Research On The Construction Of National Identity In President Xi Jinping's New Year Addresses From The Perspective Of CDA

In recent years,the Chinese President delivers the New Year address on the occasion of the New Year to communicate information related to the country‘s present state,show attitudes and consolidate relationships with the public.The increasing international status of China has made New Year speeches increasingly important and has received more attention from countries around the world.As a kind of public language,the New Year speeches are used as a means of communicating with the public,which is one of the significant ways for China‘s president to convey national attitudes to the public all over the world and construct China‘s national identity.In this research,the data were selected from the New Year addresses(2014-2019)delivered by Chinese President Xi Jinping.The source of the corpus is reliable,all of which come from the official website for China Global Television Network.And from the perspective of CDA,the study uses a combination of discourse-historical approach and intertextuality to establish a comprehensive analytical framework that explains and answers ?what kind of national identity is constructed through President Xi‘s speeches?,?how national identity is constructed? and ?why such China‘s national identity is constructed?.Through research and analysis,the following findings are obtained.From the perspective of lexical choice,it is found that President Xi has constructed China‘s identity as a responsible rising power,which adheres to peaceful and common development,emphasizes the benefit of the people and the world,and loves peace and stability around the three themes of development,people and peace.In terms of discursive strategies,nomination strategy is realized by analyzing metaphor,space reference,and personal pronouns in its specific syntactic patterns.Social actor,China,is consciously categorized into ?in-group? of the community with a shared future.Predication strategy is realized by explicit predicates in its specific syntactic structure and forms of comparative and superlative degree.China is labeled as a responsible nation through the action of committing itself to promoting well-being of the people,common development,and world peace.China‘s positive national identity assigned by predication strategy is further justified by argumentation strategy which is achieved by five topoi.And the analysis of the intertextuality can explain how China‘s positive national identity is constructed at the intertextual level.The combination of real stories,historical events,and personal experience of President Xi,shows that China is a country that constructs friendly relations and cooperation with other countries to benefit the people.On the other hand,the use of allusions,proverbs,and sayings portrays that China is a country that advocates peace and seeks common development.Finally,the macro-context analysis shows that China‘s national identity construction is influenced by China‘s current sociopolitical reality,modern history and traditional culture.In summary,this study analyzes the New Year addresses from the perspectives of lexicon,discourse strategies and intertextuality.It is found that President Xi constructs China as a people-oriented,development-oriented and peace-loving country.And the impact of sociopolitical,historical,and cultural factors from the macro-context on identity construction has been confirmed.This study serves a practical value for the studies on China‘s international image and discourse power improvement.