A Study On The Construction Of China‘s National Image In The Documentary From The Perspective Of Narratology

In recent years,with the rise of China,a group of foreign scholars have begun to study China images in the view of perceived.Generally,two different ?Chinese images? have been shaped through the view of ?perceived?: One is a negative image,?demonized? China;the other is an exaggerated positive image,?idealized? China.Similarly,the research on China‘s national image has become a hot research topic on the field of communication and linguistics in recent years in China.As for the study of China‘s national publicity films and documentaries,it has been gradually studied more and most of the researches have been made from the perspectives of multimode and communication.Relatively,there are few studies on China‘s national image in the documentary from other perspectives.Compared with some representative documentaries related with China in 21 st century,the television documentary China: Time of Xi,produced by Discovery Channel,truly and objectively represents China‘s national image.It provides us with a new narrative perspective and style to narrate stories,which is worthy of China‘s documentaries reference to building China‘s national image.Therefore,it is of great value to study this representative documentary.This thesis aims to analyze the narrative strategy of the documentary China: Time of Xi for shaping China‘s national image from three aspects of narrator and narrative perspective,narrative structure as well as narrative skills through the analysis of subtitles of three episodes videos and screenshots of this representative documentary,according to the narrative theory of the narratologists Gérard Genette,Mieke Bal and the research of domestic scholars.In this thesis,subtitles texts of three episodes videos were collected as a corpus,and by using the corpus retrieval software Word Smith to search the subtitles text of each episode video to find out the frequency of different personal pronouns in each episode,the nouns with higher frequency of each episode subtitles and the keywords of each episode subtitles,the data were classified and organised.The documentary is analyzed on the basis of data and sampled screenshots.Based on qualitative and quantitative analysis,this study yields the following findings:(1)Based on the related theories of narrator and narrative perspective,the frequency of different personal pronouns in each episode of video subtitles are summarized in the form of a table.In terms of narrators,three narrators: first person,second person and third person are involved in the documentary and the frequency of first person pronoun and third person pronoun are higher than the frequency of second person pronoun.As for the narrative perspective in the documentary,internal focalization and zero focalization are adopted in it through combining the characters of each story expressing their own feeling and thoughts with the comments and commentaries of three hosts as well as other experts and scholars.(2)Based on the related theories of narrative structure,through the analysis of the nouns with higher frequency of each episode subtitles and the keywords of each episode subtitles,in the aspect of narrative structure,this documentary mainly adopts the plate narrative structure,that is,parallel structural thinking and linear narrative structure,also called progressive structural thinking.(3)In the aspect of narrative skills,storytelling skill and audiovisual skill are employed in the documentary.First,with the help of storytelling skill,the theme can be deeply rooted in the hearts of the people through such process of expression.Second,in the aspect of audiovisual skills,the first is discourse skill,and when there needs transitions for changing the title and the topic of each episode,there usually appears President Xi‘s homochronous sound or voiceover on major decisions,and then a concrete and vivid example or story will be given and presented to well explain his political thoughts.In addition,the documentary uses rhetoric question and adds humor to attract the attention of the audience.The second is the skill of using image technology and the audio-visual elements are boldly used in the documentary,subtly adopting the three-dimensional animation to supplement the narration.By analyzing the narrator and narrative perspective,narrative structure as well as narrative skills of this documentary,the narrative strategy of the documentary for shaping China‘s national image will be studied to explore the unique path of Chinese documentaries‘ international communication,providing some suggestions for the future production of Chinese documentary,in order to better shape China‘s international image.