Corpus-Based Critical Discourse Analysis of Women’s Representation in Shen Bao (1872-1949) and People’s Daily (1950-2012)

This thesis aims to explore and analyse women’s representations in Shen Bao (1872-1949) and People’s Daily (1950-2012) in China over a period of 140 years (1872-2012). Combining the quantitative corpus analysis of 1.9 million words of data with qualitative analyses using critical discourse analysis (CDA), it examines four distinctive historical eras in the press portrayal of women: late imperial Qing (1872–1911), Republican (1912–1949), socialist (1950-1978) and the post-socialist (1979-2012). During these 140 years, China experienced dramatic sociocultural shifts and political transformations under the guidance of different ideologies over this crucial historical time. Women were placed right in the centre of this turmoil, and women’s roles have continuously been renewed, recreated, defended and modified (Williams, 1977). Women were deemed inferior to men were nothing more than the result of social constructions. Women’s representations are embedded in ideological frameworks supported by existing power relations in the patriarchal society. They operated in the symbolic world through discursive construction that defines women in ways that shape the social understanding of their role, status and identities. This construction of women by the dominant forces in society serves to sustain the existing patriarchal power relations. The thesis focuses on newspapers because of its central role in shaping public opinions, setting agendas, and maintaining power structure Broadsheet newspapers have the power to define key issues, topics, and situations which gives them ideological power. CDA pays attention to both the macro-level of context through a top-down approach, and the micro-level by analysing how ideologies, dominance and power relations are expressed in language. In contrast, Corpus Linguistics (CL) deals with large amounts of text by providing detailed information of the micro-level. CL is basically a bottom-up approach, allowing the data generated in a corpus to take the lead, and thereby limits bias. The data generated by corpus analytical tools in CL is not handpicked data selected by the analyst, it is typical and representative linguistic patterns that have been extracted from a large amount of data. Women’s representations have undergone significant transformations across the four historical eras in China as some women gain more economic independence and could challenge the power hierarchies. In the late Qing era, women were not described as the opposite gender of vi men, but are represented as the weak, incompetent, decadent, and pathological symbol of premodernity in Shen Bao. Articles in Shen Bao promoted representations of women as “Mothers of the Nation” and “Heroines”, which are variations of traditional “good wife and mother” and “devoted to husband and son” sugar-coated with modern nationalism. In the socialist era, women were mostly represented as strong, masculine, selfless, and ideologically correct workers in the labour force, and as emotionally and physically the same as men. Women lived and breathed for the state, and were willing to devote their lives, youth and efforts to communism and socialism. In the post-socialist era, women’s representations in the People’s Daily are more diverse. Discourses on women throughout the 140 years acted as a tool to legitimize various national agendas. This study offers empirical evidence and provides a macro level picture of the transformation of women’s representations in the 140 years of history, underpinning the drive behind; also a micro level analysis of detailed discussion on the confliction and consistencies of women discourse over the four historical eras. Women’s studies have their origin outside of China, in the west. I hope this study will shed some light onto the many components of the scarcely researched localization of west women theories into Chinese terms, which I believe is the next important issue and the next biggest challenge in women’s studies in China.