| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立屏東教育大學 === 英語學系 === 98 === This study aims to explore the homosexual ideologies in the entertainment news discourse by examining the process types in news clauses. In addition to the news text analysis, this study further examined if the homosexual and heterosexual readers’ interpretations of the news texts contain similar or discrete ideologies toward homosexuality as found in the news texts analysis. The news data were collected from the four mostly read papers in Taiwan. The publication time ranges from 1994 to 2010. In order to obtain readers’ interpretation to the news texts, this study chose the interview as the way to collect data. This study adopted Halliday’s transitivity theory and categorized homosexual related clauses into four types: the material, the mental, the verbal and the relational. Under each process type, verbs are further classified into verbs performed by the heterosexual and homosexual subjects. The researcher intended to examine if different sexual oriented subjects conduct different kinds of verbs and to find out what ideological meanings are hidden in the verb use.
After providing the representative news samples based on the ideological meanings found from the news text analysis, the researcher asked interviewees to give comments or criticisms after they read the news samples. The interview data allows this present study to find out more fruitful and multifaceted interpretations about the homosexual ideologies from the readers’ descriptions.
The result of the process type analysis showed four domains of the homosexual ideologies in the entertainment news, the image of homosexual people’s behaviors, the public’s peeking to the homosexual orientation, the inequality of the chance to speak for hetero- and homosexual subjects in news and the delineation of the homosexual individuals. Firstly, the gay subjects perform action to pursue the male celebrities and to cruise for the sexual intercourse. Secondly, the lesbian subjects seldom perform sexuality related action in news. Thirdly, the verbs emphasizing that sexual orientation is a controllable or reversible behavior or a curable disease can be found in news reports. Fourthly, the verbs of questioning found in the news also reflect the curious attitude in the public to the homosexual orientation. Fifthly, reporting statements about homosexual issues are made by heterosexual subjects mostly. Most of these comments are clarification or taunts to the homosexual rumors. Sixthly, in addition to expressing anger occasionally, homosexual subjects including the Internet community or the human right organization do not have much chance to make more statements in the news. Seventhly, effeminate features are the stereotypical descriptions for gay men. Eighthly, the friendship with the homosexual community is not only the strategy for celebrities to show courtesy to homosexual consumers but also a common way to clarify the homosexual rumors.
It is also found that readers’ interpretations can further explain the logic for the ideological meanings found from the news texts. Firstly, different judgments to gay men and lesbian women given by the news texts and made by the readers revealed the derogation of the sexuality in public discourse. Secondly, the image about the bisexual people that they can accept men and women leads to the perception that homosexual and heterosexual people can reverse sexual preference as well. Thirdly, the curious attitude exists in the public. However, homosexual readers’ curiosity may come from the yarning to be accepted by the society. Fourthly, the multiple interpretations of the behavior of ‘coming out’ or ‘exposing someone’s sexual orientation’ reflect that while examining the personal homosexual orientation as a public issue, the entertainment news do not care about the stress or consequence for the individual whose sexual orientation is discussed and revealed. Fifthly, homosexual interviewees claimed that personal effeminate traits described in the news texts can not be used to predict one’s sexual orientation. Sixthly, heterosexual interviewees’ overly compliments on homosexual people’s fame and wealth shows how difficult for homosexual orientation to be recognized in public. Seventhly, the homosexual and the heterosexual interviewees both sensed and approved that friendliness to the homosexual community can guarantee the homosexual people’ consuming behaviors.
The study found that while presenting the homosexual images, the entertainment newspaper can not show the diversity of the delineation of the homosexual images in the news writing. In order to obtain the multi faceted homosexual images, the readers can build their own understanding of the homosexual community through other media run by the homosexual force and personal contact with homosexual people. The discourse analysts who adopt the transitivity theory should check the context while categorizing the process types. The studies to investigate the ideological meanings in the newspapers can further examine the ideologies presented in the other news sections.
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