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CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTION

1.1 Research background
In the 2015 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, as the first language program on the stage,the short sketch Schiller Street attracted wide attention from the audiences all aroundChina. The short sketch presented a story of a female Jia Ling as a “女汉子 (NvHanzi)” who was unsuccessful in life. Her male friends Sha Yi and Li Jing tried toconsole her in a joking way, and compared her with another female Qu Yingrecognized as a “女神 (Nv Shen)”. At last, through the “reversals” in the plots, Jiawas finally “packaged” as a new “女神”, reaching to a happy ending of the story.While the short sketch brought laughter to the audiences and entertained them asa comedic performance, it has also caused strong controversy and has aroused heateddiscussions among audiences as well as the media. Some sensitive audiences withfeminist consciousness stood out and criticized the short sketch on its biased genderperceptions. They pointed out that the short sketch constructed two binary oppositefemale gender identities — “女神” and “女汉子”. “女神” was defined as a femalewith good physical appearance and obvious feminine characteristics who isappreciated by males and successful in life; “女汉子”, on the contrary, was defined asa female with quite average physical appearance and lack of femininity who is deniedby males and regarded as a “loser” in life. Such definitions are criticized to be built upthrough one-sided male perspectives in female, emphasizing only females’ externalfeatures and dependence on their male counterparts, while neglecting their internalcharacteristics, individual values and social contributions. Therefore, typical genderstereotypes and gender discrimination are thought to be revealed in the problematicperformance.
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1.2 Research questions
The present study aims to look into the female gender images shaped in the shortsketch Schiller Street and to explore gender relationship implied in the image-shapingprocess, as well as to reveal related ideological and hegemonic problems hiddenbehind. It tries to find out:1) What different female gender images of “女神 (Nv Shen)” and “女汉子(Nv Hanzi) were shaped in the short sketch Schiller Street?2) What were the males’ influences on the shaping progress of the femalegender images and how was the gender relationship revealed in theinteractions?3) What are the implied gender ideological and hegemonic problems?
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CHAPTER TWOLITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents a review of related literature. Since the targeted discourse willbe analyzed in a theoretical and analytical framework of critical discourse analysis,the development, definition as well as major frameworks and approaches in CDA willbe explicated in the first part with evaluations.Also, the present study aims to investigate gender issues through discursiveanalysis, so language and gender will be another emphasis in the review. Elaborationand evaluation of both domestic and foreign previous empirical and qualitative studiesin language and gender that could be related or compared to the present study will beincluded. Because of the domestic social-cultural context of the present study, theemphasis in this part will be on domestic studies on discourse and gender issues.Moreover, a more detailed review of existing research works into the targeteddiscourse — the short sketch Schiller Street will be done.

2.1 Critical