Discursive Identity Construction In Ancestor Worship Of Yellow Emperor (AWYE) Cebuns

Ancestor Worship of Yellow Emperor (AWYE祭祀黄帝)is a major activity of Qingming Festival in contemporary China. Great changes have taken place to the AWYE concerning this event from late Qing period to current time. With reference to Foucault’s genealogy of discourse and Gee’s and Fairclough’s discourse theories, we hold that AWYE discourse includes not only the changes in texts, but also those in social activities, social relations, beliefs, and social identities. This study aims to answer two questions:(1) What are the linguistic features of AWYE discourses in the years of1723,1912,2011in terms of transitivity, mood and thematic systems respectively?(2) What identities do these linguistic features of the texts present?The results show that the three cebuns have in common, in terms of transitivity features, that they all mainly focus on the material process to transmit new information to the listeners. The difference on Mood lie in1723cebun gives emphasis on the subject "Emperor",1912"the Republic China", while2011"Chinese nation": and1723text builds a distant social relation,1912and2011both a close social relationship. Meanwhile, the thematic features are different:1723text lays great importance to ancestral emperors and the subject "self; the theme of1912cebun is "the Republic of China", with the rheme describing the contribution of "China中华"; with regard to2011text, the themes are "central China","Yellow Emperor" and "China", and the rhemes are the extolling of the achievement of China.These different linguistic features construct different identities. As for the1723cebun displays traditional worship language features to construct the identity of "the Emperor" as a "family" in order to sustain its authority and domination of the whole state; while the1912discourse presents western features for building up the identity of "the state of Republic of China" with a noticeable use of words loaned from the western discourse so as to keep a close relationship with the folks and to consolidate its unity as a whole country. However, the2011discourse reveals features of modern and western language to construct Yellow Emperor (YE) as the ancestor of Chinese people all over the world and represents the national identity for Chinese home and abroad with the same root and origin of YE in order to realize its reunion and to revive its traditional ritual culture under the background of cultural globalization. Therefore, changes of AWYE discourses reflect the discursive construction of national or social identities in accordance with the changes of social ideology.