The Construction And Dissipation Of Identity In Media Dress Discourse

Dating back to the founding of fashion in 1980, it has been nearly 30 years since the mass media produced the discourse about dress though little attention was paid to it in the research field. On the one hand, Many studies only focus on the periodic fashion culture after transformation of market economy instead of a whole analysis of it, on the other hand macro and abstract study are preferred to micro and concrete text analysis. Moreover, superficial social or psychological angle of view made these studies ignore the sense of problem of the phenomena in the fashion. Therefore, our purpose here is to make an over-all and deep exploit in the resources to supply the meaning of dress discourse of mass media. The construction of Identity is the key words to look into the problem.Based on the discourse theory, our analysis will be displayed in the perspectives of text, discourse practice and social practice. The construction of identity will be the core to describe the text of dress discourse in the media, interpret the meaning, pay close attention to the function of identity construction and to find in different historical periods how the identity is constructed in the media and its influence.The foundation of the study is the influence of media dress discourse on the contemporary identity. Identity is connected with the pursuit of human value and meaning, particularly in collective social identity and self identity, which is surveyed in the class, gender and self identification. In reality, the significance of dress is to demonstrate the dresser's identity, with which media dress discourse set a standard to identity construction and participate in the construction of social culture.As the cultural background, the uniform of the dress before Reform and Opening showed the manifesto of political rigidity and vacancy of individualism in the name of "equality". Meanwhile, behind the collective identity, there was a still a persistence in individualism. The social transformation brought Chinese the crisis of self identity but also the possibility of reconstruction of identity. And this function of constructing identity of media dress discourse gives a chance to pursuit the new standards of new identity.The media dress discourse from the early 1980s to early 1990s devoted itself to the reconstruction of identity as "his" culture for reference. Referring to western fashion and culture, "his" image became the resource of the choice of real difference and producing of fictitious difference. The emergence of popular discourse revealed the inner socio-psychological mechanism of reconstruction of identity and the ideology of Emancipating the mind became the outer social force.Multi-dimensions and multi-features were the outstanding characteristics of identity construction of media dress discourse from early 1990s to new millennium. The advent of consumer time made media dress discourse shift to the attention to "ourselves", that is attention to human desire and needs, to construct a discourse system of identity. There was obvious change in addressing style, text pattern and structure in media dress discourse. These changes in form was the important components in discourse's meaning construction. Multi-dimensional construction of identity lied in the following aspects: the making of famous brands and quality life and promoting luxury realized the symbolic construction of middle class's identity; gender identity was constructed by reshaping male and female disposition; self-identity construction was demonstrated in multi-character merchandized selves. The multi-construction is the interaction between the media discourse and social practice, but also the result of the strong power of media discourse.In the early 2000s, the identity in media dress discourse is being dissipated in the recreationized construction. The media dress discourse transferred to language game from meaning pursuit in text by the recreationization of symbol and producing of discourse and anti-discourse. In the recreationized context, this identity is unstable and to some extent the collective identity gave way to self-construction. In multi-dimensional construction, self-identity construction fell into dire straits owing to its recreationalization and action. In the production and replacement of diverse fashion tribes, collective identity was constructed and feminist identity was reconstructed in the neutral rebellion and self-sufficient dress discourse.Identity in media dress discourse for nearly 30 years experienced a course from construction to dissipation and will never end in the cycle of discourse production, whose features discourse receivers should know but they are satisfied with its meaning's consumption and imagination which it provides.