Discursive Construction Of "Leftover Women" Identity In Attitudinal Resources Employment

With the media discussion on "leftover women," single women above traditionally "marked" marriageable age, increasing rapidly these years, this group of females have become one of the research focuses in various disciplines; nevertheless, critical discourse analysis of the media reports on this group of women is of scarcity. With Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework discourse theory and attitude system of Appraisal Theory as its analytical framework, reports and articles themed with "leftover women" from Xinming Evening News as its data, this study investigates the construction of "leftover women" identity by media discourse. It seeks to answer the following two questions:(1) What attitudinal resources are employed in "leftover women" reports? (2) How are "leftover women" identity discursively constructed via these attitudinal resources?Qualitative and quantitative data analysis reveals the following major findings:Firstly, attitudinal resources employed in "leftover women" discourse are remarkably diverse. Except for positive reaction in appreciation, all the other aspects of the three subsystems of attitude system (affect, judgment, and appreciation) are identified in "leftover women" discourse. More negative attitudinal resources than positive ones are employed in "leftover women" discourse. These negative attitudinal resources take up 58.6% of the total, with 31.9% embraced in judgment,19.6% coming from affect and 7.1% belonging to appreciation. The rest remain with positive attitudinal resources, with 10.1% for affect,26.3% for judgment, and 5.0% for appreciation.Secondly, attitudinal resources employed for disapproval of "leftover women," through which this group of women are voiced as a peculiar group, a fastidious group and an overqualified group, are far more than those employed to approve of them, which voice them as a misunderstood group and an independent group. These attitudinal resources are sourced from various appraisers; however, the voices and appraisers employed to support "leftover women" are less diverse than those employed to express negative attitudes towards them.Lastly, "leftover women" identity is the result of flourishing, diverse and interweaving voices of different intensities concerning this group of women, which construct them as a marginal and salient group and have led them into social discourse coercion. The "leftover women" discourse is to a great extent influenced by Chinese traditional culture of marriage, that is, "a girl should get married upon reaching womanhood."As a case study, this thesis reveals that unbalanced intensive voicing on a specific group from media discourse can construct unbalanced social images of a social group and in turn bring about unnecessary pressure to this group; thus mass media should cautiously do their best to provide well balanced voicing in their reports about a certain social group so as to avoid discourse violence caused by the overweighing negative voicing mechanism.