Author(s)

Jiaqi Zeng ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Georgetown University, Washington D.C. 20057, USA

Corresponding Author

Jiaqi Zeng

ABSTRACT

To explore how a working woman constructs her “social identity” (Ochs, 1993), this article unfolds the woman’s inner thoughts through the voiceovers in a Korean television drama, built upon Elinor Ochs’ theory of identity construction through social “acts” – socially recognized, goal-directed behavior –and “stances” – a display of a socially recognized point of view or attitude. This article is expanded into a multilayered research on the feminist and cultural understanding of the female protagonist’s voiceover in the drama. The first layer starts from the voiceover’s techniques – the role of the voiceovers – in constructing the social identity of the female protagonist from a feminist perspective. Then it goes further to explore the linguistic strategies applied to the construction of a working woman’s identity living in the dilemma of work and family.

KEYWORDS

Feminist media studies, Identity construction, Working women, Television, Sociolinguistic

CITE THIS PAPER

Jiaqi Zeng. A Sociolinguistic Qualitative Study on Working Women’s Identity Construction through Voiceovers in Television. Media and Communication Research (2021) 2: 22-28. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/mediacr.2021.020104.

REFERENCES

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