Engagement Resources In Diplomatic Discourse:with Reference To Remarks By Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi At Press Conferences

Diplomatic language is used in the press conference on China’s foreign policy and its external relations, with the purpose of expressing China’s stance, interpreting and explaining China’s foreign policy, making other countries understand and accept our foreign policy, and finally establish good relationships with foreign countries.Engagement system is put forward by Martin and White as a sub-system of appraisal theory. White points out that a verbal communication, whether written or spoken, is dialogic, because to speak or write always involves responding to what has been said or written before and simultaneously anticipating the responses of actual, potential or imagined listeners. Through the engagement system, the speakers open up or close down dialogic space for putative listeners, trying to align the listener and keep solidarity with them. This study applies the engagement system to analyze diplomatic discourse by Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on China’s foreign policy and its external relations, with an aim to investigate how the foreign minister uses engagement resources to open and contract negotiation space with the audience, so that he can build up solidarity to align the audience to his side. Through both quantitative and qualitative methods, it is found that the diplomatic discourse in the press conference is dialogic and full of engagement resources. The foreign minister uses entertainment and attribution to expand dialogic spaces while he uses disclaim and proclaim to contract space for negotiation, and the use of applied dialogic expend is more than dialogic contract in his remarks. However, these four kinds of heteroglossic engagement resources do not function separately, instead, they integrate with each other to achieve ultimate effects. By using different engagement resources together, the foreign minister achieves the goal of alignment and persuasion.Through the engagement system, the foreign minister also eliminates the misunderstanding that the outside world may hold towards China, advocates efficiently the diplomatic ideas of China, and provides a chance for foreign countries to have a better understanding of China’s foreign policies; hence they can accept it and keep alignment with China.