Critical Discourse Analysis Of Gendered Discourses In Chinese Women's Magazines

This thesis takes a critical discourse analysis (CDA) perspective to analyse textual data chosen from several issues of Chinese women's magazines (over the period 2001-6), aiming at carrying out a detailed investigation of some typical gendered discourses involved in the chosen texts and uncovering the hidden gender ideologies contained in them. The purpose of this article is not to analyse the magazines per se, but to analyse the discourses that are contained in and underpinning them. The author illustrates what gendered discourses are and how they can be recognized and identified by adopting CDA as the analytic approach. By undertaking analyses of three texts through examining linguistic and non-linguistic traces, macrostructures, as well as microstructures of the texts, the author presents the discourse-spotting method in a CDA way.The author argues that, though they seem to be daily, ordinary, even gossipy, the involved discourses are not as harmless as they appear to be. They tend to prescribe what a charming woman should look like, how a popular woman is supposed to behave, and what kind of taste they should cultivate, and so on. In this way, women are put in a submissive position, which causes the necessity of carrying through such analyses.