An Analysis of the Images of Senior Female Executives in Financial Times from the Perspective of CDA

Transcription

1 An Analysis of the Images of Senior Female Executives in Financial Times from the Perspective of CDA ZHAO Shurong, SONG Junxia School of Foreign Languages, Shandong Women s University, P. R. China, zhrong9411@163.com Abstract: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA for short) with the theoretical basis of Halliday s Systematic Functional Grammar, mainly studies the dialectical relationship between discourse and society by integrating several disciplines into it. This paper aims to explore the images of senior female executives by the approach of CDA, taking the news reports in Financial Times as an example, from the aspects of Transitivity, Voice, Mood and Choice of Words. The results show that there is a stereotyped view of them, reflecting the phenomenon of gender asymmetry in the news reports related to the images of senior female executives. Thus, some implications are provided that language is more than the tool for communication and thinking. Social power relations and ideology are deeply concealed in the disguise of language forms. Therefore, great importance should be attached to revealing and resisting the inequality in language use. Keywords: CDA, Systematic Functional Grammar, The image of senior female executives 1 Introduction The male and female relations have always been one of the bases of human social relations and cultural patterns. Meanwhile, language is the most important tool for human thinking and communication. The earliest research in the relationship between language and gender could be dated back to the times of Ancient Greece and Rome. With the flourishing of the Feminist Movement and the spread of Feminism, scientific research, especially humanities, came to truly care about the female group [1]. C. Kramer, B. Thirne and N. Henley, the feminist scholars, have summarized the main research topics in the domain of female language in British and American linguistics, including gender difference in language, gender discrimination in language (language structure and its content in particular), the relationship between language structure and language use [2]. However, to understand gender difference and social gender stereotype has become a new perspective arousing extensive attention. At present, studies on analyzing gender images are still relatively rare from the new perspective. In the vision of feminism, the female leaders have been a hot topic all through the ages. Female top executives, a special female group, have become the elite group and typical representatives in the mass of career women. This paper attempts to explore the images of senior female executives in Financial Times from the perspective of CDA and analyze the phenomena of gender stereotype and asymmetry reflected in language structure, aiming to reveal the ideology in the disguise of language itself. 2 A Summary of CDA 2.1 CDA and its application in news reports Discourse Study is an interdisciplinary subject, developed from the humanities of Linguistics, Literature Theory, Anthropology, Semiotics, Sociology and so on. It mainly studies the dialectical relationship between discourse and society, and discusses the functions of discourse involved in social practice, in reproducing social reality and in constructing social relations [3]. CDA, a new school in Discourse Study, is traced back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, with the representatives of R. Fowler, N. Fairclough, R. Wodak, T. A. van Dijk and so forth. CDA, by employing the analysis approaches in linguistics, analyzes and explains the generation, the internal structure and 96

2 integral organization of discourse. It links the format, the generating process and the reading process of discourse with the social powers producing them, and thus reveals the ideology in the disguise of language form by looking through the superficial phenomena and tries to find out the counterproductive effects of language form on ideology. According to Fowler, natural language carries social meanings in lexical and syntactic structure, but most of the social meanings are latent and require the process of unveiling or revealing [4]. CDA mainly focuses on looking for and analyzing those ideological ideas taken for granted by people in discourse, hence usually neglected, so as to re-examine them [5]. CDA has a relatively short history, but it has received wide attention from the researchers for its inclusivity and new perspective. Therefore, the results of previous research are abundant by adopting the approach of CDA to analyze social phenomena. Critical Linguistics holds that social critical theory should be employed to study the discourse of ordinary people, including TV programs, advertisements, news reports, official documents and so on. Attention is paid to newspaper reports, a special type of mass media discourse, for its increasing importance in our daily life. Fowler maintains that news, as a kind of practice, is far less than a neutral reflection of social reality but an intervener and participant in social construct [4]. One of the main objectives of applying CDA to news analysis is to explore the inequality in the disguise of news reports and improve one s ability to distinguish and resist it. 2.2 Methodology The three levels of analysis (description, interpretation, and explanation) proposed by Fairclough has been adopted by many researchers to analyze discourse materials in detail. Among those approaches, Halliday s Systematic Functional Grammar, as the main theoretical basis, has become the most important methodological source of Critical Linguistics. According to Functional Grammar, language carries various functions in the process of human communication. Halliday divides these functions into three categories of meta-function, i.e. ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function [6]. Ideational function is mainly reflected by the transitivity system and lexicon system of language; interpersonal function is realized by the systems of mood, modality and intonation; while the textual function is reflected by thematic structure, information structure, voice and cohesion. Cohesion is further divided into reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. From the perspective of Systematic Functional Linguistics, the form of language is, to a great extent, influenced, controlled and determined by those linguistic functions. It helps to perceive the expressing and behavioral modes in social structure by discovering the deep meaning of linguistic function through the surface of language forms. 3 Data Analysis By searching on the official website of Financial Times ( with the key words of senior female executives, more than 300 articles are found dated from October 1 st, 2006 to May 31 st, 2011, involving different aspects of their work, life and emotions. Among them, articles in the format of letters to the Editor are mainly representing personal views and therefore irrelevant to the research perspective of this paper. Hence, only several typical ones are selected according to its relevance to this study and the word limit of no less than 800 words. 3.1 Transitivity The transitivity system mainly describes the participants of a process and the relations of the roles they are playing in the process. Halliday divides human behavior and knowledge into six main categories of process based on the basic unit of clause, namely material process, mental process, relational process, behavioral process, verbal process and existential process [6]. Different processes carry different meanings in a discourse. Material process is a process of doing, mental process is that of sensing, and relational process is that of being and having. Behavioral process refers to a process of behaving, verbal 97

3 process refers to that of saying and existential process refers to that of existing. Different process carries different meaning of discourse. When a discourse is organized, how to select the process, mention the participants, describe the relation amongst different roles and thus form an invisible power are directly influencing the understanding and views of the reader [7]. Example 1: The author describes Cynthia Carroll, the new CEO of Anglo American, and its former CEOs differently in a report entitled Be a formidable new mistress of the mines as follows: Cynthia Carroll, who joins the board in January and takes the top job in March, is an industry outsider, an American and a woman. In the past, Anglo has been run by South African men who have worked their way up through the ranks. In this example, the structure of the linking verb and the predicative is used to construct the relational process of Carroll s succession to the position of CEO. Being a layman of the industry, an American (rather than a South African) and a woman (instead of a man), Carroll has no advantage of taking over such a high position. Therefore, doubts on the competence of this new CEO s ruling over the Group are revealed through the description of the language. However, behavioral process is employed to describe the former male CEOs, by saying South African men who have worked their way up through the ranks indicating that previously the Group was always run by South African men, and they all worked extremely hard from the grassroots. To sum up, the relational process focuses on the natural state while action is emphasized in the behavioral process. This sharp contrast suggests that Carroll, the female CEO, got to this position groundlessly whereas the male ones got there depending on their hard work. 3.2 Voice Voice is used to express the organizing patterns of the information, including Active Voice, Middle Voice and Passive Voice. Active Voice requires the Agent to be the Subject and Passive Voice the Affected. The Subject of Middle Voice may be either the Agent or the Affected, or sometimes have the elements of both. Passive Voice is employed for various reasons, including for the reasons of concealing the Agent, emphasizing the Affected and brevity with the Agent known to all omitted. In news texts, Passive Voice provides convenience for concealing the cause-effect relation and the Agent, effectively weakens the sense of action in a behavior or process and thus certain special objectives may be achieved by suppressing and eliminating some components in a clause [8]. Example 2: Study of Harvard Business Review was quoted in Top women tip the scales to describe the female directors on the Board in the following ways: A sole woman on a board often feels marginalized Two women may have to be careful not to be seen as conspiring A clear shift occurs when there are three or more women. The women tend to be seen just as directors, rather than female directors. In the description above, Passive Voice is used with the Agent concealed, indicating that being marginalized is the natural state for the female and they are marginalized because of themselves, concealing the reality that they are marginalized by others. On the other hand, Passive Voice also suggests the stereotyped image of senior female executives people have on them. They tend to care more about others viewpoints and comments on them and therefore have large numbers of such inner feelings. 3.3 Mood Mood system mainly reflects the speech functions of Offer, Command, Statement and Question. Among them, Question includes General Questions and Special Questions. General Questions tend to seek response rather than evoke a topic, while Special Questions carry a strong mood effect. They can emphasize a certain things, have the readers involved in the conversation and meanwhile maintain their 98

4 identity of promoters of the topic with their own voice in it, to some extent. Example 3: Amongst the news reports selected in this paper, two of them are entitled with Special Questions in the form of Wh-interrogative, i.e. Why are senior women so rare in finance? and Why there are fewer women at the top?. These two titles attract the readers attention with strong mood of Special Questions, spreading a piece of information that senior female executives are indeed rare. When the topic is started in the second news report, the author doesn t feel unfair for the women but describes them as pushy and brash, unpleasant and abrasive, indicating the writer s personal views on this topic. The senior female executives are rare for those reasons. Hence, the choice of the mood structure in a title has exerted a great impact on emphasizing the author s viewpoints. 3.4 Choice of Words To a certain extent, the choice of words in news texts indicates the latent point of view in the discourse and therefore has significant meaning in expressing their ideology. According to Fairclough, the interlocutor makes his/her choices in lexicon and grammar and these choices are consciously or subconsciously manipulated by some principles [9]. Example 4: Among the news reports selected, the author used the following expressions to describe senior female executives, i.e. formidable new mistress, alpha female banker, feisty female, and rare species. What is worth mentioning here is the expression of alpha female banker. In English, alpha girls (often used humorously) are typically confident, attractive, and determined to be successful. The choice of these words helps portray their stereotyped image of toughness, causing fearful respect, confidence and longing for success in the minds of ordinary people. Example 5: In the news report Why are senior women so rare in finance?, the author describes the feminists advocating the female working their way up to the top as follows: You can almost hear them stamping their Ferragamos as they mount their soapboxes: If a woman had been in charge, it wouldn t have happened! In the description above, the word mount is chosen, referring to to go up or climb, portraying the image of the female climbing the soapboxes with difficulty because of their high-heeled Ferragamos shoes. Moreover, when they speak, they often stamp their Ferragamos shoes like a spoiled child. Through this, a sense of irony is shown and therefore the propositions advocated by feminists will be disregarded contemptuously by other people. 4 Conclusion Only several typical examples in Financial Times concerning the living conditions of senior female executives are selected for the word limit of this paper. Their career circumstances are outlined through re-examining these news reports. The female have to undergo considerable difficulties to break up various barriers and traditional social discrimination so as to reach the top of power. Though they are competent enough, there is invisible glass ceiling and in some cases reinforced concrete ceiling awaiting them on their way up to the top. Even if they reach the top of power, they will become special species in the business circle dominated by the male. The reality is that they are often isolated, facing doubts on their abilities in management, control and decision-making, and thus their pressures are enormous. As mentioned above, language is more than the tool for communication and thinking. The relationship between language and power and the intervention language makes in social process and daily life should not be overlooked. By the approach of CDA, the ideology in the disguise of language form could be perceived. However, its ultimate objective is to draw people s attention to gender discrimination so that they will consciously reveal and resist this social inequality at long last. 99

5 References [1]. Zhao Ronghui. Language and Gender---Research of Social Linguistics on Speaking. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2003: (in Chinese). [2]. Zhang Yanbing. Literary Theories of Feminism. Jinan: Shandong Education Press, 1998: 112 (in Chinese). [3]. Tian Hailong. Discourse Studies: Categories, Perspectives and Methodologies. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2009: 33 (in Chinese). [4]. Fowler R. Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London: Routledge, 1991: 2, 89. [5]. Xin Bin. Critical Linguistics: Theory and Application. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press, 2005: 38 (in Chinese). [6]. Halliday M. A. K. An Introduction to Functional Grammar (3 rd edition). Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2008: 29-31, [7]. Wu Jingjie, Lan Yunchun. On the English News Texts from Critical Perspective. Journal of Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, 2007 (6): (in Chinese). [8]. Li Yanfang. Analysis of Two News Reports from the Perspective of CDA. Chongqing: Journal of Chongqing University of Arts and Sciences, 2008 (4): (in Chinese). [9]. Fairclough N. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992: