A Critical Analysis Of The Discourse Of The Chinese Cultural Revolution

The Chinese Cultural Revolution, known as the "ten-year chaos", which lasted 10years, not only brought severe disasters to both the nation and the people but also hadmany negative impacts on every aspect of the Chinese society: the economy stagnated;schools closed down; government sectors fell into disorders; the traditional Chineseculture was discarded; numerous families broke up; innocent people were accused ofcertain crimes on groundless and fabricated evidence and some were even ruthlesslytortured to death. For those who personally witnessed this bitter calamity, the CR willalways be a painful experience they want to forget. That's why during the last 10 to 20years, the number of publications on the CR has been decreasing. And now thirty yearsafter the CR, it seems that the young generation born after the end of the CR do not havemuch knowledge about such a rare history that has once left a cauterizing wound on theminds of their elders. As the saying goes, history is the best teacher and it again seemshighly necessary for us to take a closer look at the CR so that the old as well as the youngcan learn something from it to make sure that similar chaos and disasters will never occuragain. This paper is a try in this direction.This paper will mainly focus on the analysis of the CR discourse. By adopting theapproach of the Critical Discourse Analysis proposed by Norman Fairclough, this paperwill firstly analyze the textual features of the CR discourse and then reveal the underlyingrelationship between the CR discourse, power and ideology. Finally, a multi-dimensionalperspective on the CR discourse will be taken. The purpose of such a critical analysis is toraise the critical awareness of the people in the respect of discourse, so that our view oflanguage and discourse will empower us to change some of their aspects andconsequently in a more democratic direction, to change some social and political practicesof the Chinese society.