The Representation of Middle Class in Chinese Magazine: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, 1995-2021

Guangwei Wu [1], Savitri Gadavanij [2]

DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.12570743

 

[1] Graduate School of Language and Communication, National Institute of Development Administration, Bangkok, Thailand, Email: wu.gua@stu.nida.ac.th
 
[2] Graduate School of Language and Communication, National Institute of Development Administration, Bangkok, Thailand, Email: ajarn.savitri@gmail.com, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3483-8779
 

Abstract

The discourse of the middle class, which was encouraged by the government and promoted by the media, has become a dream and inspiration for the general public in China since the 1980s. This study employs a multimodal critical discourse analysis framework to examine the representation of the middle class in print advertisements from 1995 to 2021 in a Chinese magazine. van Leeuwen’s Visual Social Actor Network and Socio-semantic Categories are adopted to examine both the visual and linguistic data. The focus is on how such representations relate to the reproduction of class inequality and cultural hegemony in China. The findings suggest that the middle class is represented as a homogenous group of consumers, centered on heterosexual Chinese male adults, urban intellectuals and white collars, who are endowed with high cultural capital and the power to consume. The discussion argues that this homogeneous representation legitimizes the ideology of consumer culture, which is responsible for the establishment and reproduction of social stratification through consumption in China.

Keywords: multimodal critical discourse analysis, middle class, advertisement, consumer culture

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