Gender ideologies in vietnamese printed media

GENDER IDEOLOGIES IN VIETNAMESE PRINT MEDIA NGUYEN THI THU HA (M.A.) A THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE 2012 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my special thanks to my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Lazar, for her continuous assistance, patience, crucial advice and critical comments without which the thesis would not have been successfully completed. She supported me from the days I applied for NUS scholarship although we had never met or known each other before. She was the person who inspired me to think about the issue of gender equality in relation to language. Prof. Lazar is definitely the most important person to the completion of my PhD research Thanks are due to the National University of Singapore for giving me a precious chance to further my study. Without the University’s scholarship, I certainly would not have realized my dream of pursuing a PhD course. I also wish to thank the Head, teachers and staff of the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences for their concern, lessons and support. I would also like to thank Vietnam National University for allowing me to temporarily cease my teaching there for this long PhD course. Specifically, I sincerely thank Prof. Nguyen Hoa, rector of the Colleague of Foreign Languages, VNU, for encouraging me to study further and to create the most favorable conditions for my application for NUS research scholarship as well as my study in Singapore. My gratitude also goes to many of my friends and colleagues, whose names are not singled out here, for their time to discuss the topics related to my thesis. i The warmest thanks and debt of deep gratitude are reserved for my parents and my husband, who have given me their constant care, support and encouragement. My husband, Tran Thanh Dat, has been supporting me in many ways, both emotionally and technically. He was also the person who patiently listened to my thesis related ideas and gave me a lot of critical comments. Finally, my heart-felt gratitude goes to my two daughters who have day by day brought me love and hope. My big daughter, Tran Ha Thu, has been with me most of the time, constantly showing her love and care for me as well as my thesis. She has been a wonderful little helper when I was busy with my thesis. And finally, my little daughter came to me when the thesis was almost done, making my days twice as busy, but certainly many times more happy. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgments .…………………………….……….… i Table of contents ……………………………………………… iii Summary …………………………………………… … vi List of tables ………………………… …………….…… vii CHAPTER Introduction ………………………………………… …. 1.1 Background of the study ……………………… ……… 1.1.1 Feminism and and feminist linguistics ……………… .… 1.1.2 Gender equality ……………………………………………… . 1.2 Rationale ………………………………………… ……. 1.3 Research questions ………………………… ……….… 10 1.4 Data and scope of the study ……………… ………….…. 10 1.5 Methodology ……………………………… …………… 14 1.6 Organization of the thesis ………… …………………… 17 CHAPTER Literature review ……………………… ………………. 21 2.1 Gender representation in media studies and feminist 21 linguistics 2.2 The public and the private ……………………………… . 23 2.3 Gender representation in the public sphere ………………. 25 2.4 Gender representation in the domestic sphere …………. CHAPTER Contextual background of the study …………….………. 3.1 An overview of Vietnamese women’s status throughout 41 48 49 history …………………………………………….……… iii 3.2 The un-oppressed heroic Vietnamese women …….…… . 55 3.3 The Confucian influence ……………………………………… 57 3.4 A lack of feminist movements ………………………………… 64 3.5 Women’s movements and nationalism ……………… ….…… 67 3.6 An advanced country in policies promoting gender equality 69 3.7 International Women’s Day in Vietnam ……………….… 74 3.8 From the context to the arguments ……………………….…… 77 CHAPTER Theoretical background and methodology …………………… 79 4.1 A brief overview of Critical Discourse Analysis ……………… 80 4.2 Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis as a perspective …… .… 85 4.3 Fairclough’s CDA model ……………………………………… 89 4.4 Framework for textual analysis of gender ideologies in the 95 current study 4.4.1 Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) …………… 98 4.4.2 Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar ……………………. 110 4.4.3 Van Dijk’s news report analysis ………………………………. 117 4.4.4 Analysis of the narrative structure ……………………………. 120 4.5 Application of Western theories and frameworks to the 122 Vietnamese language ………………………………….………. 4.6 Data of the study ………………………………… .….……. 129 CHAPTER Gender ideologies in the public sphere ……………………… . 133 5.1 The revitalization of traditional female heroism ………………. 133 5.2 Contributions of Vietnamese women highlighted and acknowledged …………………………………………….…… 136 5.3 A talented and successful role model …………………… …. 144 5.4 Liberal quality represented to be gained ………………………. 147 iv 5.5 Equality for national interests ………………………….…… 159 CHAPTER Gender ideologies in the domestic sphere …………………… 169 6.1 A devoted homemaker … …………….……………………… 170 6.2 A good teacher for children …………………………………… 184 6.3 A good daughter-in-law ………………….……………………. 194 6.4 A submissive, dependent and concessive wife …………… .… 202 6.5 Stereotypes of men and women ……………………………… 212 6.6 Women responsible for gender inequality ………………… … 220 CHAPTER Conclusion …………………………………………………… 231 7.1 Summary of the main findings …………………….………… . 232 7.2 Implications of the study ………………….…………………… 238 7.3 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further research 239 REFERENCES 242 APPENDIX 257 v SUMMARY Since the late 1980s, studies in language and gender have been turning to the role of discourse as social practice which reflects as well as constitutes social reality (Litosseliti, 2006). Discourse, hence, has the power of shaping gender relations as part of social reality. Turning to the context of Vietnam as an advanced Asian country in terms of promoting gender equality, this study is concerned with what is the quality of that equality? (Lazar, 2005a). The study explores the gender representations in a number of Vietnamese media articles published on and related to International Women’s Day - March 8, 2010 to find out the gender ideologies that prevail. Adopting a feminist critical discourse analysis perspective (Lazar, 2005a), the study draws on a systemic functional framework for multimodal text analysis. The analytical framework was devised based on that of Fairclough (2001) to include aspects of the grammars of Halliday (1994), Kress and van Leeuwen (1996)’s visual grammar, van Dijk (1988a,b)’s guidelines for news structure and Labov and Waletzky’s narrative structure analysis (1972). The study finds that besides the glorification of women’s roles in the public domain and their equal status in the society in liberal terms, traditional Confucian expectations of them in the domestic domain still persist. The ever-rising social responsibilities and the ‘monolithic’ traditional roles of Vietnamese women together pose an unfair challenge for Vietnamese women. Despite a very positive representation of Vietnamese women, I argue, gender inequality is discursively reconstructed by the media. vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Framework for text analysis of the current study ………………… 98 Table 2: Halliday’s SFG in summary ……………………………………… 124 Table 3: Kress and van Leeuwen’s visual grammar in summary …………. 125 Table 4: Data articles ……………………………………………………… 130 vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION The above picture represents a woman in her multiple identities, being a mother and a career woman. Specifically, she is represented doing both tasks of babysitting and working with the laptop at the same time. This picture was taken from a media article dated March, 2010 in Vietnam, and it might not be significant to many of its viewers. However, from a feminist point of view, the picture may serve as a means to convey a certain gender ideology, being considered in the linguistic as well as socio-polical contexts. This picture is among numerous discoursal clues to discuss gender ideologies in the present study. This study focuses on gender representation in Vietnamese print media to discuss gender (in)equality as construed by the media. More specifically, the study aims to investigate the political agenda underlying the way Vietnamese women, and Vietnamese men, are represented in the public and domestic spheres. The investigation focuses on one important social event – International Women’s Day – to see how gender as a topic is politically foregrounded and construed through media discourse. The study takes a multimodal approach to analyse both the verbal and the visual elements of media articles, based on the poststructuralist assumption that gender (in)equality, as part of social reality, is discursively constructed and/or contested. Hence, as part of the effort to create an equal society, gendered discourses need to be investigated and challenged. 1.1 Background of the study 1.1.1 Feminism and feminist linguistics Gender equality has been the general aim of feminism since the 18th century. There are two core issues of feminism: (1) males and females are and ought to be equally valuable, and (2) feminism is a commitment to social activism towards the goal of full equality of males and females (Blackmore et al, 2009). Different feminist movements have been fighting for different aspects of gender equality; for example, according to Mills (2002a), the premodernist or ‘first wave’ feminism can be associated with the suffragette movement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the modernist, or ‘second wave’ feminism during the 1960s and 1970s can be associated with political resistance against sex discrimination and with the promotion of equal opportunities as well as the emancipation of women. ‘Third wave’ feminism, with its more critical, constructivist, and post-structuralist theoretical paradigms, is concerned with the diversity, multiplicity, performativity, and co-construction of gender identities and gender (in)equality within specific contexts. As an intellectual approach, ‘third wave’ feminism seeks to [...]... general introduction of gender representation in media studies and feminist linguistics, which is followed by the review of specific studies concerning gender representation in the public and domestic spheres 2.1 Gender representation in media studies and feminist linguistics Gender representation has been the focus of both media studies and feminist linguistics for decades In the field of linguistics, since... to remain separate from men in some way Both the dominance and difference approaches drew on essentialist notions of gender, seeing gender as naturally determined, stable and pre-existing discourse Current feminist linguistics has been influenced by both ‘third wave’ feminism and post structuralism, focusing on the investigation of genderrelated linguistic phenomena, and to link these to gender inequality... because its interest in feminism as a political movement or theory may not be evident or made explicit (Litosseliti, 2006: 22) Feminist linguistics is interested in identifying, demystifying, and resisting the ways in which language is used, together with other social practices, to reflect, create and sustain gender divisions and inequalities in society (Talbot, 2010) Since its emergence, feminist linguistics... and in the light of this understanding, how they can be changed (Cameron, 1994: 4) Feminism has influenced the study of language and gender since the late 1960s to form a body of research, namely feminist linguistics, and feminist linguistics developed within linguistics rather than within feminism It is important to note that not all gender and language research would align itself with feminist linguistics,... review of relevant existing studies on gender representation in the media The review will touch upon both domains of media studies and feminist linguistics with the focus on those studies sharing the same interest in gender representation in the public and/or domestic spheres I also aim to position my research in this literature to highlight its contribution to the knowledge of gender (in) equality and language... behave in particular gendered ways The findings of these feminist linguistic studies taking the discursive approach generally challenge the view that once a measure of equality, in liberal terms, has been achieved by women, gender struggles along with feminism has ended (Lazar, 2005) Gender discrimination and gender inequality, as shown in these studies, exist in much less overt forms in different cultural... gender representation in the media can be found in Bentz & Mayes (1993), Cortese (2004), Byerly & Ross (2006), Thornham (2007), and Gauntlett (2008) In what follows, I will position my study in the relevant literature of gender representation research, to include both studies in the domain of media studies and feminist linguistics Rather than looking at the long history of research in the two domains,... to elaborate key points concerning gender issues in Vietnam, mentioning the heroic tradition of Vietnamese women, the influence of the Confucian ideologies, the lack of feminist movements in Vietnam and the connection between Vietnamese women’s movements and nationalism in the country Later in the chapter, I provide some aspects of the political context which relate to gender issues in Vietnam such as... to seek and identify gendered discourses of a ‘damaging kind’, and many feminist linguists have used CDA fruitfully in their feminist linguistic research (see Lazar, 2005a) A collection of current feminist linguistic research taking the discursive approach (e.g Lazar, 2005a; Majstorovic & Lassen, 2011; also see Chapter 2) attempt to investigate the dominant gendered discourses being produced and circulated,... extremes of femininity and masculinity respectively, producing gender stereotypes and the rest can be found somewhere on the gender continuum, and gender identity is also context dependent (Baker, 2008: 63) Poststructuralist feminists are against the mapping of gender onto sex, which is constituted by social practices reflecting norms and taboos In this study, I draw on a poststructuralist view of gender equality . on gender representation in Vietnamese print media to discuss gender (in) equality as construed by the media. More specifically, the study aims to investigate the political agenda underlying. feminist linguistics has been influenced by both ‘third wave’ feminism and post structuralism, focusing on the investigation of gender- related linguistic phenomena, and to link these to gender inequality. gendered discourses of a ‘damaging kind’, and many feminist linguists have used CDA fruitfully in their feminist linguistic research (see Lazar, 2005a). A collection of current feminist linguistic