A Study On Xi Jinping’s Governance Concepts Reflected In Chinese Political Discourse In The Light Of Argumentation Theory

As a product of political system,political discourse has become the focus of language research.As an important part of Chinese political discourse,political discourse of General Secretary Xi Jinping expresses his unique political views and governance concepts,attracting the attention of numerous scholars.At present,the studies on political discourse mainly concentrate on critical discourse analysis and cognitive analysis.There are few researches based on the argumentation theory proposed by Fairclough and Fairclough(2012).As the latest development of political discourse analysis,argumentation theory holds that the essence of political discourse is practical argumentation,that is,the process in which the discourse subject demonstrates the rationality of a particular political behavior and decision for a certain goal.Through this argumentation process,it is helpful to clarify the goal,the circumstance and the values held by the discourse subject,so as to specifically analyze the governance concepts embodied in the discourse.This study mainly includes following questions:(1)What are the key keywords and their collocates that reflect Keyness in political discourse?(2)What are the main aspects of Xi Jinping’s governance concepts in political discourse?(3)How does Xi Jinping’s governance concepts reflect in political discourse in terms of argumentation theory?This research adopts the research method of combining quantitative and qualitative analysis,and analyzes 319 political discourses from 2012 to 2019 with the help of Wordsmith 5.0 corpus tool,including the speeches in books Xi Jinping: the Governance of China I,Xi Jinping: the Governance of China II and http: //jhsjk.people.cn/.The quantitative analysis includes the text processing with the help of corpus software,the retrieval of keywords with the Keyness,which is the criterion to judge whether words have significant meaning in the observed texts,and further retrieving the key keywords and their collocates.The judgment is based on whether the word has abnormal frequency as the keyword in a series of single texts,and the specific criteria are the number of recurrence texts(generally set as≥2)and the frequency of the word in a single text(generally set as≥5).The qualitative analysis includes the further classification of the key keywords according to their meaning and the extraction of the aspects that embody the governance concepts in combination with the text.Combining with the social context and argumentation theory,it further analyzes how Xi Jinping’s governance concepts is reflected in the political discourse.The findings are as follows.Firstly,the corpus tools are used to extract keywords with Keyness.Furthermore,a total of 81 key keywords were extracted,such as “development”,“people”,etc.Then the collocates of the key keywords are extracted through Concordance.For example,the collocates of the key keywords “development” are “economy”,“society” and so on.Secondly,according to the classification analysis by the meaning of the key keywords,the author found that they can be divided into four categories.One is the verbs of concrete action,like “insist”,“build”,etc.The second type is the degree required to carry out the action,like “reinforce”,“deepen”,etc.The third type is the words that presents the abstract political meaning,like “-ism”,“great”,etc.The last category is the concrete aspects,including “society”,“reform”,etc.By further combining the texts,it is found that all aspects in fourth type constitute a closely connected and coordinated governance system,for example,social development cannot be separated from economic development.Among all aspects,the four aspects with a high recurrence number(≥10)are “society”,“reform”,“economy” and “ecology”.Because the comprehensive development of the society covers many other aspects,reform is the most distinctive part in Chinese development,economy is the foundation of national construction,and ecology is the most urgent problem to be solved.Therefore,this thesis takes these four aspects as examples for analysis.Thirdly,by combining the key discourse determined by the key keywords and their collocates with the social context,and further identifying the relationship between the argumentation premises and the claims,it is found that in the social aspect,discourse revolves around the general task,values,areas of concern and specific actions of social development.In the circumstance of the “new era”,value premise is “socialist core values”,for the realization of communism and achieve the goal premise of “Two Century Goals”,the means-goal is “a comprehensive framework for promoting the rule of law”,“to strengthen Party self-discipline”,“poverty alleviation”,etc.,and they are the necessary condition to achieve the goal.It embodies Xi Jinping’s concept of “putting people first” and pursuing common prosperity.Part of the first centenary goal in the text is changed from “prosperous,strong,democratic,culturally advanced and harmonious” to “prosperous,strong,democratic,culturally advanced,harmonious and beautiful”,which reflects the governance concepts that pays attention to ecological environment.Its argumentation process logic is close,the language is plain,the political proposition is reasonable and the acceptability is strong.In reform aspect,the discourse focuses on specific areas,target tasks,and specific actions.The circumstance and value are consistent with the social aspect.The goal premise is to put “reform and opening up” to develop in depth and “comprehensively deepen the reform”.The means-goal is multidisciplinary system reform and strengthen the army.Among them,the innovation system reform is the most significant in the text,showing that Xi Jinping,on the basis of predecessors’ ruling concepts,innovates in accordance with the new era.In the text,he advocated multi-faceted and all-round reform,which was consistent with the goal premise,and had close logic,reflecting that he practically solved the problems in the process of reform,and carried out reform in all aspects of national governance,social development and people’s daily life.The discourse on economy focuses on the economic development goal,the current economic system,the economic development ways and the development process.The goal is to achieve economic development and ultimately achieve socialist modernization.On the basis of value premise “new development” concept,and under the circumstance of economic globalization,the means-goal is to build the “One Belt And One Road”,etc.which is the necessary condition for realizing the goal,and embodies the concept of building an open economy,and the concept of high-quality and green development.In terms of ecology,the discourse focuses on the goals,concerns,progress and specific actions of ecological construction.The goal premise is to achieve ecological civilization and create a good ecological environment,the value premise is the concept of “lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”,the circumstance is the “new era”,and the means-goal is to implement major ecological restoration projects,etc.The logic of the whole argumentation process is close,which reflects the concept of harmonious coexistence between man and nature.This study applies Fairclough and Fairclough’s argumentation theory to the analysis of Chinese political discourse,which helps to expand the application of argumentation theory of political discourse in the Chinese context.Meanwhile,this study helps to promote people’s understanding of political discourse,and provides a linguistic basis for Xi Jinping’s governance concepts conveyed in political discourse.