Discursive Change Of The Image Of Mother In Textbooks For Chinese Courses In Primary Schools

The textbook for Chinese course in primary schools as an authoritative and crucial source for nine-year compulsory education,is a significant educational material for the construction of the image of mother,playing great role in guiding and shaping the formation of students’ outlook on life and values.This thesis takes the four editions of textbooks for Chinese courses published by People’s Education Press from 1987 to nowadays as an example,with a span of 34 years,to explore the discursive construction of the image of mother and its changes from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis,combining Wodak’s Discourse-historical Approach and methods of corpus.At the macro level,this thesis employs the corpus software Antconc 3.5.8 to extract the key terms of the texts to analyze the topic about mother in the educational discourse of textbooks.At the micro level,it studies the linguistic means and its effects in the constructing the image of mother in textbooks and its effects,based on the discursive strategies,transitivity,and the collocation,word cluster and index of corpus.This thesis analyzes the image of mother constructed in the textbooks and its changes,and discovers that the texts of these textbooks construct multiple images of mother,through the usage of discursive strategies and the choice of language forms:(1)an industrious and laborious physical laborer,taking “educating children” as her duty;(2)the caretaker of children;(3)the enlightener and guide of children;(4)the material provider and spiritual motivator of children;(5)one of the weak;(6)the revolutionary who sacrificed for the country,and the contributor who made contributions to society.Although these multiple images are constructed by various editions of textbooks together,the overall trend still demonstrates that the image of mother as the agent of women abiding by traditional morality and ethics has not changed,and the stereotype of her as a traditional physical laborer centering on “educating children” is inherited,as well as the traditional image of females sacrificing for their families is enforced.The research significance of this thesis mainly includes two aspects: on the one hand,the study on the construction of the image of mother in textbooks for Chinese courses in primary schools,can make the textbooks learners understand comprehensively the image of mother constructed by textbooks,as well as through the analysis of the social context of the construction of the images,it can help students and editors know problems existing in the images,rather than be influenced by the traditional stereotype of mother.On the other hand,the application of discursive strategies can help editors to better achieve a specific discursive intention,pushing forward the study on the educational discourse,while the construction of various images through these strategies is related with the social factors of different historical periods,which is of certain enlightening significance to understand the essential characteristics of “Discourse-historical” Critical Discourse Analysis.