A Diachronic Study Of The Discursive Construction Of China’s National Image—based On The English News Reports On The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games And The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games

In recent years,national image construction has become a widely explored topic across various research fields,including linguistics,discourse studies and communication.At the same time,exploring the national image based on the data from news reports on sports events is a crucial area of study within national image construction.Overall,research on constructing a national image through sports events and related aspects has generated various topics.However,studies on the national image construction based on the discourse of news reports of sports events mainly concentrate on the synchronic investigation,lacking a diachronic comparative analysis of the national image.Given this,this study from a diachronic perspective aims to investigate the discursive construction of China’s national image focusing on three dimensions,i.e.,discourse subjects,discourse themes,and discourse contents,by taking the news reports of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games in China Daily,one of the most influential English mainstream media in China,as the data.This study is conducted by adopting the framework for cultural discourse studies proposed by Shi(2010),the discourse-pragmatic framework for regional image construction proposed by Ren and Wei(2017)and the analytical framework for city image construction proposed by Yuan(2018).This study mainly addresses the following three questions:1.Who are the key actors involved in constructing China’s national image in the news reports of China Daily on the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games? What are the diachronic changes in discourse subjects during this period?2.What discourse themes are highlighted in constructing China’s national image in the news reports of China Daily on the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games? What are the diachronic changes in discourse themes during this period?3.What discourse contents are made salient in constructing China’s national image in the news reports of China Daily on the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games? What are the diachronic changes revealed in discourse contents during this period?Both qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data yields the following results:Firstly,the finding shows diverse discourse subjects involved in the news reports such as event staff,the masses,experts and scholars,the workers of companies and foreign media.Compared with the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games,the increasing proportion of them suggests that the media is inclined towards constructing China’s national image from a more diverse perspective,successfully combining the“self-construction” and the “other construction”.Secondly,the news reports cover a variety of discourse themes,such as politics,economy,culture,sports events,and people’s livelihood.Sports events reports are prevalent in both the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games.However,the distribution of the themes differs between the two events,with the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games highlighting more on the economy,people’s livelihood,and ecological environment.This finding illustrates that under the premise of focusing on sports events,the media’s attention covers a broader range of discourse themes,reflecting the significant influence of the Olympic Games in politics,economy,culture,and many other aspects.Finally,the discourse contents of the news reports also provide a vivid reflection of China’s diachronic change in national images,such as a shift from “me” to “us”,and a change from “integrating into the world” to “together for a shared future”,and so on.China exhibits more confidence,calmness,and openness in projecting its image of politics,economy,and culture to the world.This has led to China’s image devoted to constructing a global community united in a shared future with other countries.This study has both theoretical values and practical implications.Firstly,by adopting a discourse-analytical approach and assisted by the use of the corpus method,this study provides a diachronic comparative perspective for national image construction through a detailed analysis of the news reports on sports events,thus contributing to the further research on national image construction and sports events.Furthermore,by utilizing the news reports from the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games,this research delivers a focused and insightful diachronic comparative study of the change in China’s national image.This highly focused approach offers valuable suggestions for enhancing our nation’s image construction through sports events.