Abstract
The question of how gender and disability are portrayed in sports media is less explored in many societies including China. This research investigates the Chinese news portrayals of female versus male Paralympians and their relationships with the Chinese sociocultural context. Employing Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis (Multimodal CDA) to analyze language and images in Chinese news coverage of the 2022 Winter Paralympic Games, this study finds evidence that female and male Paralympians are both constructed as inferior physicalities in sports. However, in the discourse of ableism and sexism, female Paralympians are doubly marginalized from the perspectives of physicality and masculinity. The display of sexism further trivializes female Paralympians by portraying them as feminine, infantile, and physically inferior compared to male Paralympians. The discursive representations interact with body ideology, disability discourse, and gender ideology in post-reform China, further strengthening the dominance of males and the non-disabled in and beyond sports.
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