Suchergebnisse

The term 'leftover women', commonly referring to single women older than 27, has been in popular use in Chinese media since 2007. This study investigates how leftover women are linguistically represented in the English-language news media in China by employing a corpus-assisted approach to critical discourse analysis. A specialised corpus of 303 English news articles (i.e. 236,254 words), covering the years between 2007 and 2017, was built for this purpose. Corpus linguistics techniques were employed to quantify the meaning shift units (MSUs) of the lemma leftover WOMAN, and van Leeuwen's 'social actors and actions theory' was applied to inform the classification of MSUs in context. These findings shed light on media representations of leftover women, the contested ideologies emerging from these representations, and how shifting gender politics and identity shapes and is shaped by media in the world's most populous nation.

Abstract
There have been limited studies comparing Chinese and American news media in their descriptions of vaccines, especially their use of metaphors in the context of COVID-19. Hence, this paper employs a corpus-assisted critical approach to examine the metaphors used in constructing crisis discourses relating to vaccines in Chinese and American newspapers. The study reveals four conceptual metaphors: WEAPON, MACHINE, TRAVELLER, and CONTEST. The usage of these metaphors is intertwined with wider discursive contexts, which are shaped by the two countries' distinct journalistic and geopolitical/sociocultural contexts. These have resulted in the adoption of different strategies for handling the COVID-19 crisis, reflecting the ideologies of collectivism in China and capitalism in America. The study highlights the significance of metaphors in shaping the ideologies of governments and/or the public towards vaccines through news media. Additionally, this paper provides a useful framework for comparing metaphor usage in two large corpora using Wmatrix.

Although the Chinese media's construction of unmarried citizens as 'leftover' has incited much controversy, little research attention has been given to the ways 'leftover men' are represented in discourse. To fill this gap, this study performs a critical discourse analysis of 65 English language news reports in Chinese media to investigate the predominant gendered discourses underlying representations of leftover men and the discursive strategies used to construct their identities. The findings show that the media perpetuate a myth of 'protest masculinity' by suggesting that poor, single men may become a threat to social harmony due to the shortage of marriageable women in China. Leftover men are represented as poor men, troublemakers and victims via discursive processes that include referential, predicational and aggregation strategies as well as metaphor. This study sheds light on the issues and concerns of a marginalised group whose predicament has not been given much attention in the literature.

There is a paucity of research pertaining to the discourse-based construction of legitimation within the realms of law and healthcare. To fill this gap, the present study examines the deliberations within the Legislative Council of Hong Kong pertaining to the enactment of legislation recognizing rare diseases (RDs) as eligible for governmental support. Employing van Leeuwen's sociosemantic approach, we analyzed the debates, revealing four distinct discursive strategies, namely rationalization, morality, authorization, and mythopoesis, employed by the legislators to advocate for RD legislation. Among these strategies, rationalization emerged as the most frequently employed. The legislators' discourse carries ideological implications concerning humanitarianism. This study not only sheds light on the utilization of legitimation strategies to advocate for the enactment of social policies within a legal context but also provides valuable insights for other regions seeking to advance RD legislation from a linguistic perspective.

AbstractThis study presents a conceptual model that investigates teaching satisfaction as an outcome variable in mainland China. The model incorporates the mediating mechanism of emotional intelligence and the moderating role of physical activity. The results of a survey of 2500 university teachers from 25 public institutions, which tested teaching satisfaction, demonstrate that job stress is negatively related to teaching satisfaction and indirectly related to emotional intelligence. Physical exercise acts as a moderating factor that alleviates the negative correlation between job stress and emotional intelligence. Overall, our findings indicate that enhancing the frequency of physical exercises can potentially alleviate stress, regulate emotional intelligence, and ultimately contribute to a positive enhancement in teaching satisfaction. These outcomes undeniably hold practical significance for teachers and educational administrators in the realm of higher education.

In China, the phenomenon of 'little fresh meat' has recently sparked a contentious debate. However, few studies have examined the thematic concepts surrounding the phenomenon of 'little fresh meat' in the Chinese English-medium news media. In order to fill this gap, this study used corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis to examine how the 'little fresh meat' phenomenon has been represented discursively in Chinese English-language news media and observe which stance the media take on this phenomenon. The findings show that four semantic domains, namely, entertainment, education, personal care, as well as gender and sexuality, are inextricably intertwined with the 'little fresh meat' phenomenon. The findings also show that patriarchal discourse is prominent, and resistance discourse is only subordinate in the representations. This paper sheds light on debates surrounding the 'little fresh meat' phenomenon and demonstrates state gender governance through China's state media.