An Analysis Of The Official Discourse On The China-US Trade War In 2018 From The Critical Cognitive Perspective

The US President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on March 22 nd,2018,announcing that measures would be taken to impose a 25% tariff on Chinese products worth $60 billion,marking the first shot of the US trade war against China.Since then,the China-US trade war has intensified and evolved into an international trade dispute that threatens the global economy.Trade disputes are not only closely related to the fields of economy,politics,and international laws,but also inextricably linked to the discourse practices of both sides.At present,the studies of the China-US trade war in 2018 are mainly concentrated on such fields as politics,economy and rule of law,focusing on the reasons for the initiation of the trade war,the consequences and countermeasures.There are only limited studies on the discourse analysis of China-US trade war.The current studies mainly analyze the narrative discourse of news from the perspective of pragmatics.However,since the trade war has upgraded to a confront between national governments,the discourse subject is not merely limited to the media,and the government,through its official media,official spokespersons and documents,is playing a crucial role in guiding the trade war process,influencing the public opinions and shaping its own policies,Therefore,because of the insufficient researches on the multiple discourse subjects and the stages of the event,nor a complete and systematic research paradigm is proposed,the previous studies were unable to achieve convincing research results.It is worth noting that,considering the massive scope,duration and impact,as well as the dynamic nature of the China-US trade war,the author thinks that there is no objective basis for a thorough analysis of its whole process.The China-US trade war happened in 2018 is a relatively complete process,which has fully demonstrated the characteristics of the official discourse by both sides,thus is able to provide the representative and diversified materials for the author to conduct the research from the critical cognitive perspective.Therefore,this dissertation,by carrying out a research on the stages of the China-US trade war in 2018,not only helps to fill the gap in the current researches on the China-US trade war from the perspective of linguistics,but also provides a reference path for future researches.This dissertation aims to address the following research questions from the perspective of linguistics:1.Theoretically,in current stage,through critical cognitive discourse analysis,what ideologies are conveyed by Chinese and American official discourse subjects;and what influences are exerted on the audiences?2.Practically,in next stages,how can China utilize the official discourse to demonstrate the “Chinese wisdom” in its war of discourse against the US?To answer the above two questions,this study combines the critical discourse analysis with the theories of cognitive linguistics,and forms the path of critical cognitive discourse analysis.The author uses the discourse strategies toolbox to construal the discourse of different official subjects.At the same time,this dissertation conforms to the research idea of combing quantitative and qualitative methods through using the basic theories of corpus linguistics.According to different development stages and discourse subjects of the China-US trade war in 2018,three main corpora are built.They are official media discourse corpus of China and the United States at the “beginning” stage(Form March 22 nd to May 14th),the official spokespersons discourse corpus at the “development” stage(From May 17 th to September 17th)and the official documents corpus at the “intensifying" stage(Form September 18 th to December 1st).Through making a comprehensive and systematic comparative analysis of the discourses of China and the United States during the trade war in 2018 and discussing about the different discourse subjects and the characteristics of the discourse,the author gets the following main findings.At the "beginning" stage of the trade war,China mainly adopts defensive discourse by “shirking responsibility ",which is consistent with China's long-term use of vague and evasive statement in the international arena to conceal its real political intention,so as to avoid giving the audience a sense of pressure,shorten the distance and arouse resonance with the audience.The US mainly adopts offensive discourse by " attributing the occurrence of the war to China ",which is not only aimed at persuading but also controlling the audience's consciousness,not only conveying the message,but also diverting people's attention.Through a comparative study,it can be found that the US “official” media show a strong " aggressiveness " and pertinence" at the “beginning” stage of the trade war,which proves that the action taken by the US is not a "small fight" but a "deliberate plan".Compared with the objective narration and vague statement by China's official media,such language features have stronger authority and dissemination effects in guiding the audienceAt the “development” stage,China's language strategy of "objective demonstration,through presenting historical experience,existing cases,international rules and other objective facts,has a good logical and empirical nature,but from the perspective of language effects,it is somewhat less inflammatory.However,the US side,through utilizing the language strategy of "first strike",directly links the bad effects resulted from the trade war with the interests of the United States and the global economy,which is a propaganda way to force the audience to accept its ideology by creating conflicts.Through comparative analysis,it can be seen that,the official spokespersons of the United States are skilled at communicating and publicity.They attach great importance to adopting a large number of language strategies to defend his government's foreign policies and western values.Their speeches are so emotional and touching so as to promote their foreign policies,thus achieving their political goals.At the “intensifying” stage of the trade war,China takes "positive evaluation" as its main discourse strategy.It uses easy-understandable discourse that contains international values.By activating the value system of the audience,the discourse is gradually consistent with the views of the audience,so as to express China's propositions and thoughts.The US side takes "negative evaluation" as its main discourse strategy.It takes a negative attitude towards China-US trade relations since it wants to maintain the "American First" international order,and constantly strengthens the stereotype of "threat from China”.Through comparative analysis,it can be found that facing the mud thrown by other countries,China still needs to strengthen its discourse power construction with Chinese characteristics and form a discourse system that matches China's identity as the world's largest developing country.Otherwise,in a world system dominated by the United States,China would still be challenged by the so-called "universal values" such as "democracy","freedom" and "market economy".In conclusion,From the perspective of critical cognitive discourse analysis,in view of the multiple stages and different discourse subjects of official media,official spokespersons and documents of China-US trade war in 2018,the official discourse of the two countries demonstrates the characteristics of various genres and forms,which leads to different discourse strategies adopted according to different stages of the trade war,due to their deep-rooted different views on the issue of trade war,as well as the conflict of national interests.Therefore,in order to better display "Chinese wisdom" in the discourse battle in the next stage of the trade war,China should be aware of the following points.Firstly,set clear topics.At present,China's official discourse not only takes the domestic mainstream ideology,but also the international laws and recognized norms of international relations into consideration when setting its topics,which present itself as a responsible country.However,at the same time,it should also be noted that for better maintaining its national interests,the world peace and development,China needs to take initiative to absorb those discourse which originated from the west but now have become the common pursuit of human society and the progress of mankind civilization,update its own discourse concept,so as to make full use of its redeeming points to strengthen its value expression,thus making its main points more clear when refuting the US's views.Secondly,identify the discourse objects.In the era of economic globalization and information socialization,the speed and breadth of discourse transmission are more massive than ever,making the clear positioning of discourse objects an important link in realizing accurate discourse transmission.Facing the global audience,China should not only pay full attention to the connotation of its own discourse,but also study the discourse system and thinking habits of foreign audiences.Therefore,China needs to develop the researches on the relationship between discourse strategies and discourse objects on the basis of clarifying its own ideology,so as to ensure that the ideology contained in the discourse can be accurately conveyed to different audiences and play a role in guiding public opinions.Thirdly,strengthen the discourse power construction.As China is gradually moving towards the center of the international arena,it is required to be more authoritative and communicative in its discourse system.According to the research,although China's use of "positive evaluation" discourse strategy has positive diplomatic significance,it may affect the credibility of the government's voice due to insufficient dialectic,not to mention its failure to meet the international community's demand for "Chinese wisdom".Therefore,in addition to focusing on the discourse of official media,official spokespersons and documents,it is necessary for China to further carry out the top-level design of discourse system construction and adopt comprehensive measures to ensure that it can fully utilize the construction capacity of discourse power which is equal to its current status in the international community.In conclusion,based on critical cognitive discourse analysis approach and corpus linguistics,this dissertation makes a cognitive construal of different discourse subjects in different stages of China-US trade war in 2018.By utilizing the theories of construal operations contained in language strategies,this dissertation examines different meaning construction process evoked by different language strategies to make the audience more clearly recognize how the discourse subjects use discourse strategies to achieve their purposes.It also helps the audience better understand power relations and ideology during the practical discourse,and at the same time puts forward more feasible suggestions for China on its official discourse strategies in the next stages of the China-US trade war.