VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES *** NGUYỄN HỒNG LIÊN VIETNAMESE WOMEN’S REPRESENTATION IN TV COMMERCIALS RELATED TO LUNAR NEW YEAR: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN PHÊ PHÁN VỀ HÌNH ẢNH NGƯỜI PHỤ NỮ VIỆT NAM TRONG CÁC QUẢNG CÁO LIÊN QUAN ĐẾN DỊP TẾT ÂM LỊCH M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field : English Linguistics Code : 60.201 HANOI - 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES *** NGUYỄN HỒNG LIÊN VIETNAMESE WOMEN’S REPRESENTATION IN TV COMMERCIALS RELATED TO LUNAR NEW YEAR: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN PHÊ PHÁN VỀ HÌNH ẢNH NGƯỜI PHỤ NỮ VIỆT NAM TRONG CÁC QUẢNG CÁO LIÊN QUAN ĐẾN DỊP TẾT ÂM LỊCH M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field : English Linguistics Code : 60. Nguyễn Thị Thu Hà HANOI - 2016 ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com DECLARATION I hereby declare that the thesis, entitled “Vietnamese women’s representation in TV commercials related to Lunar New Year: A critical discourse analysis” has been carried out in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at the University of Languages and International Studies.
This work is original and carried out with the cited sources, literature and other professional sources. Hanoi - 2016 Nguyễn Hồng Liên iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the period of completing the Master thesis, the author has received great assistance and support from a lot of people. First and foremost, the author would like to express her deepest gratitude to Ms. Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, her supervisor, who initiated her into this study and has always been willing to give her clear insightful guidance as well as valuable feedback and suggestions in the completion of the Master thesis.
The author would also like to thank her peers in Vietnam National University for helping her search for needed materials to complete the Master thesis. Last but not least, the author would like to express her sincere thanks to her big family, her ―little‖ family and friends for their encouragement. The Master thesis could not have been fulfilled without them. iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This research is placed within the critical discourse analysis perspective that assumes an entangled relationship between discourse and its underlying social meanings.
Explicitly, the study of Vietnamese women's representation in 25 TV advertisements related to Lunar New Year with emphasis on gender roles is embraced. The study, which is expected to fill the present gap, seeks answer to how Vietnamese women are characterized in TV commercials and whether this reflection sustains or challenges the existing ideologies in the current society. Employing the framework of Fairclough (2001), Halliday (2014) and Kress and van Leeuwen (2006), the research has reached some findings: (1) laid in the domestic landscape, Vietnamese women are simultaneously portrayed as different characters; (2) the existing gender ideologies of Confucian ethics upon women can be said to be still upheld; (3) there seems to be no opposition to the current belief. v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1.
Six types of processes in the transitivity system (Adapted from Hu, 1988) Table 2. Mood and theme relations (Adapted from Halliday (2014: 78)) Table 3. Summary of social distance and its relation (Adapted from Royce, 1999) Table 4. Summary of visual realizations (Kress and van Leeuwen, 2006: 148) Table 5.
Image-Text relations (van Leeuwen, 2005: 230) Table 6. A summary of discourse description Table 7. A sample of discourse description Figure 1. Three-dimension conception of discourse (Fairclough, 1992: 73) Figure 2.
Procedure of the analysis Figure 3. Frame SAXI 1 Figure 4. Frame PHO2 Figure 5. Frame BIBI1 Figure 6.
Frame CIF3 Figure 7. Frame NCAFE1 Figure 9.2 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES. vi PART I: INTRODUCTION.
Objectives of the study. Scope of the study. Methods of the study. Significance of the study.
Design of the study. 3 PART II: DEVELOPMENT. 5 CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. 5 AND LITERATURE REVIEW.
Contextual background of the study. Critical Discourse Analysis. Fairclough’s 3-dimension model. Halliday’s Functional Grammar.
Kress and van Leeuwen’s grammar of visual design framework. Inter-mode relations. Feasibility of applying Western-based frameworks into Vietnamese settings. Response from research communities.
19 CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Data of the study. 24 CHAPTER III: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. Findings and discussions of research question 1.
Representation of Vietnamese married women. 27 vii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. The woman as a family cook. The woman as a teacher and caretaker of her children.
The woman as a caretaker of her family members. The woman as a subordinate partner of her man. The woman as a household chores performer. The woman, rather than the man, as a loving portrayal of parenthood to the children.
Representation of Vietnamese unmarried women. Portrayal of Vietnamese men. Findings and discussions of research question 2. 35 PART III: CONCLUSION.
Summary of the study. Limitations of the study. 46 viii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale According to the report of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Vietnam has invested great efforts for gender equality since 2006.
Those include the approval of the Law on Gender Equality in November 2006 and the ratification of the National Strategy for the Advancement of Women by 2010 and the new National Strategy for Gender Equality for the period of 2011-2020. Theoretically, Vietnamese women can be said to have an equal position as men in the contemporary society. A look in reality through mass media should disclose the actual idea of gender equality in Vietnam. Media has been of great importance in representing different groups in a society.
TV advertising, as one of the media genres, plays a significant role in representing and shaping attitudes. The image of women and men in the media, particularly in TV advertisements, is likely to project the understanding of social practices, social interactions and ideology on gender differences. By analyzing the projection, underlying ideologies can be revealed on how the media conceptualizes women’s identities in particular. This study focuses on women’s representation in a number of TV commercials during Lunar New Year in 2013, 2014 and 2015.
Tet holiday or Lunar New Year is a special occasion for Vietnamese people to unite with their family. What stands prominently around this time is solidarity, intimacy, family bonding with the images of parents and children, grandparents and family members, husband and wife or even friends. Hence, in this period, Vietnamese women are supposedly portrayed in a variety of familial relationships simultaneously via TV advertisements. Also, for a 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com comprehensive view of Vietnamese women’s depiction, it is necessary to reveal how their opposite gender is reflected in those advertisements.
Regarding linguistic research, a number of existing studies have examined printed advertisements from the perspective of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) namely Kaur’s research on beauty product advertisements in Malaysia (2013), Vahid’s study on products/non-products advertisement in Iran (2012) or Tahmasbi’s analysis on Iranian Banks Advertisements (2013). However, little is known by applying the CDA in TV commercials in the context of Vietnam. Nguyen Thi Thu Ha (2011) carried out a study on gender ideologies in Vietnamese media, which is seemingly the first author to initiate the trend. Nonetheless, she focused on printed media not TV advertisements.
Meanwhile, Mohammadi (2011) from Iran and Hag (2011) from Bangladesh presented their investigation on the image of women in TV commercials. Hence, a study that combines CDA and women representation in Vietnamese TV advertisements should be worth carrying out. For all above-mentioned reasons, a research named ―Vietnamese women’s representation in TV commercials related to Lunar New Year: A critical discourse analysis” is undertaken with a view to bridging the gap. Objectives of the study This study aims to unearth the underlying gender ideologies in Vietnamese TV advertisements.
Specifically, it is implemented with the subsequent objectives: to investigate how Vietnamese women are represented in TV advertisements related to Lunar New Year; to discover whether this representation reflects or challenges the existing ideology in Vietnamese society. To fulfill these purposes, the study will answer the following research questions: 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com (1) How are Vietnamese women represented in TV advertisements related to Lunar New Year? (2) Does the representation sustain or challenge the existing gender ideologies? 3. Scope of the study The research examines selected TV commercials on the occasion of Lunar New Year in 2013, 2014 and 2015. As the title suggests, the analysis falls on how women are portrayed during this period, thus uncovering the image of Vietnamese women in the domestic domain in the contemporary society.
Other aspects of the advertisements such as illustration of the product, background music of the advertisement, etc are beyond the scope of this study. Methods of the study This research is conducted based on a critical discourse analysis approach which will be further discussed in the next sections. The study applies the following analytical frameworks simultaneously: Fairclough (2001) for textual analysis, discursive practice and social explanation; Halliday (2014) for verbal examination; Kress & van Leeuwen (2006) for visual investigation. The combination of those frameworks is expected to fully examine all the data and present comprehensive findings.
Significance of the study Theoretically, the study contributes to the contemporary literature that focuses on the relationship between language and gender in Vietnam. Practically, the study provides an opportunity to expose the hidden ideology in the representation of Vietnamese women via TV advertisements and to raise people’s awareness about the underlying gender ideologies in TV commercials. Design of the study The map of the study is presented as follows: 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Part I: Introduction This part includes the rationale, objectives of the study, research questions, methods, scope and significance of the study as well as the design of the research. Part II: Development Chapter I: Theoretical background and Literature review (This section examines basic concepts, presentation of the framework and related research of the study) Chapter II: Research Methodology (A detailed description of how the research is implemented with the adoption of different approaches is displayed in this section) Chapter III: Findings and Discussions (This section provides the gathered results and a discussion of how to interpret the data analysis) Part III: Conclusion The last part briefly summarizes the main ideas of the study, presents the limitations of the study as well as suggests further research on the same topic.
4 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter is devoted to examining the theoretical background and literature review of the study. The first section describes the current ideology that shapes attitudes towards Vietnamese women these days prior to investigating how Vietnamese women can be represented in the advertising sphere linguistically. Then, the approach of CDA and three analytical frameworks employed in the research are presented in the following sections. Additionally, the application of Western frameworks into Vietnamese context is also discussed.
The last one collects related studies from research experts. Contextual background of the study This study adopts Critical Discourse Analysis perspective and one of the fundamental tenets of CDA is that discourse is socially embedded as Breeze (2011:512) states: ―It is at once socially constructed, and also plays a role in constructing and perpetuating (―reproducing‖) social structures and relations.