Discourse Analysis Of Premier Li Keqiang’s Answers To The Press From The Perspective Of Speech Act Theory

On the morning of March 4th 2015, after the closing meeting of the 3rd Session of the 12 th National People’s Congress, a press conference was held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. At the conference, Chinese Premier, Li Keqiang answered the questions put forward by domestic and foreign journalists. His remarks at the press conference played a very important role in delivering the information of major issues concerned by people at home and abroad, strengthening the friendly relation as well as promoting the mutual understanding between China and other countries. And also his remarks at the conference aroused concern and research of many people including experts, scholars, and linguists. They made the researches on the remarks of Premier Li’s answers to the press from different perspectives to explore Premier Li’s speech acts, language art and personality charm.Premier Li is knowledgeable with high social status and peculiar governing styles which are closely related to his speech acts. The author chooses to apply speech act theory(SAT) to conduct the analysis on the remarks of Premier Li’s answers to the press. SAT means that an utterance that the speaker issues understood by the hearer under certain circumstances can be considered as performing an action for the speaker. The utterances of Premier Li’s answers to the press on the morning of March 4th 2015 at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing represent Premier Li’s different speech acts. Therefore, applying SAT to explore Premier Li’s remarks at the press conference can reveal Premier Li’s speech act categories, linguistic features and governing styles. SAT can provide the researchers with a new perspective and insight to give a full, comprehensive interpretation about the nature, the purpose, and the process of linguistic communication. SAT can provide a way to appraise Premier Li’s remarks from various aspects including accuracy, rationality, and appropriateness.The thesis takes 83 utterances the author collected from Premier Li Keqiang’s answers to the press on the 4th March 2015 at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing as research subject.The thesis makes an analysis on the remarks of Premier Li’s answers to the press at the press conference from the perspective of SAT including alternative three-act distinction,classification of illocutionary speech acts and indirect speech act. The thesis is mainly a qualitative data analysis, and the data are collected from the online source(www. gov.cn).Through the analysis by applying speech act theory, the thesis has had the following findings regarding Premier Li’s linguistic features at the press conference. a) Premier Li expressed his remarks mainly in an explicit and direct way. And his direct utterances are moreand indirect utterances are less. b) In most cases, at first, Premier Li asserted his ideas clearly;then he made serious explanations by analyzing the positive and negative factors influencing the present situation of a series of problems; finally he presented some important national policies and measures to make people have a full belief in what he said. c) Premier Li’s expressions are clear, definite, and concrete, and his way of expression makes people have an easy understanding of the meaning of his utterances. d) The remarks are organized well in a proper way, and logical providing people with the full, complete, and comprehensive information. e) The words of the remarks are simple and plain while the connotation of the remarks is rich and deep. f) The remarks are practical and persuasive, leaving the journalists a deep impression, and gaining people’s support and acceptance.Based on the above analysis, we can also see Premier Li’s governing styles: 1) Act strictly in accordance with the law. 2) Step up the efforts to accelerate the reform. 3) Solve a series of problems including poor people’s livelihood and housing problems to promote the harmonious development among people. 4) Strengthen friendly relation, cultural exchanges, and business cooperation between the mainland and Hong Kong or Taiwan.In comparison with the current other researches on answers to the press, the research has its own particular innovative points:(1) The thesis makes an analysis on Premier Li’s remarks at the press conference under the theoretical framework of SAT. SAT provides a new perspective to make the research on press conference language. However, most current researchers make the researches on the remarks of answers to the press from the perspective of the relevance theory, the adaptation theory, the cooperative principle and the politeness principle. There is fewer research on the remarks of Premier Li’ answers to the press from the perspective of SAT.(2) The research has important theoretical and practical implications such as making SAT have a wider range of application, exploring Premier Li’s speech acts, summing up the characteristics of Premier Li’s remarks, knowing Premier Li’s governing styles and offering a reference and an analytic pattern for those who make further exploration and research on the spokesman’s remarks at the press conference.(3) Adopting a qualitative analytic method, the research is concerned with speech acts of Premier Li’s answers to the press and linguistic features at the press conference with an aim to explore Premier Li’s governing style.