The Deconstrction And Reconstrction Of The Female Gender Identity: A Critical Study Of Divorce Mediation Discourse

The relationship between female and language is a focus in the field of discourse theory in recent years. The discursive style of female as a weak group has drawn attention in the last decades. In the domain of human discourse, male’s discourse embraces a dominating position while that of female is regarded as powerless language. The vision, perspective and voice of men are thought to be universal; comparatively, the vision, perspective and voice of women are rejected, erased and ignored. Due to this discriminatory development, men improve intelligence and wisdom and further acquire discourse right in society; while women have no choice but succumb to the life range and their established roles which the society has set for them, and descend to secondary and subordinate status.However, the conventional stereotype that of women, i.e., women’s discourse is characterized by uncertainty and powerlessness, and they are more euphemistic, more willing to comply and cooperate, and more frequent to use tag questions or hedges to ensure that their communication can go smoothly and successfully, has changed. With the advancement of social-language and its deep research, lots of researches arrive at a rather opposite conclusion that the style of gender discourse is characterized by relativity and dynamics. Whatever, gender is not a marked factor that affects discursive style. Factors like society, culture, psychology and context, among others, will influence the discursive style of female and make it display the characteristic of powerfulness.This thesis, based on the transcription of 23 cases heard in a couple of cities in China, from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analyses, tries to explore the power distribution in the interactive divorce mediation; namely, to explore how powerful women control discourse and deconstruct and reconstruct their gender identity through vocabulary, hedges and other discursive strategies like interruption, violation of Politeness Principles and Face Theory.Further, this thesis tries to explore how such factors as education degree, the status of social economy, etc. influence female’s discursive style in divorce mediation. In doing so, this study will deconstruct and reconstruct the traditional view that “Women are in a powerless situation, displaying a powerless discursive style” and therefore unveil an interactive relationship between the powerful female’s discourse, power and ideology.This thesis tries to explore that how the powerful female realize the deconstruction of their traditional stereotype identity and reconstruction of a different identity in divorce mediation at the discursive level, so as to fill the gap in this research and enrich the scope of discursive research of the female. In sum, apart from contributing to the implementation of the critical thinking in judicial system, and promoting and expanding the scope and means of female discursive study, this paper also provides some practical examples and enlightenment for powerless women in striving for their equal discourse rights.