A Critical Discourse Study Of The Middle Class’s Image Construction In Sanlian Life Weekly

Since the 16^thNational Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2002,raising the proportion of the middle-income group has received widespread attention from the society.Expanding the middle-income group contributes to China’s economic restructuring and social prosperity and also facilitates China’s progress toward building a moderately prosperous society in all aspects.Under the publicity of mass media,this group has attracted much attention.In recent years,studies on the middle-income group are steadily increasing,but most of them mainly explore their development from economic or sociological perspectives,while neglecting the image construction of the group.This thesis takes the middle class（the middle-income group）as the research object,and selects the articles about the middle class in Sanlian Life Weekly from 2002 to 2021 as the data.Adopting Ruth Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach as the theoretical basis,this thesis explores the image construction of the middle class in specific social context.It mainly answers the following three questions:（1）What image of the middle class has been constructed by Sanlian Life Weekly?（2）What discursive strategies are used in constructing the image of the middle class?（3）How does social context influence the image construction of the middle class?It is found that the articles on the middle class in Sanlian Life Weekly use five discursive strategies to construct the image of the middle class:referential strategy,predication strategy,argumentative strategy,perspectivization strategy,and intensification.Taking social context into account,the image of the middle class has been continuously enriched in the past two decades,from a single image of consumption to a multidimensional image of consumer economy and culture.Between 2002 and 2003,articles mainly construct the consumer image of the middle class and their modern life style;from 2004 to 2005,articles construct the image of the middle class that can stabilize the society and promotes economic development;from 2006 through 2008,articles try to construct a fragile image of the middle class that needs government support in terms of economic crisis;from 2009 to 2013,articles construct the image of the middle class who are trapped in the property market in terms of policy reform;from 2014 to 2021,articles construct the image of the anxious middle class in the era of change in terms of development opportunities and the“next generation”issue.In the past two decades of world turmoil and social and economic changes in our country,every change is of great significance to the middle class.Sanlian Life Weekly takes“China’s white-collar class”as the target group,and its construction of the image of the middle class shed lights on the a deeper understanding of this group.