Subject Positioning In Chinese Real Estate Advertisements-A Critical Approach

Subject positioning is a term closely related to Althusser's understanding of "subject," "ideology," and "interpellation". Subject positioning means the process through which language constructs a social position for an individual and thereby attempts to make him/her an ideological subject—an individual controlled by ideologies. Discourses usually provide people with social positions. People's occupation of the positions is usually accompanied by their unconscious acceptance of a set of ideologies embedded in those discourses. The critical study of subject positioning in discourses can reveal how discourse attempt to position people as various kinds of subjects and the ideologies hidden in those discourses.Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is derived from Critical Linguistics with the aim of exploring the relationships among language, ideology and power. Critical linguists believe that discourse is not merely the 'mirror of reality', but also a force of social practice. Critical discourse analysis is mainly to identify and analyze those ideological assumptions hidden in the text that have largely been taken for granted. CDA is a socially directed application of linguistic analysis. The major methodological resource of CDA is Systemic-functional linguistics.Using a framework combining Fairclough's three-dimensional model of discourse, Halliday's ideational and interpersonal metafunctions, and Maslow's theory of a hierarchy of needs, the present study focuses on subject positioning in Chinese real estate advertisements and exposes how the advertisements attempt to position their readers as four kinds of subjects and the major ideological work of the advertisements---classifying people into different social strata. Therefore, while reading the real estate advertisements, readers should train their critical reading abilities for discourses, critically read those advertisements which are apparently promoting products and explore how the ideologies embedded in the real estate advertisements influence people's living philosophy and lifestyles.