A Study Of China’s National Image Construction Based On Speech Reporting In Belt And Road Initiative Reports

Due to the widespread influence of mass media,news,as a main way of information dissemination,becomes the subject of extensive intellectual scrutiny.Under this trend,Critical Discourse Analysis(short for CDA)comes into being,aiming at revealing the multiple relationships among language,ideology and power through the studies on public discourses.Speech reporting has become an important aspect of news discourse research because of its essential position in news reporting.However,most of the early studies on speech reporting are confined to the domain of grammar study and literary study.Contemporary studies of speech reporting have markedly shifted their focuses from the traditional concern with syntactic operations to the situated accounts of speech reporting which are sensitive to historical and social contexts and discourse types.Therefore,in this thesis,we will take a discourse-pragmatic perspective.With the rapid development of modernization and globalization,cooperation and exchanges between China and the whole international community have become closer.National image is the business card of our country’s contacts with other countries.Accordingly,the construction of China’s national image attracts increasing attention from governments and academic circles.At present,researches on national image are mainly centered on communication and journalism,international politics,art and cultural.Adopting a combination of Fairclough’s three-dimensional discourse model and intertextuality theory as the analytical framework,this thesis conducts a quantitative and qualitative critical research on the speech reporting in 60 news reports on the Belt and Road(short for B&R)from the official website of People’s Daily,which are ranged from January,2018 to January,2019,aiming at revealing the national images of China constructed in the news reports.This thesis intends to solve the following research questions:(1)What national images are constructed by the news sources of speech reporting in the news reports?(2)What national images are constructed by the reporting verbs of speech reporting in the news reports?(3)What national images are constructed by the reporting modes of speechreporting in the news reports?Through a detailed analysis of the three questions above,this thesis draws the following conclusions:Firstly,this thesis studies the news sources of speech reporting from two dimensions: the voice subject of the source and its accuracy.With regard to voice subjects,we find that the most frequently occurred voice subjects are official governments,accounting for 31.4%,followed by common people,public figures,experts and scholars,news media,and others,which take up for 27.0%,18.6%,14.2%,6.5%,2.3% respectively.In terms of the accuracy of the news sources,it is found that specific sources,with the highest percentage of 91.1%,greatly outnumber unspecific and implicit sources,which take up for only 6.8% and 2.1% respectively.Such distributions are ideologically embedded.With respect to power relations,the authoritative voice subjects such as official governments share more discursive power than the readers and the public.The reporter’s inclination in dealing with news sources not only successfully demonstrates the credibility and preciseness of People’s Daily,but also underpins China’s national image as a responsible economic power of universal love.Secondly,reporting verbs in this thesis can be divided into neutral reporting verbs,mental/thought reporting verbs,and speech act reporting verbs.Among these three categories,we find that the most frequently occurred reporting verbs are speech act reporting verbs,accounting for 50.5%,followed by neutral reporting verbs and mental reporting verbs,which take up for 41.7% and 7.8% respectively.Reporting verbs are ideologically invested in the news reports.The most frequently used reporting verb is “说(say)”,with the highest quantities of 188.The instances of “说”without any description of body language account for an extreme high proportion of94.7%,greatly outnumbering those accompanied by body language description,taking up for only 5.3% with 10 instances.This inclination successfully suggests the prudence of People’s Daily,which indicates ideologically the precise and cautious image of Chinese government.At the same time,the reporters of People’s Daily are able to obtain a better communication effect by keeping a balance between objectivity and liveliness according to the content and purpose of the reports.By appropriately adding descriptions of body language to “说”,they not only increase readers’ pleasure of reading and improve the readability of the reports,but also effectively reinforce the distribution of China’s positive national images constructed in the reported speeches.What’s more,adding modal expressions to the reporting verbs is another effectivediscursive strategy to strengthen this transmission.As for the power relations,the tendency to employ speech act reporting verbs is a demonstration of the embedded power relation that the uninformed readers incline to trust the words of people who have more rights to speak.At last,reporting modes are divided into direct speech,indirect speech,free direct speech,free indirect speech,and the narrative report of speech acts.According to the distribution of these five categories,the most frequently employed reporting mode in the news discourse of People’s Daily is direct speech,which accounts for the highest proportion of 57.8% with 433 instances.Indirect speech ranks the second place with 250 instances,taking up for 33.4%,followed by the narrative report of speech acts,which accounts for 7.1% with 53 instances.Few free direct speech and free indirect speech are used in the B&R news reports,taking up for the minimum proportions of only 1.2% and 0.5% respectively.The reporting modes are ideologically implanted.It shows that the tendency to employ direct speech is a manifestation of the embedded ideology that the authors of People’s Daily have paid attention to the use of a more faithful reporting mode to convey the objective authenticity of news reports,which also helps to prepare for shaping the objective and real national image of China in the reported speeches.In regard to power relations,studies show that the reporters incline to employ direct speech when reporting the words from both the authoritative and non-authoritative voice subjects.For one thing,the tendency to use direct speech when reporting the words from authoritative groups indicates the power relation that voices subjects with higher social status enjoy more discursive power.For another,the tendency to report common people’s words in direct speech is a reflection of the embedded power relation that the reporters of People’s Daily intend to establish a solidarity between the official and the public.Speech reporting is an effective discursive strategy in the construction of national image.By skillful processing of speech reporting from the perspectives of news sources,reporting verbs,and reporting modes,the reporters are able to reinforce the authoritativeness and credibility of the intertextual reported speeches.With the help of such a discursive strategy,People’s Daily successfully constructs ten kinds of national images of China in the B&R news reports,covering four domains of politics,economy,society,and culture.This thesis provides a new perspective for the study of national image construction.At the same time,it also contributes to raising readers’ critical awareness of news reports,and helps to enhance the public’s understanding of China’scontribution to the international community.