The Construction Of Gendered Discourses In Fairy Tales: A Case Study From The CDA Perspective

Fairy tales play an important role in children's socialization process, but it is a pity that they are more or less tainted with gender privileging ideas, which makes it significant to study the gender issues within them. Besides, gender studies have primarily focused on gender difference from sociological, cultural or feminist perspective. In the gender study of this thesis, a critical discourse analysis approach is adopted to analyze gendered discourses, with the purpose of investigating how gender is constructed by means of language.In this thesis, three current popular fairy tales--Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel are studied. The study focuses on gendered discourses in the chosen fairy tales from perspective of transitivity, appraisal system and representation of social actors. By carrying out a detailed analysis of some typical gendered discourses involved in the three fairy tales, it tries to uncover how gender is constructed through language and how these gendered discourses are operated to affect readers.The thesis respectively analyzes the transitivity choice in the main characters' actions, explores the lexical choice of character descriptors with appraisal system, and explains how those participants are represented as social actors. The findings show that transitivity and appraisal system in systemic functional grammar as well as van Leeuwen's representation of social actors can serve as theoretical tools for identifying and analyzing gendered discourses. The presence of three gendered discourses, which are “Active Man/Passive Woman”, “Women Beware Women” and “Privileging of Appearance- in Women” are verified in the thesis as well. What's more, the study reveals the gender ideologies in these gendered discourses, indicates how these discourses do potential damage to women, men and gender relations and how these discourses are operated to affect gender formation in young readers. Based on the study, it demonstrates that critical linguistic strategies be employed in the reading and rewriting of fairy tales in order to prevent gender privileging.