Critical Discourse Analysis Of Xi Jinping’s Speeches On The International Economy(2013-2019)

At present,there are many studies on leaders’ speeches using linguistic theories,but most of them focus on the study of foreign leaders’ speeches,and there are only a few studies on President Xi Jinping’s speeches.In view of the current global economic downturn,this paper analyzes President Xi Jinping’s speeches on the international economy between 2013 and 2019 in framework of critical discourse analysis.The following three questions were addressed: 1.What discourse strategies does President Xi Jinping use in his international economy speeches? 2.In international economy discourses,how does President Xi Jinping use intertextuality to construct global governance on economic issues and China’s image as a great power? 3.What are the potential factors for producing economic discourses?I select thirty-four articles of President Xi Jinping’s international economy speeches from “Xi Jinping speech series database of People’s Daily Corpus”,using Fairclough’s three-dimensional analysis model and Halliday’s systemic functional grammar to make critical discourse analysis to expound the relationship among language,power and ideology,mainly from the three levels of text,discourse practice,and social practice.Through analysis and research,we have answered the above questions: Firstly,President Xi expresses his economic thoughts through such strategies as high-frequency vocabulary,the use of transitivity process,and the use of modal words in his international economy speeches.Secondly,President Xi uses the intertextuality of quotation,storytelling,and data to construct his thought on global economic governance and show China’s image as a great power.Thirdly,the potential motivations of economic discourses are the necessity of domestic economic development,the promotion of China’sinternational discourse power,and the change of global economic governance pattern to strive for the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries.It is necessary to investigate deeply into the meaning of language itself and its context in order to improve cognitive ability and analyze the construction logic of text,discourse practice,and social practice by means of critical discourse analysis.Only by analyzing leaders’ speeches from micro and macro aspects can we understand the ideology behind their words about boosting the global economy and improving the global economic governance pattern and understand their intention of using different language strategies on different occasions.