Discourse And Trade Dispute

International trade dispute is not only an economic, political or legal problem, but also has much to do with discourse. Discourse plays a pivotal role in the occurrence, continuation, intensification, transformation and dissolvation of trade dispute. Up until now, only a few studies notice the discoursal reasons and corresponding solutions to trade disputes. Yet, neither do these studies put forth systematic discourse-analytic paradigms according to the charactersitics of trade dispute discourse, nor do they carry out detailed case studies, which, therefore, make their conclusions unconvincing.This dissertation, through a systematic invetigation into the discourses permeating Sino-US tire special safegurad case, intends to reach two general research aims:1. Propose and justify a feasible research framework for trade dispute dicourse studies;2. Reflect on China’s merits and defects in dicursively coping with this trade dispute. These two macro aims are expected to be realized by answering three major research questions, they are:1. How did each party (pro-safeguard and con-safeguard) macro-configurate their own discourse in this case? What are the merits and defects of China’s macro discursive configuration?2. What specific discursive strategies were manipulated by each party in this case? What are the merits and defects of China’s manipulation of discursive strategies?3. What implications can be drawn from the above findings?In line with the research aims and questions, this dissertation firstly analyzes the contextual, social and cultural nature of trade dispute discourse as an argumentative, intercultural and power-struggle interaction, based on which. Cultural Approach to Discourse (CAD) is used to macro-analyze and compare the discourses uttered by parties involved in tire special safeguard case (the corpus covers60.000Chinese characters and100,000English words), from such three analytic categories as Speaker, Medium and Topic. Then, to micro-reveal the discursive strategies and their corresponding linguistic realizations manipulated by each party in tire special safeguard case, Strategic Maneuvering analytic framework for argumentative discourse studies is exploited to analyze and compare USW’s (the petitioner of tire special safeguard case) public letter to the Senate and the House on August31st.2009, and China’s CCCMC&CRIA’s public letter to Obama and USTR on July27th.2009. As is revealed from the macro and micro analysis, governments, officials, guilds/workers’ unions, tire businesses, medias and experts are major Speakers in this special safeguard case. These Speakers, via Mediums including announcements, public letters, public hearings, face-to-face negotiations, press conferences and mass medias,"argue" with each other mainly on "’legitimacy" and "rationality" of tire special safeguard measures. Apart from that, the strategic maneuvering in USW and CCCMC&CRIA’s public letters is integratedly realized through choice of topical potential, catering for audience demands and choice of presentational devices, which is supported by such argumentaive strategies as appeal to authority, pressuposition, omission, metaphor, avoidance of disadvantages, catering for audience’s preference, normination, truism, modal idiom, paralellism, contrast, irony, categorization, generalization. concession,consensus, vagueness, repetition, statistics, appeal to opponent’s concession, and the like.China needs to improve its configuration of Speakers, Mediums and Topics, in comparison to its American opponents; in contrast to the careful strategic maneuvering in USW’s public letter, CCCMC&CRIA’s public letter has its shortcomings in clarification of difference of opinion in the confrontation stage, in choice of starting points in the opening stage, in choice of topics in the argumentation stage and in manipulation of such specific argumentaive-rhetoric strategies as ’contrast’and’statistics’. On the other hand, it is evident that China has been aware of the importance of language use in trade disputes and made considerable progress in the manipulation of discursive strategies, which is in sharp contrast to its passive discursive responses in previous trade disputes.In view of China’s merits and deficiency in discursively coping with the tire special safeguard case, this dissertation suggests that, in the future international trade disputes, as for the macro configuration of discourse, China should:1. not only organize domestic speakers, such as government, enterprises, guilds, experts, media, and etc., to’argue’with opponents, but also make great efforts to urge more stakeholders and opinion leaders to stand out and’argue’for China;2. make full use of official announcement, public letter, public hearing, official face-to-face negotiation, press conference and mass media, in accordance with their different characteristics;3. avoid using simple judgement in topic-setting with no ample evidences, instead, China should focus on the key controversies and respond to them from multi-angles with enough evidences;4. further apprehend the universal rules to settle international trade disputes, and the other country’s procedures to deal with trade disputes;5. face up to and pay more attention to the differences in cultural ways of speaking between the Chinese and westerners, and try to’justify my position with your terms’; as for the manipulation of micro argumentative, China should:1. clarify the confrontation, opening, argumentation and concluding stages of the argumentative discourse and flexibly set the dialectic and rhetoric aims of these four stages according to the context;2. strategically maneuver among topical potential, audience demand and presentational devices, in line with the established dialectic and rhetoric aims in different argumentative stages;3. further get familiar with audiences’cultural way of speaking and avoid simply measuring others’corn by our own bushel.Based on the connotation and characteristics of trade dispute discourse, and in light of the case study of Sino-US trade dispute on tire imports, we hold the view that, two research routes can be followed when investigating international trade dispute discourse:1. analysis and comparison of each party’s macro configuration of discourse in terms of Speakers, Mediums, Topics, Purposes, Effects and the like;2. analysis, comparison and interpretation of the discursive/argumentative strategies and corresponding linguistic devices manipulated by each party.Major innovations of this research lie in two aspects:first, it theoretically proposes and justifies a feasible research framework for trade dispute dicourse studies which break through the traditional research paradigms and therefore expand the views of both trade dispute studies and discourse studies. What’s more, it innovatively offers systematical and detailed suggestions for China on how to discursively respond to international disputes with wisdom.