“Good Citizenship”: The Ideals of Moral Politics and Democracy in the Short Stories of Phan Wan Fah Award Between 2016 to 2021
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Abstract
The article focuses on analyzing social ideas and political ideologies in the Pan Wan Fah Award-winning short stories published between 2016 and 2021. It applies concepts from semiotics and textual analysis to interpret and analyze the signs within 77 short story texts of the Pan Wan Fah Award, considering both their literary and socio-political contexts. The results reveal that the signs in the Pan Wan Fah Award-winning short stories reflect the political ideologies of the state, such as royal democracy and moral politics, which are combined with the ideas of being a good citizen and liberal democracy. Additionally, the short stories of the Pan Wan Fah Award present the ideals of liberal democracy and active citizenship, including new common values in human rights, equality, and human dignity. However, there is also a struggle for the people's political ideology against the state, such as a fair and truly elected democracy as a hope for future politics, freedom, equality, and democracy, including resistance to state violence, suppression, and unjust power of authoritarianism.
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