ABSTRACT
The textual representation of women's changing roles and statuses in Taiwanese society should be seen as part of that process of change. I suggest here that scholarly and popular discourse on women's roles in Taiwan today also participates in the creation of "women's status" as a social reality and as lived experience, and that this discourse itself is an object worthy of study. This is to be seen as an analysis of native discourses that places in the foreground the discursive properties of texts to reproduce and to transform cultural forms such as "women's status." According toBakhtin (1981 [1934— 35]), every utterance is polyphonic and is part of a dialogue of discourses. Public explanations of women's changing roles and statuses in Taiwan can be read as a text whose many voices call into being Chinese concepts of women's place in the social order. These texts help discursively to construct the social roles and identities that "real" women occupy. Individuals then draw on these discourses to create and transform their own notions of identity and role.
