A Critical Study Of White Papers Of China’s Human Rights

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) which emerged in the 1970s has achieved vast development and improvement, especially in the latest decade. Founded on Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), it is to conceptualize a variety of issues connected with language use in society and aim at uncovering power relations and ideological construction implied in texts and discourses. Since its emergence, CDA has been applied to a variety of types of discourses, such as institutional discourse, mass media discourse and political discourse, and has achieved great fruits. Especially currently, a large number of political discourses have been researched to unveil the government’s attitudes and stance towards some problems. Therefore, from the critical perspective, this study is intended to adopt latest five white papers of China’s human rights as data. The objectives of the research are to reveal power relations in the white papers, to unveil the ideological implications and to analyze whether the white papers help to construct new social practices.The thesis, from the critical perspective, is designed to use Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework combined with van Dijk’s socio-cognitive theory and Wodak’s discourse-historical view as theoretical framework to deal with the following three questions:1) By what means in the white papers of China’s human rights does the Chinese government exercise and maintain its power?2) How are ideological implications embedded in the white papers of China’s human rights?3) Do the white papers of China’s human rights construct new social practices?Through a critical study on the latest five white papers of China’s human rights, conclusions are made as follows:1) In the white papers, the government uses high standardization of expressions and intentional material processes to maintain its power. Besides, it employs more clauses of declarative mood to inform people of the government’s firm determination and strong capability in protecting human rights. By the technologization, democratic relationship is sustained and a harmonious atmosphere between the power groups and the people is created, which in turn forms another way to strengthen its power.2) People-oriented ideological implications are embedded via vague language and marked themes. Schematic structures that are constituted by different levels of topics show the hierarchically cognitive ideology.3) The white papers can guide the masses to participate in practices of human rights protection, thus helping to construct new social practices. New social practices are constructed that effective policies are supported and innovative measures are made to better preserve China’s human rights.The study is meaningful in two aspects. On one hand, CDA can be recontextualized into Chinese context to adjust to Chinese discourse. In this sense, the study extends CDA research to Chinese discourse and enriches the analytical methods of CDA. On the other hand, the study helps to raise people’s critical awareness of Chinese political discourse.