The cultural value of Chinese filial piety “孝”, the unconditional devotion and subservience to parents and elders, remains one of the core values of Chinese families. In media, filial piety is constantly negotiated in... [ view full abstract ]
The cultural value of Chinese filial piety “孝”, the unconditional devotion and subservience to parents and elders, remains one of the core values of Chinese families. In media, filial piety is constantly negotiated in the discourse of marriage, since it seems to create a dilemma between parental approval and the pursuit of freedom in their children’s marriage. This paper looks into the conflict between parents and children in choosing a life partner, and examines how filial piety plays out in constructing parenthood and heterosexual couplehood in media discourse.
While previous studies on family discourse and media mainly focus on gender ideologies and parent-in-law-children relationship, this paper investigates two under-researched areas. One is how filial piety works to construct parenthood and couplehood in media discourse, and the diverse ways filial piety is negotiated discursively. The other is how cultural notions of filial piety interact with gender ideologies, such that parental authority and children’s freedom of marriage get discursively (de)legitimized. This study is based on data from a Chinese TV program Love Battle, which aims at solving couples’ problems by promoting mainstream social values. I choose three episodes in 2016/2017, which feature a major problem concerning parents’ disapproval of their children’s boyfriend/girlfriend. Using a combined analytical framework from Critical Discourse Studies (Wodak & Meyer, 2016), discursive legitimation (van Leeuwen, 2008) and epistemic legitimization strategies (Boye, 2012), this study analyzes the data from parents, couple and the invited guests who help solve their problems. The study finds that filial piety is legitimized in the discourses of constructing parental authority over children’s marriage, the unquestionable intention of parents, and children’s unconditional obedience and responsibility; it is delegitimized in the discourse of a hypothetical breakdown of parent-children relationship. Moreover, it works with gender hierarchy to construct identities of gendered children-in-law and degendered children.
Boye, K. (2012). Epistemic meaning: A crosslinguistic and functional-cognitive study. Walter de Gruyter.
Van Leeuwen, T. (2008). Discourse and practice: New tools for critical discourse analysis. Oxford University Press.
Wodak, R., & Meyer, M. (2016). Methods of critical discourse analysis. Los Angeles, CA: Sage
