ideas and symbols in media using network analysis techniques. We leverage the TV Tropes wiki of media works, cross-referenced with the widelyrecognized character/situation types (tropes) that these works contain, to construct a bipartite graph representation of 4,616 films and their associated tropes. We perform community detection on a weig...

A trope is a particular property: the redness of a rose, the roundness of the moon. It is generally supposed that tropes are individuated by primitive quantity: this redness, that roundness. I argue that the trope theorist is far better served by individuating tropes by spatiotemporal relation: here redness, there roundness. In short, tropes are not this-suches but here-suches. I generally favo...

David Armstrong believes in universals. Once universals are accepted, it must also be accepted that they resemble one another to various degrees. Colors, for instance, fall into a complicated multidimensional resemblanceorder. Armstrong claims that all universals are complex universals, and that they resemble one another insofar as they have common universal constituents. Armstrong’s reductive ...

This article examines the evolution of borderlands as an organizing trope by focusing on how transcendence beyond cultural nationalist perspectives traces shift from Chicano/a to Latinx discourses. In order address this issue, I will analyse two twenty-first-century texts that delve into intricate ways in which transnational forces collide with economic, and political processes persistently rev...

The meanings attached to the nation can be consequential for group members' attitudes and beliefs. We examined how national identity definition can influence the extent of individuals' homophobia with 159 Lithuanian and 176 Scottish university students who completed a questionnaire which measured their national identification, homophobia, and the extent to which they felt traditional family val...