Empowering Women from an Institutional Perspective.The Case of “Spotlight Initiative”

Social semiotics mainly deals with the social dimension of meaning . In particular, ‘[…] it sets out to reveal how processes of meaning making shape individuals and societies. Its basic assumption is that meanings derive from social action and interaction using semiotic resources as tools’ (Halloran et al 2016: 58). Starting from this theoretical assumption, the study is aimed at investigating EU And UN social commitment to protect women from violence through the’ Spotlight Initiative’. The initiative ‘[…] is so named as it brings focused attention to this issue, moving it into the spotlight and placing it at the centre of efforts to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment, in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The name reminds us that violence often takes place in the dark, is denied or rendered invisible and that it cannot survive in the light. It also highlights the importance of targeted investments in women and girls to achieve sustainable development, making this renewed and unwavering commitment of the EU and the UN visible’ (https://www.un.org/en/spotlight-initiative/index.shtml). Thus, the study will examine the ‘Spotlight initiative’ website from a multimodal perspective. More specifically, the interplay of its semiotic resources employed to promote non-violence measures against women will be analysed. As a matter of fact, ‘[…] a multimodal analysis can be best aligned with the core aims of critical discourse studies: to reveal buried ideologies in texts and to show how the powerful seek to re-contextualise social practice in their own interests and maintain control over ideology’ (Machin et al 2016: 303). In short, this work will attempt to focus on ideologies and social practices enacted by EU and UN through their efforts to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment.