"Fashion" In Media Discourse

After china’s Reform and Opening at1978, There came the fashion media, especially the fashion magazines; At the same time, fashion, have been a very popular concept affecting the Chinese people’s daily life. The issue of what is fashion in Chinese media discourse, including the meaning and significance, construction and deconstruction, is the focus of this dissertation. In order to provide a complete description of the vicissitudes of fashion in the Chinese media discourse, the author refers to Norman Fairclough’s discourse analysis theory and Randal Collin’s social conflict theory.In China, the modern sense meaning of fashion can date back to the1930’s, in Shanghai. During that period, the media constructed the idea of "Modern" which became one important culture concept for the growth of Chinese fashion in the media discourse later. Besides "Modern" there are other two concepts which offer the cornerstones for the fashion in the media discourse:one is "Qizhuangyifu",(means very strange and special clothes, similar to the odd dress or the outlandish dress, but can’t be substitute for it considering the unique political sentiment in Chinese); the other is "Beauty", or vaguely esthetics. Just because Beauty or esthetics, the change of fashion in Chinese media discourse unfolded along a very different inter thread compare with that of the Western’s.Chinese fashion magazines stemmed from the Clothes magazines during1980’s, and these Clothes magazines are the inception of Chinese fashion magazines. At this stage, fashion is not a self-contained word, it is only the synonym of the modern clothes or the trends of fad. Since it is the synonym of the modern clothes, modern clothes is a kind of art and it’s purpose is for the esthetics, and which is different from Qizhuangyifu, so it could be shared by all the people around the country. Later, when china has being scheduled to conduct the urbanization process, the meaning of fashion changed. Compare with the last phrase, now, fashion as a kind of beauty has its own limitation. Fashion as a kind of beauty is only fitted on urban young females, so it must be a special beauty. During this stage, Modern became the popular word to describe the fashionable ladies. With the rise of males fashion magazines, the limitation on female is the first to be broken down. But if the definition of limitation on females is just emphasis the decoration of the body, then fashion of males still share the same meaning of that of females. While fashion as a special beauty is strengthened at this third stag, fashion got another dimension of meaning in the media discourse gradually, names challenge. Though it names challenge, it does not really threaten all the mainstream culture, but only the sex and the relationship between men and women. Despite the limitation, the meaning of fashion can’t be stable any more attribute to the challenge. So who has the power to explain or interpret fashion has been the most important problem in the construction of fashion. By stratified the fashion media system step by step, including editors, writers and the readers, the editors became the final fashion interpreter. Thus the fashion media seized the power to define fashion, and the chief editors have almost been a commander in fashion world.From the fashion vicissitudes, there are three feathers. First is the trend gradually focusing on body. Fashion space has become a serial space around body in the end, the closer to body, more important of fashion world. Second is the difference with that of the westerns. Because of the special inception, Chinese fashion in the media discourse is changed around esthetics, while the western’s is changed around identity of class or stratification. Third, the tactics of discourse is based upon the resource the media holds. When the media have more resource, they inclined to distinguish themselves and achieve the solidarity, and clarify the boundary of the fashion organization. When the resource is scarce, the media often show intimation with the readers and the writers. By strategically adopting these discourse tactics, Chinese fashion media gradually create an imagined heterotopia, names fashion.