A Study Of The Discursive Construction Of China's National Image In The Cases Of President Xi Jinping's Political Discourse On "A Community Of Shared Future For Mankind" From The Perspective Of Transitivity

In the time of peace and development as the mainstream,the national image has become an important factor in the competition of comprehensive national power among countries.Scholars of international relations,international communication and linguistics have paid extensive attention to it and studied from various perspectives.Linguists mainly study the other-construction and self-construction of national image with news,speech discourses and other language materials.Many overseas scholars study the China's national image by diachronic methods through combing the westerners' view of China in a certain period and to investigate the image of China in the minds of the public through sociological methods.In domestic studies,scholars mainly focus on revealing the foreign media's distorted construction of China's national image.There are few scholars applying the linguistic theories to the selfconstruction of China's national image.After proposing A Community of Shared Future for Mankind,President Xi has delivered relevant political discourses on multiple occasions,which provides corpus support for the study of national image selfconstruction.This research selects 20 political discourses(49,634 words)related to A Community of Shared Future for Mankind,which are published by President Xi on the official website of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China,the official website of China Daily,and THE GOVERNANCE OF CHINA,as research material.Employing transitivity system as the theoretical foundation,the thesis studies on the transitivity participants and their processes by quantitative and qualitative methods,aiming at answering the following three questions:(i)What is the distribution of the transitivity participants and processes in Xi Jinping's political discourses related to “A Community of Shared Future for Mankind”?(ii)What is the realization of the transitivity participants and processes in Xi Jinping's political discourses related to “A Community of Shared Future for Mankind”?(iii)How do these political discourses construct China's national image as The Builder of World Peace,The Contributor to Global Development,and The Defender of the International Order through transitivity system?The main findings of this study are summarized as follows:(1)In these political discourses,the transitivity participants include material participant(59.02%),relational participant(22.00%),mental participant(8.48%),behavioral participant(6.22%),verbal participant(2.11%)and existential participant(2.01%);Transitivity processes include material process(61.38%),relational process(18.19%),mental process(9.97%),behavioral process(6.35%),verbal process(2.01%)and existential process(1.83%).The high-frequency use of material process and relational process is to enhance the objectivity and accuracy of the content of discourse statement;the low-frequency use of mental process,verbal process,and behavioral process is to arouse the audience's emotional resonance and shorten the distance with audiences;Some existential processes are also used at low frequency in the text in order to emphasize a certain actual situation and attract the audience's attention.(2)The realization of transitivity participant reflects the theme of the discourse.Through the whole selected discourses,the high-frequency words of material participant,relational participant,and existential participant,like nuclear security and friendship,reflects the theme of the Builder of World Peace;the high-frequency words of material participant,mental participant and behavioral participant,like development and our efforts,reflects the theme of the Contributor of World Development;the high-frequency words of relational participant,mental participant and verbal participant,like economic globalization and openness,reflects the Defender of World Peace.(3)In the process of constructing the national image of the Builder of World Peace,the Contributor of World Development,the Defender of World Peace,President Xi mainly uses material clauses to objectively represent the achievement of the Reform and Opening-up policy in the past 40 years and China's current contribution to the world,uses relational clauses to explain the One Belt One Road Initiative and other Chinese programs for world development for defending world order,uses mental clauses,verbal clauses and existential clauses to represent China's desire for peace and our willingness to maintain world peace with other countries.Based on the above findings,this study reveals the feasibility of transitivity in the construction of China's national image.In addition,the analysis of China's image will provide some enlightenments for the writing of English news in foreign communication.At the same time,the research limitations and suggestions for the further research are also illustrated.