A Study Of Discursive Strategies In The Governance Of China Based On Construal Operations

Political discourse represents the stance and attitude of a nation or an institution and it is related to the image of the nation or institution.Particularly,speeches given by national leaders,as a typical form of political discourse,which have always been the focus in political discourse studies,enable readers to have a better understanding of policies,political purposes,and governing ideas of leaders.So far,political discourse has been discussed from the perspectives of rhetoric,Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA),functional linguistics and cognitive linguistics.Although cognition,as a component of discourse analysis,appears to attract more attention from discourse analysts,the theories of cognitive linguistics have so far hardly been applied to the analysis of discursive strategies in Chinese Political Discourse(CPD)in a systematic way.Political discourse analysis not only analyzes political language,but more importantly,it also gives due attention to the cognitive thinking process underlying language usage.And discourse space is constructed at the cognitive level in political discourse so as to express ideas and values for the ultimate purpose of persuading the addressees.The purpose of persuasion is effected via discursive strategies in political discourse,which are employed by politicians to legitimize their political views and ultimately help the addressees to understand and accept their political ideas.The analysis of discursive strategies from cognitive linguistics perspective serves as a method for examining the cognitive mechanisms underlying discursive strategies.It should be noted that the newly-built cognition-oriented theory of construal operations aims to deal with the construal process of political discourse,explaining the regularity of discursive strategies,thus providing a new and systematic approach to political discourse research.Xi Jinping: The Governance of China(I and II)(hereinafter referred to as The Governance of China),a typical form of CPD,witnesses an increasing attention from the academic circle.However,previous studies on The Governance of China are mainly carried out in the areas of politics and mass communication,lacking in-depth research from the perspective of linguistics.In view of that,this study,by making a tentative revision of the theoretical framework of construal operations proposed by Hart(2014a,2014b),attempts to explore the relation between discursive strategies of CPD and cognitive mechanisms from the cognitive linguistics perspective based on instances and data taken from the Chinese version of The Governance of China.The major findings of this study are as follows: Firstly,structural configuration,framing,identification and positioning proposed by Hart are all strategies employed by President Xi in his speeches,and those strategies can be respectively accounted for via schematization,framingmetaphor,metonymy,viewing frame and proximization.Secondly,with the above strategies,President Xi not only unifies the Chinese people and encourages them to pursue the Chinese Dream,but he also constructs,to the outside world,the image of China as a major responsible country that is committed to inclusiveness and openness,peaceful development,cooperation and win-win progress.And lastly,the revised theoretical framework of construal operations provides a systematic and coherent analytical framework for analyzing discursive strategies in CPD,serving as a beneficial supplement to cognitive linguistics approach to political discourse.The academic contribution of this study lies principally in the following two aspects: Firstly,the research scope of construal operations theory is expanded via its application to the analysis of CPD;and secondly,this study validates the feasibility of applying the revised theoretical framework of construal operations to the account of discursive strategies in CPD,which adds to the in-depth research on CPD.