Diplomatic Channels Of Communication Theory And Practice On

In the background of the development of globalization and the transformation of China's international identity, the diplomatic communication between nation-states is much more important than ever before. Based on the studies of international relations and diplomacy as well as the communication, public relations and management, the dissertation is mainly aimed at the foundation of theoretical framework of diplomatic communication and how it is applied to diplomacy practices. It consists of seven parts including the introduction and the conclusion.The Introduction presents briefly the reasons for choosing the topic, the methodology and the literature review from the aspect of diplomatic communication theory and China's diplomatic communication. From the literature review, we could find that neither a common idea nor a systematic theory on the concept diplomatic communication exists though it is often mentioned in practice. In fact, the concept is related to the fields such as diplomacy, international relations, public diplomacy, government's international public relations, communication studies and so on, but it is not the simple addition of all the related contents. Furthermore, the definition of the concept is continuously being developed. Concerning the case studies, most of the related articles focus much on the mass media, which is different from my dissertation. This not only poses some difficulty for my research, but also provides grounds for the possible new ideas.The first chapter is about the definition of the concept diplomatic communication. It is a kind of communicative actions, so the chapter begins with the studies of the communicative action which include the definition, the essential factors, the patterns, the forms and the interaction between communicative actions and social cognition. Then, the author explores diplomatic communication, indicating that it is a kind of intercultural communication with the definite guidance of national interests and a process of two-level cognitive construction in the unit of nations. The two-level cognitive construction is based on the distinction between the self-cognition and the cognition of others. The diplomatic communication is to construct the cognition of other countries based on self-cognition constructed in one's own country.The second chapter is the core of the whole thesis, namely the theoretical framework of diplomatic communication. It regards the diplomatic communication as a process in which four interactive variables work together: norms, institutions, tactics and management. At the level of structure are norms and institutions; at the level of individual are tactics and at the level of process, management. The four factors constitute the framework of diplomatic communication theory.The norms refer to the essence of diplomatic communication and the question of"how it is should be". Although many scholars have shed light on the issue, the author mainly turns to Habermas'theory of communicative actions and Grunig's theory of excellence in public relations. Compared with norms, tactics are used to solve the question of"how to undertake effective communication". The institutions are made up of two parts, the system of establishment and the mechanism. The system consists of governments, public organizations as well as the media and the public, which could be presented by a model. The essence of management is to coordinate and integrate the parts of the system in order to get the best result. The process, with the core role of government, includes several steps such as fixing an objective, choosing the communication channel, receiving the feedback and so on.The third chapter concerns China's diplomatic communication which comprises the background, the history review, the institutions and the management. It shows that China's diplomatic communication has its own characteristics besides the above-mentioned ones. From the perspective of diplomatic communication, the last two chapters are the case studies on the March 14th event in Tibet and the Wenchuan earthquake, representing respectively the diplomatic communication in internal political affairs and natural disasters within one country.The conclusion proves the application of the theoretical framework, indicates the general rules and induces the implications for China's diplomatic communication.