Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Telling Stories: Text Analysis In A Museum, Emily Rose Purser

Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) - Papers

Museum texts tell interesting stories, and their role in public education makes them quite important. The exhibition discussed in this paper gives a message that interests, but also concerns me, as a teacher of language, communication and cultural studies. It is a case of one culture telling stories about another, and in such a delicate arena there is much potential to cause offence. The exhibition in question is about peoples of the Pacific, and is in a major European museum of the world's indigenous cultures (BerlinDahlem). I had visited it to see how Australian cultures are represented in image and …