A Research On China's National Image Construction In Chinese State Leaders' Diplomatic Speeches-A Critical Discourse Perspective

In both domestic and foreign academia,research related to China's national image construction has long been conducted in the fields of communication and international relations.Although few linguistic scholars started to examine the discursive construction of China's national image from the perspective of critical discourse analysis(CDA),relevant studies are still in their infancy,which are confined to apply Fairclough's three-dimensional model and Halliday's Systematic-Functional Grammar to explore what and how China's national image is constructed in news discourses.Taking the limitations into account,the present study chooses Wodak's analytical framework for discourse-historical approach(DHA)as its analytical framework,and discursive strategies of DHA and intertextuality as its theoretical foundations to carry out a critical research on China's national image construction in political discourses.As a kind of political discourses,the state leaders' diplomatic speeches during state visits are not only efficient ways to propagate the political standpoint,development concept and ideology of a nation,but also key channels of constructing and uplifting its national image.President Xi Jinping is especially attentive to the pivotal role of diplomatic speeches in the international environment.What's more,Xi's speeches with his own style have been highly valued by the foreign public and mass media,making a profound impact on promoting China's international image.Via the official website of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China,this thesis has systematically collected President Xi Jinping's diplomatic speeches during state visits from March 14 th 2013 to December 31 st 2015 to form the corpus.With the aid of Wodak's analytical framework for DHA,the present study is dedicated to critically analyzing the discursive construction of China's national image in President Xi Jinping's speech discourses during state visits.Through analyzing the collected corpus at both micro-linguistic level and macro-context level,this research makes an attempt to answer the following three questions:(1)What national image is constructed in President Xi Jinping's diplomatic speech discourses during state visits?(2)How is China's national image constructed in these diplomatic speech discourses by means of discursive strategies of DHA and intertextuality?(3)What factors influence the discursive construction of China's national image? Specifically,at micro-level,assisted by corpus analytical tools,the author has conducted both quantitative and qualitative analysis of lexical choices,discursive strategies and intertextuality to answer the first two questions;at macro-level,the sociopolitical,historical and cultural factors influencing China's national image constructionhave been taken into consideration to answer the third question.Major findings achieved in this study will be presented as follows.Firstly,lexical choices in constructing China's national image.The interpretation of the distribution of lexical patterns and the exploration of clusters,collocation and concordance of some specific lexical items reveal that China's national image is constructed through President Xi Jinping's elaboration on four major themes: development,cooperation,people and peace.Focusing on these four themes,President Xi Jinping constructs China as a responsible rising power which sticks to peaceful and common development,enhances win-win cooperation,benefits the people and the whole world,and cherishes peace and stability.Secondly,discursive strategies in constructing China's national image.By means of the strategy of reference,the strategy of predication,the strategy of argumentation and their specific linguistic devices,the author probes into how such positive national image identified by lexical choices is constructed at lexical,syntactic and rhetorical levels.To be specific,at first,China is consciously categorized as the “in-group” of the international community by the strategy of reference which is realized by the personal pronoun in its specific syntactic structure,spatial reference,and metaphors.Then,the social actor China is labeled appreciatively by the strategy of predication whose linguistic devices are explicit predicate in its specific syntactic structure,a large number of comparative degree and superlative degree of adjectives and adverbs,and pervasive parallelism.China is constructed as a responsible “member state” of the international community in which China commits itself to fostering common progress,win-win cooperation,the well-being of the people and world peace and stability,making greater contribution to global economic growth.Finally,China's positive national image assigned by the strategy of predication is further justified by the strategy of argumentation which is achieved by seven topoi.Thirdly,intertextuality in constructing China's national image.Through the investigation of reference and quotation,the present paper examines how China's favorable national image is constructed at intertextual level.By virtue of referring to true stories,historical events and President Xi's personal experiences,such context in which China cultivates friendly relations and cooperative projects with other countries,benefits its people and respects diversity of civilizations is demonstrated.Apart from that,the citation of allusion,proverbs and sayings,the quotes by famous people and ordinary people,in the past or present,at home or abroad,depicts the situation in which China is a peace-cherishing and cooperative nation that seeks common prosperity and promotes inclusiveness for differences.Finally,macro-context analysis shows that the discursive construction of China's national image is not only strongly influenced by China's current sociopolitical reality,but also closely associated with the modern history of China and Chinese traditional culture.To sum up,research results suggest that President Xi Jinping constructs China's national image as a responsible rising power which values common development and win-win cooperation,benefits the people,and loves peace in his diplomatic speech discourses during state visits at four levels: lexical,syntactic,rhetorical and intertextual levels.In addition,China's favorable national image constructed by linguistic devices can be interpreted by the sociopolitical,historical and cultural contexts in which President Xi Jinping's diplomatic speeches are embedded.This research serves as a valuable reference for polishing China's international image and increasing the voice of China on the international stage.Furthermore,it can enrich the discussion on political discourses in the field of critical discourse analysis and provide a new vision for investigating China's national image construction.