A Study On Politeness Strategies For National Identity Construction

As political diplomatic discourse, the press conference discourse is a hotspot in critical discourse analysis (CDA). However, research on national identity construction with press conference discourse is rare. With Fairclough’s Three-dimensional Conception of Discourse as its theoretical framework and Brown&Levinson’s Politeness Strategy Theory as the textual level analytical tool, the present study carries out a quantitative and qualitative study on the National People’s Congress (NPC) press conference discourse for the first session of the twelfth NPC by Fu Ying, the first spokeswoman of NPC, to discuss three questions as follows:(1) What are the features characteristic of the employment of politeness strategies by Fu Ying in the2013NPC press conference?(2) What national identity has been constructed through these salient politeness strategies?(3) What are the possible causes for her adoption of these politeness strategies in national identity construction?Data analysis reveals that the spokeswoman Fu Ying mainly employs seven kinds of politeness strategies, i.e. the four positive politeness strategies "Give gifts to H","Include both S and H","Be optimistic" and "Notice, attend to H" taking up23.22%,20.54%,13.39%and9.82%among all the positive politeness strategies employed in the data; the negative politeness strategy "Questions and hedges" with a high frequency of56%among all the negative politeness strategies employed; and the two off-record strategies "Presuppose" and "Be vague" amounting to24.07%and18.52%respectively of all the off-record strategies employed.With the employment of these salient politeness strategies, three kinds of national identities have been constructed. Through the use of the positive politeness strategy "Give gifts to H" in diplomatic interaction, the spokeswoman constructs China’s general identity as a developing country with sincerity and humility for worldwide communication and cooperation. As to China’s domestic identity construction, the spokeswoman mainly employs three salient positive politeness strategies "Include both S and H","Be optimistic" and "Notice, attend to H" to construct China’s domestic identity as the people-based central leadership showing intimacy with and affinity for the Chinese public in those domestic political, economic and environmental issues like anti-corruption legislation, government budget and environmental management. In terms of China’s foreign identity construction, through resorting mostly to the negative politeness strategy "Questions and hedges", the positive politeness strategy "Be optimistic" and the two off-record strategies "Be vague" and "Presuppose", China is constructed as a responsible emerging power showing a mixture of toughness and softness when faced with some diplomacy issues concerning basic national interest.The possible causes for her adoption of these politeness strategies in national identity construction can be primarily explained from the institutional interest of the Chinese NPC to present the image of China properly to the world, the foreign and domestic situations at the present time that require a mixed national identity of toughness and softness, and a societal consideration that includes culture and ideological values.