A Critical Contrastive Study Of The Construction Of National Identities In Beijing And London Olympic Discourses

This thesis makes a critical study of the construction of national identity inBeijing and London Olympic discourses by applying the Discourse-HistoricalApproach with case study and contrastive analysis methods. It aims at discovering theroles of discursive strategies in the construction of national identities and making acontrast between the discursive strategies and explores the reasons so as to help thereaders have a better understanding of the Olympic discourses.Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) emphasizes five types of discursivestrategies. In accordance with the features of the data, the employed strategies mainlyinvolve the strategy of predication, the strategy of perspectivation and the strategy ofargumentation in data analysis. As for the strategy of argumentation, the topoi mainlyinclude the topos of usefulness, the topos of numbers, the topos of definition, thetopos of history and the topos of culture.This thesis includes three types of data, that is, candidates’ presentations ofBeijing and London Olympics, news reports by China Daily on Beijing Olympicopening ceremony and that of BBC on London Olympic opening ceremony as well asOlympic volunteers’ narratives. Three types of genres, namely, speeches, news reportsand narratives, are covered to analyze the construction of national identities of the twocountries, representing the views from the government, the media and the individuals.The author selects40extracts to conduct a qualitative study, analyzing the discursivestrategies adopted in dealing with the same topic and making a contrast between thediscursive strategies in Beijing and London Olympic discourses and then explore thereasons.Through a detailed analysis, the author finds out that when referring to the sametopic, different discursive strategies are employed. For instance, He Zhenliang’sspeech employs prepositional phrases to demonstrate the historical meaning ofholding the Olympics both for China and for the world whereas Tessa Jowell adoptsadjectives and parallelism to emphasize the significance for the young generations. In the news reports of Olympic opening ceremonies, China Daily focuses on using thetopos of numbers, the topos of definition and the topos of culture to demonstrate theChinese image of being ancient and full of modern charm. Nevertheless, BBC adoptsthe topos of history to show that Britain once as a “never-sunset” empire will stillinfluence the world in the future. In addition, BBC makes a comparison between theopening ceremonies in Beijing and London to emphasize the excellence of its openingceremony. As for the narratives of Olympic volunteers, the Chinese volunteers tend touse explicit predicates, adjectives and adverbs to construct the hospitable and unitedChinese image. In contrast, the London Olympic volunteers use the adverbial of time,the comparative degree of adjectives and subject clauses to show the London image ofbeing a multicultural metropolis.This thesis bears some practical significance. Firstly, as for foreign languageteaching, teachers are expected to teach discursive strategies to their students in orderto improve their skills in English writing. In CET-4or CET-6, different discursivestrategies can be taught to enhance the students’ flexibility in writing. Secondly, it isconductive to improve students’ intercultural communication competence and dailycommunication skills. The students can choose appropriate discursive strategies toachieve the ideal effect in communication according to their communicative purposes.Thirdly, the present study can help to cultivate the critical awareness of students,improving their skills in critical reading. When reading British and Americannewspapers, the students can interpret the ideology hidden in the news discourses byusing discursive strategies effectively.