Abstract

This study is a rhetorical analysis of the gendered language both Chinese and Western news media perpetuate in depicting the female Chinese Olympian Ye Shiwen at the 2012 London Olympics. The analysis reveals that both media employ a language that constructs Ye as an immature, childlike being whose achievements are not only unexpected but unnatural. After initially identifying Ye with the doping history of Chinese athletes in the 1990s, Western journalists depicted her as a passive victim of unethical child training programs, described in terms which imply a rhetorical identification with China’s doping history. In its turn, Chinese news media defended the integrity of its Olympic ethos by casting Ye as a dutiful daughter, and innocent child; this construction of her ethos absolves her of blame by denying her agency, effectively placing strict boundaries around her ownership of achievement, boundaries which reflect normalized assumptions of submissiveness as appropriate female behavior. The readiness of both the Western and Chinese media to default to a rhetoric of gender discrimination when norms are challenged demonstrates how the Olympic ideal of surpassing boundaries can still be a closed border for Chinese women.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.