Page 180 - Šolsko polje, XXVIII, 2017, no. 3-4: Education and the American Dream, ed. Mitja Sardoč
P. 180
šolsko polje, letnik xxviii, številka 3–4
chetypal formation, can sustain the test of time. However, the post-struc-
tural findings point to the fact that discursive formations – and the Ameri-
can Dream concept cannot be an exemption – do change their course over
time. The discussion herein presents a modest attempt to understand the
potential of the narrative and archetypal structure of this concept. Never-
theless, further research should take into account two important aspects
that are beyond the scope of this paper: firstly, the postmodern forms of
the American Dream deserve further attention. As already demonstrat-
ed, the persistence of the American Dream lies in its ability to adapt to
various media formats and trends. In this regard, the American Dream
could be examined as a discursive formation (in strictly Foucauldian
terms), where one could observe the social history of the concept, includ-
ing its post-modern condition: for example, what elements of the Ameri-
can Dream are preserved in non-narrative media formats, such as celebrity
reality shows, where material wealth has been intensely displayed?35 With
this approach, the visual cues of the American Dream could be examined
through the lens of temporal analysis in order to detect external, i.e. visual
changes that might have occurred from its inception to recent adaptations
in various media representations. Secondly, the narrative structure as seen
in the small sample presented here, already demonstrates traces, typical of
the American Dream concept. In order to confirm such a claim and avoid
the inevitable bias of a small sample, an analysis should be extended to a
considerably larger data-set of biographies. The extraction of morpholo-
gies has already been transferring from laborious manual task to automat-
ed task, mainly in the field of computational linguistics (Finlayson, 2016:
p. 55). Modern computational tools and advancements in machine learn-
ing have proved to be methodologically efficient in detecting function lev-
els, embedded in stories, although implicit functions remain problematic
(Finlayson, 2016: p. 57). However, the constantly emerging stories reveal a
repetitive pattern of basic narrative functions and together with the pros-
pects and advancements of data analytics and machine learning, the field
of various popular culture forms can be further examined. At the time of
writing this paper, the empirical validation on a large scale data set, relat-
ed to the topic of the American Dream, still remains underexplored. The
possibilities of a computational examination could be extended to stud-
ying the basic core of the American Dream narrative and its variable ex-
ternal elements, such as time, settings, etc. By examining the American
Dream with temporal analysis, one could: (i) follow the modifications of
the concept; (ii) define its fixed structure that sustained it through time;
35 Here we refer to reality show formats, that depict (strictly in visual terms) the opulence of
American Dream, but offer no grand-narratives for example The Kardashians.
178
chetypal formation, can sustain the test of time. However, the post-struc-
tural findings point to the fact that discursive formations – and the Ameri-
can Dream concept cannot be an exemption – do change their course over
time. The discussion herein presents a modest attempt to understand the
potential of the narrative and archetypal structure of this concept. Never-
theless, further research should take into account two important aspects
that are beyond the scope of this paper: firstly, the postmodern forms of
the American Dream deserve further attention. As already demonstrat-
ed, the persistence of the American Dream lies in its ability to adapt to
various media formats and trends. In this regard, the American Dream
could be examined as a discursive formation (in strictly Foucauldian
terms), where one could observe the social history of the concept, includ-
ing its post-modern condition: for example, what elements of the Ameri-
can Dream are preserved in non-narrative media formats, such as celebrity
reality shows, where material wealth has been intensely displayed?35 With
this approach, the visual cues of the American Dream could be examined
through the lens of temporal analysis in order to detect external, i.e. visual
changes that might have occurred from its inception to recent adaptations
in various media representations. Secondly, the narrative structure as seen
in the small sample presented here, already demonstrates traces, typical of
the American Dream concept. In order to confirm such a claim and avoid
the inevitable bias of a small sample, an analysis should be extended to a
considerably larger data-set of biographies. The extraction of morpholo-
gies has already been transferring from laborious manual task to automat-
ed task, mainly in the field of computational linguistics (Finlayson, 2016:
p. 55). Modern computational tools and advancements in machine learn-
ing have proved to be methodologically efficient in detecting function lev-
els, embedded in stories, although implicit functions remain problematic
(Finlayson, 2016: p. 57). However, the constantly emerging stories reveal a
repetitive pattern of basic narrative functions and together with the pros-
pects and advancements of data analytics and machine learning, the field
of various popular culture forms can be further examined. At the time of
writing this paper, the empirical validation on a large scale data set, relat-
ed to the topic of the American Dream, still remains underexplored. The
possibilities of a computational examination could be extended to stud-
ying the basic core of the American Dream narrative and its variable ex-
ternal elements, such as time, settings, etc. By examining the American
Dream with temporal analysis, one could: (i) follow the modifications of
the concept; (ii) define its fixed structure that sustained it through time;
35 Here we refer to reality show formats, that depict (strictly in visual terms) the opulence of
American Dream, but offer no grand-narratives for example The Kardashians.
178
