Household chores and children versus the rest of the universe: news values and views towards women in The Korea Herald and The Korea Times, a CDA perspective.

Published in The Journal of Media and Performing Arts.

Household chores and Children versus the rest of the universe: news values and views towards women in The Korea Herald and The Korea Times, a CDA perspective.

ISSN 1975-8928.

Abstract:

This paper comparatively analyses the discursive construction of women’s societal roles in two online Korean English language newspapers. It addresses the question; how are women represented in English language ‘broadsheet’ online news journals of record in South Korea; and how do those representations of women maintain the social conditions which sustain gender inequalities?  Linguistic data was gathered from The Korea Herald and the Times of Korea over a two day period based upon headlines that had a direct reference to ‘women’.  A Critical Discourse Analysis approach (CDA) was used drawing on various theories of discourse analysis, pragmatics, and cognition.  The findings pointed to an ideological predisposition towards representing women in traditional roles in line with a socio-cognitive legacy of Confucian values. There was also a notable confusion in the language which reflects the discord between these Confucian values and modern globalised values.

Keywords: cognition, Confucianism, feminism, Critical Discourse Analysis, linguistics, media, values, ideology

Introduction

Historically, society, culture and politics in South Korea have been guided by Confucian ideology.  According to Zoltan (2009) within Confucian ideology, amongst other tenets – age determined social rank, respect for parents and worship of ancestors – ‘the eldest males hold the highest ranks while the youngest females are placed at the bottom of the hierarchy’. (3)

Since the establishment of democracy in 1987 the relatively fast economic growth and socio-cultural shifts in values and beliefs in Korea have reduced the hegemony of Confucian principles making way for certain social norms associated with western liberal democracies.  Equality and human rights have seen rapid growth since the beginning of ‘The Sixth Republic’ – Korea’s sixth period of time functioning as a republic – in 1987.  However, according to the recent Global Gender Gap (2014) report by the World Economic Forum, Korea ranked 117th among 142 countries in terms of gender equality.  This has been variously attributed to the legacy of Confucian values (see Prieler 2013, Kim 2009, Zoltan 2009, Fetzer and Soper 2010).  In his 2013 article, Michael Prieler concludes that ‘the role of gender is in flux in a culture that is in a constant negotiation between traditional and Western culture’ (19). Also, Fetzer and Soper (2010) point out that South Korea has officially separated Confucianism from social and political institutions forming an ostensibly secular state.  However, family and marriage play an important role in Korean society and Fetzer and Soper also highlight that (2010) family loyalty is ‘the only Confucian value that inhibits democracy’ (17).  Concurrent with this, traditionally, and historically, women occupy the least powerful social roles in Confucian norms.

The systematic gender inequality which Confucianism supports has been addressed on many levels in Korean society, most notably, as mentioned above, through the secularisation of the Nation.  However, this article argues that Korean national media contributes discursively to the maintenance of Confucian values and ideology and therein the maintenance and obfuscation of ideologies of gender inequality.

Analysis of the production and reproduction of Confucian values through text is approached, here, from a socio-cognitive critical discourse analytic perspective. I have drawn upon a theoretical line of thought taken primarily from Critical Discourse Analysis researchers such as Van Dijk (2008) Fairclough (2010) Wodak & Meyer (2009) Richardson (2007) and Hart (2011).

Theoretical Background: Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

This study adheres to a CDA approach to language focusing primarily on VanDijk’s (2007) Cognitive Discourse Analysis model.  CDA is the study of language as situated within the context of social and material circumstances, with a focus on how the conventionalisation of language obscures ideologies and belief systems which are imbedded these circumstances.  Following Richardson (2007) CDA is understood here to contribute to the ‘(re)production of social life’. Richardson goes on to posit that since ‘language use contributes to the (re)production of social life then, logically, discourse must play a part in producing and reproducing social inequalities. 

Fairclough and Wodak (1997: 271–80) summarize the main tenets of CDA as follows:

1. CDA addresses social problems

2. Power relations are discursive

3. Discourse constitutes society and culture

4. Discourse does ideological work

5. Discourse is historical

6. The link between text and society is mediated

7. Discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory

8. Discourse is a form of social action.

The two most recent trends in CDA have been the inclusion of ethnological perspectives (Gillen, 2014; Rampton, B. Maybin, J. Roberts, C. 2014; Gee, 2014; Bhatia 2014) and of cognitive perspectives (Vandijk, 2008; Lakoff 2008; Black, 2011; Hart 2014, Hart 2014b; Antaki, C. Condor S. 2014).  There is a rich and diverse literature on both of these topics which is beyond the scope of this paper.  I have focused upon Van Dijks cognitive approach in order to further understand mental contextual factors such as memory, knowledge, models, and schemata and the effect they have on the maintenance of social inequalities.

 The socio-cognitive approach to CDA developed by VanDijk (1985, 1988b, 2008, 2009) explicates how social-cognition is a necessary link between discourse and social structure.  Social cognition is defined as ‘the system of mental representations and processes of group members’ (1995: 18).  The group members in this case being those men in South Korea who have benefited from the social status-quo.  The primary socio-contextual tenet of social-cognition in this study is the historical legacy of Confucianism which creates the social conditions necessary to perpetuate gender inequality.

This study of representations of women in two online English language news journals, The Korea Herald and The Korean Times in South Korea is based upon the assumption forwarded by Richardson (2007) that ‘journalism exists to enable citizens to better understand their lives and their positions in the world’. (7) The implication of this fiduciary statement is that the information which we receive from news media can be assumed to be socially beneficial in function.  Both papers were chosen for comparison in order to highlight that the findings are not peculiar to one English language newspaper in Korea, but rather exist across different organisations.

 As mentioned, the approach in the present study relies primarily upon Van Dijk’s socio-cognitive contextual perspective (2008).  Van Dijk emphasises the importance of multi-layered context from a cognitive perspective.  He considers ‘contexts to be participant constructs or subjective definitions of interactional or communicative situations’ (16).   Contexts according to Van Dijk are ‘mental models’ built around unique ‘individual experience’ of social and material surroundings.  They create individual subjective interpretations of the world around us.  However, importantly they are also ‘consist of schemas of shared, culturally based, conventional categories, which allow fast interpretations of unique, ongoing communicative events’ (17).  Language on a socio-cognitive level contributes to the construction and reconstruction of social and cultural norms by sustaining traditionally held assumptions and beliefs.

I follow Van Dijk’s (2008) CDA perspective here to show how certain social conditions, values and mores associated with Confucianism are maintained and supported in mass media through the discursive establishment and recreation of cognitive norms and conventions.  Crucially, I aim to show how the recreation of certain aspects of Confucianism through discourse practices perpetuate the social conditions necessary for maintaining unequal gender relations.  It’s important to understand, following Teo (2009) that:   

Discourse, especially the sort that we encounter everyday, in an almost routine and hence unremarkable way , can change our perceptions and attitudes regarding people, places and events and therefore becomes a potentially powerful site for the dominance of minds. (9)

 Mass media organisations play a crucial role in recreating the socio-discursive conditions which perpetuate, create and recreate social values and norms.  The decisions that are made play a crucial role in this process.  Richardson (2007) points out that

text, indeed the newspaper as a whole, is the result of journalists making a multitude of choices between alternatives, including: between covering event A or event B; between putting story A on the front page or story B; between quoting this source or that; between this way of referring to said source or that; between using headline A or headline B; and so on.

Van Dijk suggests that these decisions and others are necessarily constructed by, construct and are contextualised by cognitive functions which normalise certain discourses in order that communications to readerships are as efficient and recognisable as possible.

Methods.

Data collection

The data under analysis was taken from The Korea Herald and The Times of Korea. Journalistic coverage of a poll surveying Korean women’s views on marriage, which was published in both newspapers on June 20^th, was chosen for comparison.  The focal articles which cover the topic of women’s views on marriage are salient given their pertinence to both men and women and the potential for comparison of gender-biased perspectives on the issue.  They are ‘cotextualised’ by articles from the previous two days in both newspapers explicitly dealing with the topics of ‘women’ or ‘women’s issues’ (see Fairclough 1995: 60)

The CDA approach which I used in this research, while focusing on Van Dijks (2008) perspective, also incorporates a combination of tools from more traditional approaches such as those of Richardson (2007) Fairclough (1995,2001) and Wodak (2001), and as mentioned cognitive approaches such as VanDijk (1998) and Lakoff (2011).

The Korea Herald articles were analysed using the concepts of predication, entailment, and presupposition.  Each of these terms is informed by what Vandijk refers to as social-memory.

Cognitive Social Memory

Social-memory is essentially social cognition.  Following Van Dijk (2008) this study views the functioning of social-cognition as based on assumption that ‘contexts are not some kind of objective social situation, but rather a socially based but subjective construct of participants about the for-them-relevant properties of such a situation, that is, a mental model.’  Therefore, a socio-cognitive model bridges the gap between discourse and society and how we linguistically create and recreate the social conditions which support language conventions and modalities.  As generations pass the hegemonic power of Confucianism gives way to multiculturalism amongst other isms.  However, as mentioned above there is a legacy of Confucian values which inform socio-cognitive behaviour both socially and linguistically in South Korea.  At the forefront of cultural artefacts which reproduce this legacy is the mass media.

Predication

Referential form and meaning necessarily reflect certain levels of value judgments in language use.  The choice of words sentences and phrases used and the order in which they are arranged, i.e. passive or active voice, to describe situations, persons, places or things cannot be removed from the social, political, cultural and ideological surroundings or context within which the discourse has been constructed.  Reisigl and Wodak (2001) refer to these descriptions as a text’s predicational strategies, or ‘the very basic process and result of linguistically assigned qualities to persons, animals, objects, events, actions and social phenomena’. (54)

For example, in the following headline, which relates to two men attempting to avoid the mandatory army conscription in Korea, the objects of the sentence are predicated using the term ‘draft-dodgers’.

Six draft-dodgers caught gaining weight, faking illness

The lack of a definite article in the use of ‘draft-dodgers’ uses a predicational strategy which Richardson (2007) refers to a title-ness. It essentialises the two in question as ‘draft-dodgers’ backgrounding any other potential descriptions.  The term ‘draft-dodgers’ also carries with it idiomatic baggage of ‘facetiousness’ or ‘banter’ discourse which is a social predicate that serves to delegitimize the importance of what is happening to these two young men on a personal level.  For example if they had been labelled ‘draft-resisters’ the predication would change from a pair of jokers attempting to buffoon their way out of conscription, to a pair of citizen who perhaps have a legitimate political grievance with conscription.

The predicational strategy employed in this case clearly trivialises any potentially legitimate reason for wanting to avoid conscription.

Entailment

Entailment, a pragmatic term, is the relationship between two clauses or sentences whereby the truth of one sentence, ‘A’ is dependent upon the truth of another, ‘B’. For example:

A.    He was decapitated

entails

B.     he is dead

There is little room for manoeuvre with entailment. It is a logical and analytical form that has clearly defined parameters particularly in logic. Therefore, he cannot be alive and decapitated. However, he can be dead but not decapitated.  Also, ‘he is dead’ analytically entails that ‘he was killed somehow’ but it does not logically entail how.

The adverbial use of ‘how’ is where presupposition enriches meaning.

Presupposition

Presuppositions deal with hidden content within clauses or sentences. Richardson (2007) following from Reah (2002: 106) lists three linguistic structures common to presupposition; first:

certain words such as change of state verbs (stop, begin, continue) or implicative verbs (manage, forget) invoke presupposed meaning in their very use: stop presupposes a movement or an action... the classic example of such a presupposition is the sentence ‘Have you stopped beating your wife?’ It’s impossible to answer yes or no to this question without confirming the presupposition: that you have at some time in the past, beaten your wife.

Second, the definite article, ‘the’, and possessive articles such as ‘his’, ‘their’ and ‘our’ trigger presuppositions.  For example the old classic Pathe news example of ‘our boys doing their duty overseas’ not only presupposes that they are somehow belong to us but also that there exists a duty or responsibility that belongs to them.

The third type of presupposition that Richardson mentions exist in ‘wh’ questions which as why, who, how etc. For example the question ‘Who is responsible for the poor state of the national health service?’ presents us with two questions; one the explicit request to name someone; and two, the presupposition that one person, ‘someone’, is responsible.

I have chosen these three meta-linguistic tools of analysis primarily because they are quite closely related in terms of their analytical function and therefore serve to reinforce the findings from each stage of analysis.  The primary goal of these three tools is to uncover ideologically normalised language within the Korea Heralds coverage of certain women’s issues within a specific time frame.

Analysis

‘Four out of 10 Seoul Women say marriage not necessary’ (Korea Herald 2014/06/20)

40 percent of Seoul women say marriage not necessary (The Korea Times2014-06-20)

As noted above, this article was syndicated from Yohap news service. Both newspapers have used identical versions of the article without any modifications or editing to the text.  The Korea Times, however, showed a picture of two young women who are apparently at a busy festival or a party.  They are holding inflatable toys and wearing red t-shirts which are cut to reveal their midriffs. They are also wearing plastic devil’s horns and appear to be chanting or shouting. They both look like they are enjoying themselves.  While a detailed analysis of the semiotics of the imagery is outside the scope of this article, the pictures placement must not be ignored.  Rocha (2013) suggests that the meanings held within mediated images of women must be viewed as temporally situated.  That is to say that they are somewhat relative to the socio-cultural norms of the time.  He argues that

the meanings produced by the media are public, shared and collective, which makes it difficult, for example, for someone not to understand an advertisement, radio news, television program, or newspaper photo. This indicates that the study of meanings propagated throughout these materials serves as clue toward the existing models, desires, and dilemmas of a culture. (2)

This idea is similar in form to Wodak and Fairclough’s notion that language is socially both socially constituted and socially constructive.  The article accompanying this picture adopts a serious tone with no evidence of irony.  The pictorial construction of the two women as party-going, carefree, somewhat licentious characters is juxtaposed with a text that highlights the large decline in birth rates since the 90s.  The emphasis on these two points suggests that the declining birth rate is the fault of women who are not following traditional lifestyles.  The type of traditional lifestyle which is most prevalently understood, and thus most cognitively salient in terms of social memory in Korean Society, is that which follows Confucian norms.

Predication

There is a clear predicative strategy in this headline which associates the importance of women’s values in relation to marriage.  The social-memory of the importance of marriage as a function of fertility and thus economic growth is well established articles in The Korean Times such as ‘Low fertility woes’ (2014), and ‘Korean economy faces 'boiling frog's dilemma’ (2013) - which refers to the metaphor for the economy of a frog leaping out if put in boiling water (immediate economic danger) but remaining oblivious if put in cold water that is slowly boiled (creeping economic danger).  As with the last article this one is presented in what appears to be a declining number of women who are interested in traditional values such as ‘marriage’, ‘attending to house work’ and child-rearing.  Again there is no definite article which confers the status of title-ness and reduces ‘women’ who find marriage unnecessary to a statistical figure.  Also ‘Seoul Women’ predicates that there is a universal category of women that carry with them an innate association to Seoul whatever that might mean. For example, many may only work or study there and live elsewhere. Also to be a ‘Seoul women’ must one have to have been born in Seoul. These potential details are collapsed into the more easily interpretable title of ‘Seoul Women’. It is an expedient yet misleading use of language.

Entailment

‘Four out of 10 Seoul women say marriage not necessary’ quite obviously entails that there are 6 out of 10 women who say it is.  However, the women who still believe that marriage is ‘necessary’ are deemphasised in preference to forgrounding the women who no longer believe that it is necessary.  One of the reasons given for this figure in the main body of text is the increasing number of women who are now ‘getting’ higher education and ‘finding’ stable careers. According to the article this has ‘driven up women’s sense of independence giving then more freedom to [sic] or not marry’.  That they have more freedom to marry or not to marry analytically entails that women only have two options both of which entail a negotiation with the idea of marriage.  The traditional role of women in society is repeatedly and clearly underlined by the choices with which they are presented in The Korea Herald’s analysis.

Presupposition

Again there is a presupposition evident in the manner in which this story and the previous one are framed.  Women’s choices in life are juxtaposed with traditional roles and values and the acceptance or rejection of them. Also, the phrase

‘women getting higher education’

presupposes that there is an element of chance to the attainment of higher education by women.  The word ‘Getting’ could have just as easily been changed with ‘pursuing’ which would allow four out of 10 women more agency in the path which they chose for their life.

Also the article concludes with statistics on the decline in the number of babies being born over the last 20 years.

Such rapid social changes were well reflected in the city's birthrate, with only 83,900 babies newly born in Seoul last year.

It was more than half the number of babies born in the city in the year 1993, which stood at 175,800.

 In a broader economic context a drop in birth rate is a normally undesirable in terms of economic growth. Korea is no different and there has been significant attention payed to the declining birth rate in the country.  Again this presupposes that women are not fulfilling their traditional and economically necessary traditional roles of wife, home maker, child bearer and child guardian.

Preceeding articles

The Korea Herald

Number of stay-at-home moms declines for 11th month: data (The Korea Herald 2014-06-18)

‘Number of House Wives in Decline’ (The Korea Herald 2014/06/18)

The Korea Times

Actress discomforted by emcee's hug (The Korea Times 2014-06-18)

More attention needed for foreign brides in plight (The Korea Times 2014-06-19)

Scantily-clad ladies heat up World cup crowd [with accompanying photo of ‘scantily-clad ladies’] (The Korea Times 2014.06.19)

Predication

What is the relevance of these articles as determined by their headlines?

‘Number of House Wives in Decline’: The use of ‘number of house wives’ without a definite or indefinite article turns this clause into a noun phrase which foregrounds the importance of the quantity of house wives in Korea.  Also, the phrase in the article; ‘the number of women staying at home to attend to house work and child rearing was 7.08 million in May, down 2.6 percent from the same month a year earlier.’ This embeds the argument within an economic predicate using statistics with an emphasis on dropping numbers.  Contributing to Social-memory in South Korea are the combination of Confucian legacies and headlines like ‘Korea running out of babies’ – an article that highlights the economic risk associated with low birth rates.  The implicit perceived contentiousness of newly emerging values amongst women supports the social conditions which attempt to hamper the advancement of these values and freedoms.  This theme of this proposition is counter to the social-memory of Confucian principles which foreground family values in terms of patriarchy.

In The Korea Times’ article ‘More attention needed for foreign brides in plight’ a peculiar sentiment was noticed which stood out in terms of its predicative force. Expressed in the following three clauses the writer seems to reflexively establish the priorities of this journalistic endeavour towards the women which they discuss:

At a shelter for battered migrant wives, the employees politely but firmly asked the press not to report on the women because the Korean husbands might track them down and do them harm.

The hotline for migrant wives facing life challenges in Korea, affiliated with the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, refused to talk about them.

But foreign women in such a plight and those who heard about them were tracked down for interviews.

The co-textualisation of the focal article with an article highlighting the systematic immigration of women for marriage presupposes that there exits an asymmetry in marriage values between men and women in Korea.  Both The Korea Herald and The Korea Times published articles that dealt 

Entailment

Number of stay-at-home moms declines for 11th month: data: The number of ‘stay at home moms’ declining entails that there is an increase in the number of women doing something else.  However, this headline deemphasises this in favour of highlighting the chosen alternative.  There is ideological significance in this choice under the assumption that the news media exists to help us better understand the world we live in. (Richardson,2007)  We are offered an understanding of the Korean society with a particular emphasis on the decline of ‘stay at home moms’.  ‘stay at home moms’’ entails that they are women and they serve a ‘traditional’ function in the home.  The publication of this article presumes or presupposes that this particular focus is an important way to frame the issue.  The reasons cited for this ‘decline’ further down in the article are ‘women searching for work to support their families amid signs of a prolonged economic slump’.

The Korea Times article Scantily-clad ladies heat up World cup crowd is a relatively short piece with multiple photos of aforementioned scantily-clad ladies.  The conclusion of the piece is that they are models looking for career boosts.   The cotextualisation of licentiousness in pursuit of career with falling desire for marriage constructs a further conflict with Confucian values.  Indeed it’s worth noting that the women in the photo from this article appear to be at the same festive event as the photo accompanying the article about falling marriage rates.

Presupposition

The publication of this article presupposes that it is relevant and important to society that housewives are in decline. That they are in decline also presupposes that there was previously a greater number of ‘house wives’.  As mentioned in the predication phase of analysis the presentation in economic terms of the drop in numbers implies that this drop is a bad thing.  The phrase analysed under predication:

‘the number of women staying at home to attend to house work and child rearing’

also presupposes that those two tasks are what preoccupy married women who stay at home. 

The article was also reposted under the headline ‘Number of stay at home moms declines for 11^th month. The linguistic variance was minimal and did not justify further analysis.

 In The Korea Times the article ‘Actress discomforted by emcee's hug’ there is a presupposition that the actresses response I more noteworthy than the unsolicited hug.  Also the article concludes with the clause; ‘She did not sue, but it is questionable whether she will be happy about appearing on I Need Romance again.’  The issue of harassment is never mooted presupposing that the important issue is her appearance on the show as opposed to her experience on the show.

Conclusions and Discussion.

The results showed that there exists a socio-cultural and linguistic predisposition towards ascribing more traditional roles and values to women in Korean society despite the ostensive progressive nature of news media in general throughout Korea

This study used the CDA tools of social-memory, predication, entailment, and presupposition to analyse data taken from The Korea Herald and The Korea Times in relation to representations of women in society.  The meaning construction and form of the articles in both newspapers was consistent with Confucian-legacy values highlighting the importance of family and contrasting this with increased freedoms and changing values which women are experiencing.  The disintegration of Confucian values was discursively linked to economic down turn through discursive strategies of contextualisation and co-textualisation with social-memory.  In presenting the changing values and freedoms of women The Korea Times used pejorative terms such as ‘scantily-clad’ and ‘half-naked in a slew of news photos’. The Korea herald on the other hand presented women as abandoning their duties; ‘the number of women staying at home to care for household chores and child-rearing came to 7.08 million in May, down 2.6 percent.’  This is co-textualised with the almost halving of the birth rate since the 1990s and with men’s statistically greater desire for marriage and family.

The articles under analyses also pointed to less traditional roles which women occupy in society such as positions in educational progression and professional careers. However, they were predominantly represented as being in competition with traditional roles or as being somewhat detrimental to Korean societal progression.  For example ‘Seoul women’ were ostensibly displayed as representing liberal values associated with educational progression such as critical attitudes towards marriage and traditional female roles.  This narrative was contextualised with the declining birth rate in South Korea: an issue that is generally considered an economic problem which by implication, might not be the case if Confucian-legacy values were stronger.  Also the decline of housewives was linguistically predicated as a problem which presupposed that the only reason that women weren’t staying at home was unforseen economic circumstances and broader changes in society. In all three articles where women are represented as occupying progressive societal roles it is discursively constructed as passive, for example ‘getting education’ as opposed to ‘pursuing’. At the other end of the scale they are linguistically predicated by default in both articles as occupying the traditional roles of either; home/baby carers, baby producers or objects of marriage.  This study is a modest contribution to a growing social-science field of research.  The recent shift in CDA to include socio-cognitive analysis has been used to bridge the gap between language analysis and social analysis.  This study demonstrates the functionality of this method in a nuanced context.  Also, this work makes a modest contribution to the growing body of research that approaches issues of unequal power distribution and social relations in an effort to generate awareness towards, and reframe subject matters which concern society as a whole. 

Awareness of the legacy of historically pertinent social norms of Confucianism can create the basis upon which they can be changed.  This study is a small contribution to this awareness from a CDA perspective.

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