Pragmatic Strategies And The Realization Of Intention In Diplomatic Discourse

The diplomacy is the activities between countries. The diplomatic language is the language carrier used to embody a country's foreign polices and defend its own interest. Through the authorized Foreign Ministry press conference, the spokesmen can accurately express their country's polices and standpoints. The pragmatic strategies they adopt, the achievement of intention and the interrelationship between them are worth our consideration.This thesis conducts an empirical research about pragmatic strategies in diplomatic discourse and the realization of intention. All the data are collected from the website of PRC Foreign Ministry during September 2009 to September 2010 including 86 pieces spokesman's remarks and 17 video clips. This article randomly chooses 43 pieces to conduct the research. Firstly, it clarifies the differences between primary and secondary intention, implicit and explicit intention in diplomatic discourse. The intention in the same discourse can be intended as compound or single one which may cooperate or conflict with each other. Meanwhile, the interpretation of intention is also affected by para-linguistic factors. Moreover, semantic extension, semantic upgrading and semantic degrading are the commonly used rhetorical devices during the interpretation of intention.This paper focuses on the questioning strategies from reporters and answering strategies from spokesmen. Spokesmen's strategies can be divided into offering and avoiding strategies, direct and indirect strategies. Among the indirect avoiding strategies, shifting the focus, vague answers, "Ti pi qiu" strategy1 and adjustment of answering orders are commonly used. Within the quantitative analysis of 43 pieces, nearly 1,000 pairs of questions and answers, we get the conclusion that the distribution of avoiding strategies used in press conference is unequal. Spokesmen prefer indirect avoiding strategies. Shifting the focus and vague answers are the main indirect avoiding offering strategies in the proportion of approximately 50% and 40%. This thesis aims to reveal the relationship between intention and pragmatic strategies in diplomatic discourse. I hope that it can provide some inspirations to the later study of intention in specific fields.