Analysis On The Characteristics Of Conflict Discourses In Diplomatic Chinese For Second Language Teaching

Nowadays,numerous foreign envoys and diplomats begin to learn Chinese,which leads to the importance of diplomatic Chinese teaching become more and more important.However,the development of diplomatic Chinese teaching in China is quite slow,mainly manifested in the few types,quantity,and timeliness of special textbooks for diplomatic Chinese.In addition,the relevant studies on diplomatic Chinese are scarce which cannot provide the necessary theoretical and academic support for diplomatic Chinese teaching.As a result,this paper takes the regular press conference of China Ministry of Foreign Affairs,a typical diplomatic spoken scene,as an example.Based on the "conflict discourse"theory,455 pairs of conflict discourses from the press conference for the past three years are selected to make a small corpus of about 100,000 words.Based on "discourse analysis"and "quantitative statistical method",this paper conduct quantitative research on "question"and "response" respectively,to analyze the common vocabulary,sentence structure as well as the structure of conflicting discourse in diplomatic Chinese,which aims to provide support for the second language teaching and relevant textbooks writing.Based on the methods above,the research finds that:1.There are five structures to originate conflict discourses in diplomatic Chinese:direct,expounding,reporting,imperative and hypothetical.Among them,the direct,expounding and reporting are the commonly used forms to give rise to conflict discourses which accounts for 96%in total.2.There are four categories of conflict discourses in diplomatic Chinese.namely,sensitive international affairs(account for 17%),involving national interests(49%),beyond the answer domain(22%)and intentional dilemma(12%).3.The response strategies can be divided into "direct strategies" and "indirect strategies" while the response structure can be summarized into nine types:imperative expression,positions statement,negative evaluation,clarification of facts,etc.4.Both "question" and "answer" of conflicting discourse in diplomatic Chinese have specific language features.5.What determines whether the question is a conflicting discourse is the "content" of the question,in other words,the category of question.6.Facing different types of conflict discourses,the spokesperson has specific preferences on response strategies and structures.This study also produced some materials to support the teaching of diplomatic Chinese and the compilation of textbooks,namely,list of symbolic words and commonly used structures of conflict discourses in diplomatic Chinese,list of commonly used idioms of conflict discourses in diplomatic Chinese,list of commonly used colloquialisms of conflict discourses in diplomatic Chinese and vocabulary list o f commonly used words of conflict discourses in diplomatic Chinese.On the basis of the research findings,this paper puts forward suggestions on the teaching and textbooks writing of diplomatic Chinese.On textbooks writing:Firstly,diplomatic Chinese textbooks are more suitable for L2 learners at the intermediate and advanced levels.Secondly,it is supposed to innovate the concept of diplomatic Chinese textbooks writing,specifically with scenarios or topics as the outline and focusing on language usage.Thirdly,textbooks making should refer to the professional vocabulary syllabus.Fourthly,it is vital to pay attention to the compilation of lexical structure.On teaching:Firstly,it is necessary to strengthen the research on diplomatic Chinese to provide theoretical support for diplomatic Chinese teaching.Secondly,spoken diplomatic Chinese teaching should focus on important sentence patterns and specific structures.Thirdly,value the importance of common language knowledge as well as Chinese communicative culture.