Expressing Disagreement At Press Conferences Of Chinese Foreign Ministry:A Conversation Analysis Approach

Press conferences of Chinese Foreign Ministry are a crucial platform for spokespersons to address inquiries from journalists and negotiate contentious issues.There is however so far not much research on Chinese press conferences as an interaction arena in the political public sphere.This thesis adopts a Conversation Analysis approach to scrutinize government-media interactions when disagreement occurs,in a bid to gain insights into the interactive mechanisms and discursive strategies employed by participants in negotiating and managing contentious issues in press conferences.To be specific,it tries to address the following three questions:(1)How do journalists design their questions that are likely to bring about disagreement from spokespersons?(2)How do spokespersons express their disagreement when responding to those questions?(3)What are the possible causes for expressing such disagreements at the press conferences? The corpus contains a total of 270 videos related to “disagreement” from the official account of Foreign Ministry Spokesperson’s Office and Xinhua News Agency on the bilibili website from 2020 to2022.The thorough examination indicates that when disagreements arise,both journalists and spokespersons adapt to the institutional context in which they operate.Journalists,on the one hand,when trying to hold the government accountable by asking adversarial questions,attempt to perform a neutral(istic)stance by attributing adversarial information to third-parties,embodying an unfavorable presupposition and exploiting the potential vulnerabilities.Spokespersons,on the other hand,would express disagreement appropriately and decently by negating the argument of(the 3rd party)with facts,delegitimating the preceding presupposition,appealing to a moral stance,and challenging potential “trouble-makers”.By means of these strategies,journalists are able to struggle between maintaining objectivity and adversarialness,and Chinese spokespersons are able to accomplish their duty to express unwavering oppositions to unfounded allegations while also maintaining a positive image of the Chinese government.Additionally,this thesis demonstrates that political and sociocultural contexts play a significant role in determining the tone and content of the interactions between journalists and spokespersons,and can influence the ways in which disagreement is expressed and received.The study has theoretically enriched the research on the intricate dynamics of government-media interactions in the realm of Chinese diplomatic discourse research.It also provides practical implications for improving communication strategies employed by both spokespersons and journalists to facilitate cooperative and effective diplomatic communication in situations where disagreement arises.