The Construction Of National Identity By National Discourse And Its Rhetorical Strategies

Within the national discourse system,it is increasingly hot to explore how actors use language to construct national identity.In addition,the construction of national identity is an indispensable part of the study of international relations.In recent years,under the general trend of interdisciplinary and applied research,academic circles at home and abroad,especially domestic scholars,have shown great enthusiasm to interpret social phenomena and participate in social management by combining theory with practice with a high sense of social responsibility.Especially in the current complex international situation,the research on the construction of national identity is not only a hot topic in the field of international politics,but also a growing trend among scholars in the field of discourse research.At present,on the whole,the discourse research on national identity has a wide range of contents and fruitful results,mainly covering the overall review of identity within the existing theoretical framework and the analysis of its construction process.It can be subdivided into functional class,policy class and relationship class.The theoretical perspective is mainly carried out in the framework of critical discourse analysis and pragmatic analysis,which provides valuable reference and reference for the study of this paper.At the same time,the existing research also has some problems.For example,research ideas are limited,and a theory is used to explain problems rather than interdisciplinary cross-research.There are also research methods that need to be broken.Traditional qualitative research cannot fully meet the needs of scientific research.Appropriate use of various corpus processing methods to conduct statistics and processing of information can effectively improve the objectivity and accuracy of research.In view of the research status in this field at home and abroad,this paper selects the discourses of national leaders within the category of national discourse,specifically taking the diplomatic speech of Chinese President Xi Jinping as the research object.One attempt is to analyze China's multi-national identity constructed by the discourse with the approach of corpus research.The second is to expand the scope of thinking through interdisciplinary research,using Kenneth Burke's new rhetoric theory as the main theoretical basis,supplemented by the social constructivism theory of international politics to construct a discourse analysis paradigm of national identity construction and its discourse rhetoric strategies.The research on national identity of national discourse has a wide perspective,and the paper mainly analyzes it from the macro and micro levels.In the macro analysis module,it relies on the motivation theory of Burke's dramatism rhetoric and the social constructivism theory of international politics.In terms of research methods,a hybrid research method combining corpus research,qualitative research and quantitative research is adopted to answer the "what is" and"why" questions of Chinese national identity on the whole.The study found that the discourse of President Xi Jinping's diplomatic speeches concretely constructs four national identities:China as an emerging power,the world's largest developing country,a responsible power and a civilized power with a long history and cultural tradition.Focusing on both domestic and international situations,the fundamental motivation of the construction of national identity in the discourse is on the one hand to safeguard China's own development interests,security and sovereign interests and cultural interests,and on the other hand,it is also a global spirit,striving to take into account the common interests of the world and among countries,and promoting the construction of a community with a shared future for mankind.In addition,the direct motive of the construction of national identity in the text is to make all parties of the international community,on the basis of reaching the concept of community of values and community of responsibility,take the community of action as the driving force,and put the concept of community of human destiny into action.In the micro analysis module,it specifically relies on the identical theory and abstract theory.of dramatist rhetoric to answer the question of "how about" of Chinese national identity in detail.In other words,in terms of structural arrangement,the thesis explores the internal discourse mechanism of national identity construction,namely rhetoric strategy,from the three levels of content identification,form identification and rhetoric identification.It is found that the content-identity strategy of China's national identity construction includes three realization paths:sympathetic identity,oppositional identity and unconscious identity.Accordingly,the form-identity strategy,which is complementary to content identity,is developed from three aspects:protocol form,repetition form and progressive form.In addition,within the same strategy of rhetoric,we find three main metaphorical figures of discourse that construct national identity,namely,architectural metaphor,personification metaphor and journey metaphor.In the field of international relations,the construction of national identity is never the result of self-talk,but the joint construction of internal and extternal structures.Among them,the inner structure can be regarded as the "self' construction of identity,and correspondingly,the outer structure is the "other" construction of identity.Therefore,although this paper explores the discourse strategy mechanism of Chinese state leaders' internal self-establishment of national identity based on western rhetoric,it does not ignore the external effects of self-establishment.According to the Global Survey Report on China's National Image 2019 released by the Institute of Contemporary China and the World,the results of the survey show a high degree of consistency with the conclusion on"what is China's national identity" discussed in the paper.This fully shows that the self-building effect of China's national identity has been widely recognized by others,and at the same time,it also provides a realistic justification for the legitimacy of this study.The innovation of this paper mainly includes the following four aspects:(1)in theory,the organic integration of western rhetoric and international political theory,so as to establish a new analysis model with interdisciplinary nature,which is beneficial to enrich the academic resources of political discourse research;(2)In terms of research methods,the mixed research paradigm is adopted,which breaks through the previous single method of conducting research in a single mode,and helps to change people's criticism of discourse research being too subjective,add concrete empirical support for the interpretation of political discourse,and enhance 'the reliability and validity of the research;(3)From the perspective of research,the focus of the research is changed from the traditional one-way persuasion to the two-way identification between the development and the audience.In the analysis of discourse,we focus on how the speaker rationally dispatchs the relevant rhetorical resources in the interaction with the audience to realize the effective construction of national identity;(4)In terms of research value,in the face of the new situation of the construction of the discourse system with Chinese characteristics,we made a breakthrough in choosing the diplomatic speeches of Xi Jinping,the President of China and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China,to make the research of this topic more distinctive with the characteristics of The Times and practical significance.This not only helps to enhance the internal national cohesion,but also helps to increase China's influence in the international community,improve China's voice in the international arena,and promote the construction of a new order of international discourse.