Gender Order, Microcelebrities, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of the Representation of Wanghong Women in China’s English-Language Newspapers

Abstract

The term “ wanghong women” has been in a state of flux in China’s public discourse since its inception in 2015. In particular, the COVID-19, while causing major economic setbacks across the world, has, to some extent, boosted the growth of the wanghong industry and altered public attitude towards wanghong women in China. Against this background, this study aims to investigate how wanghong women are linguistically represented in the six leading official English language newspapers in China. A corpus-assisted discourse analysis of 156 English news articles (i.e., 140,931 words), covering the years between 2015 and 2022, was conducted. The study revealed a significant attitudinal shift in the editorial stance on China’s wanghong women phenomenon since the COVID-19 epidemic: the semantic prosodies of the word “ wanghong” has shifted from women who are stereotypically young, fashionable, and attract online attention by using pretty face and sexualized body shape to women who can boost the national digital economy, contribute to the state’s agenda of rural regeneration, and help spread timely instructions regarding the pandemic. The findings shed new light on the evolving Chinese gender politics which is shaped by the entangled forces of traditional patriarchy, commercialization, and the government’s crisis management strategies during the pandemic.