Cover not available
Part of
Contemporary Chinese Discourse and Social Practice in China
Edited by Linda Tsung and Wei Wang
[Studies in Chinese Language and Discourse 4] 2015
► pp. 125–142

Co-construction of migrant workers’ identities on a TV talk show in China

ORCID logo
This study examines how identities of migrant workers (i.e. nongmingong) have been constructed and represented on a TV talk show program in China, called “China’s Nongmingong”, launched by Guizhou Satellite TV (GZSTV) in China in 2007. Drawing on narrative theories concerning interactions between narrative and identity, and a dramaturgical model of social interaction analysis, this study explores how the nongmingong’s personal life experiences are transformed into public discourse. It is proposed that there are three stages in this process of transformation, namely ‘off stage’, ‘back stage’, and ‘front stage’, through which the media prepares the participatory nongmingong for the live TV program. The study finds that the program, in order to fulfil a specific social purpose, adopts various discursive practices to represent nongmingong’s identities as normal or even supernormal in contrast to the public discourse which depicts them as abnormal.
Published online: 9 October 2015
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scld.4.08wan
References (11)
References
Bai, Fangqing. (2008). Responsibility constitutes the brand, in The Oral Record of China’s Nongmingong. Guiyang: Guizhou Education Press.Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan. (2005). Discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana. (1997). Dinner Talk: Cultural Patterns of Sociability and Socialization in Family Discourse. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Dong, Jie. (2013). When modern public space encounters postmodern migration: abnormality and the making of migrant identities. Sociolinguistic Studies, Vol 6.2: 239–257. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. (1995). Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. (1977). Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews. Ed. with a preface by Donald F. Bouchard; trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
. (2003). Abnormal. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Anchor Books for Doubleday.Google Scholar
. (1974). Frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria. (2009). Television discourse: Analysing language in the media. Basingstoke [England]; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Macionis, John J. & Gerber, Linda M. (2011). Sociology (7th ed.). Toronto: Pearson Canada.Google Scholar