| This dissertation explores the ways top political leaders practice public communication at government press conferences (GPC). The theoretical foundations are made up of three different yet complementary orientations to language and discourse: Conversation Analysis (CA), Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). For better insights into GPC, the corpus is analyzed for this project both qualitatively and quantitatively.The multidimensionality of political media discourse has aroused the interest of many discourse analysts. GPC, however, has rarely been the specific subject of study. Although there have been some studies reported in the field of presidential press conferences in general, there has been very little, even no work on the comparison of government press conferences by political leaders from massively different ideological backgrounds. Taking an integrated approach, this thesis is intended to fill that gap by focusing on GPC involving two Chinese Premiers and two US Presidents. Their press conferences these years provide rich data for the study of their ways to successful and fruitful public communication through media in arriving at their political goals.The analysis was firstly based on a corpus of 20 political press conferences by top political leaders dating from 1996 to 2008 and later particularly focused on 4 inaugural press conferences chaired by them right after they took office as premier/ president for a better control of the variables involved and as a result of the rotten time limit. The data left serve as reference for this study. In addition, to validate the analysis, a corpus of secondary data consisting of statements, commentaries, news and views expressed in the media by spokespersons, associates, news reporters, political analysts, and academics, from a variety of media sources with such modalities as text, audio, and video, has been considered. The focus of this study is on the way top political leaders position themselves, journalists and the public through GPC with a comparative approach, we are supposed to answer the following research questions:1. What strategies are adopted by top political leaders to handle questions put to them at GPC? Do they have different preferences in strategy choice?2. How do politicians from two different cultures perform their institutional roles via language respectively? And how do they present ideological evaluation of their own at GPC?3. In what ways does head of government (HG) build better an image of his own at GPC? What similarities and differences are evident in doing so between HGs from such different ideological backgrounds?4. What are similarities and differences between China premiers and US presidents in expressing their (un)certainty?5. How is interpersonal engagement realized in political media discourse of this kind?6. What are the implications for political discourse study?a. How can the findings of the study inform political figures and journalists?b. How can the findings of the study inform linguists about political discourse in the media?The dissertation is chiefly guided by the six research questions. It is found that there are both similarities and differences between China GPC and US GPC.(i) Similarities between China GPC and US GPCa. The request at GPC for specific information is the most frequently adopted strategy by journalists from both cultures, accounting for about 70% of all questions.b. HGs from both nations answered over 50% questions hit to them in a direct way and no criticism strategies were taken in both data.c. Both have two major themes at GPC, home issues and international relations.d. Home policies invite most interest of journalists in both China and US GPCe. Top political figures from two different countries enjoy partial discursive power f. GPC of both countries share similar ritual structure, consisting of 3 sessions, a short statement by HG, question-answer, and acknowledgement.g. Both parties adopted much high value lexis like very and much less low value lexis like none.(ii) Differences between China GPC and US GPCa. Both parties preferred different strategies when they were unwilling or not in a position to answer some questions from journalists. 'direct refusals' and 'reason' were pretty more frequently taken strategies in the US data while avoidance and insufficient answers were the major strategies in the Chinese corpus.b. Strategies of alternative were used more often by the China HGs than the other party.c. There were 3 major themes in China GPC while only 2 in US data.d. During the political interview, it is the government employee who assigns the floor to certain journalists in China while it is the president himself who does it in US.e. China attaches importance to the relations with its neighbors while Middle East alone appears the concern of US when it comes to international relations.f. US HGs were more personal while their China counterparts were more impersonal in the sense that the former a lot more frequently used parenthetical expressions than the latter.g. China HGs largely preferred certainty to uncertainty in response to questions and US HGs seemingly cared to enjoy both of them.The study contributes a theoretically motivated, multi-dimensional and pragmatic explanation of political discourse in the media.In brief, the dissertation consists of seven chapters. The first chapter introduces the research background and motives, the theoretical foundations and the significance of the study. Chapter two is focused on the histories and functions of government press conferences. Chapter three reviews theoretical foundations of the present study with political discourse in the media. The following three chapters correspondingly analyze the selected corpus from the three theoretical perspectives. Chiefly based on the findings and conclusions from the previous three chapters, chapter seven makes a summary of the findings for insights, conclusions and suggestions, paving the way for the would-be creation of a model for political media discourse.
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