Metaphorical representations of “leftover women”: between traditional patriarchy and modern egalitarianism

Abstract

ABSTRACT Single Chinese women above the age of 27 have been commonly labelled as “leftover women” by the Chinese state-run media since 2007. To investigate how leftover women are represented metaphorically, this study adopts the discourse dynamics approach to identify metaphor vehicles (i.e. linguistic metaphors), classifies their vehicle groupings and evaluations, and explains the potential ideologies behind the metaphor use from 28 English-language news articles (i.e. 24, 226 words) produced by the Chinese media. The findings show that leftover women are represented as different kinds of social actors (i.e. TRAVELLERS, FIGHTERS and FISHERS/HUNTERS) and dehumanised objects (i.e. COMMODITIES and FOOD), and their attributes (i.e. age, socioeconomic status, and marriage expectations) are highlighted with HEIGHT. The metaphorical representations of leftover women potentially imply the contested ideologies of traditional patriarchy and modern egalitarianism, which reflect and shape Chinese womanhood within the Chinese sociocultural context.