Symbolic Power In The Discursive Practice Of Income Distribution Reform In China

This thesis studies Symbolic Power hidden in the discursive practice of IncomeDistribution Reform in China and its naturalization tendency with the support ofNorman Fairclough’s theory of discursive practice as well as Pierre Bourdieu’s theory ofSymbolic Power. According to relevant studies, the discursive practice of this reformprocesses and represents Symbolic Power mainly through language skills ofnominalization, passivization, modality, classification, parallelism and collocation, etc.,so as to realize the transition from naturalization of Symbolic Power in the linguisticlevel to naturalization of Symbolic Power in the ideological level in the process ofdiscursive production, distribution and consumption. It has been found that powerrelations in the reform are unequally distributed, but for the tendences of mediadiscourses to vague responsibilities, Symbolic Power in this discursive practice has beenmystified and naturalized as legitimate common sense so that the public fail torecognize this inequality. In fact, it is Symbolic Violence over the public. This thesisaims at analyzing the unequal power relations in the reform and exposing how they canbe naturalized and accepted by the public without resistance.