Discourse-historical Analysis Of The Country Reports On Human Rights Practices Of China In 2012

The annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices are official documents on the human right conditions in about 190 countries and regions including China,published by the United States Congress and submitted by the United States Department of State.The Country Reports on Human Rights Practices carry on American values and foreign strategies.With the "impartial" words,the government hides their opinion and ideology by discursive strategies,and employ the human rights as their tool to achieve their own interest and diplomatic strategies.Discourse-Historical Approach,put forward by Ruth Wodak and other scholars in analyzing the event of Austrian anti-Jewish,is one of the approaches of Critical Discourse Analysis.This approach lays stress on analyzing and interpreting discourse within various of historical contexts to find out the relationship among discourse,power and ideology and expose the implications beyond the literal words.With the Discourse-Historical Approach,Ruth Wodak sums up and distinguishes the five discursive strategies:strategy of referential or nomination,strategy of predication,strategy of argumentation,strategy of perspectivization and strategy of intensification or mitigation.Based on Ruth Wodak's Discourse-Historical Approach and the features of the research data,this thesis tries to analyze the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices of China in 2012 from respective five strategies.It aims to explore how to employ the discursive strategies in the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices of China in 2012 and its final language effects,and helps the readers to make a better understanding of the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices of China in 2012.The main findings indicate that the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices of China in 2012 applies the discursive strategies to cover its subjective misunderstanding of human rights in China.In terms of the strategy of referential,the REPORT employs personal reference,indefinite pronoun,metaphor and other rhetorical devises in order to build an image of indifferent and apathetic government.In light of the strategy of argumentation,the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices of China in 2012 makes use of the topoi of number,history,culture,responsibility and humanitarianism to attack human rights conditions in China.Within the strategy of predication,the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices of China in 2012 describes Chinese human rights condition with the negative traits in the expressions,and China is labelled as a negative image.Through the strategy of perspectivization,the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices of China in 2012 uses subjunctive mood,the present perfect tense and words with negative sense,which turns China into a country without responsibility and human rights.By the strategy of intensification,the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices of China in 2012 utilizes devices such as frequency adverbs,prepositional phrase,repetition and passive voice to smear the human rights in China.At the same time,the relation among discourse,power and ideology can be found out through uncovering its historical origins,because the formulation of Country Reports on Human Rights Practices possess its deep historical and social root.