A Corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis Of Security Strategies Of The United States And The European Union

As two essential poles in the international arena,the United States(US)and the European Union(EU)play essential roles in politics,economy,and culture.The present study takes the security strategy documents of the two as the research object,and the corpora are built for the analysis.It applies the Corpus Linguistic(CL)tool Ant Conc to quantitatively analyze keywords,collocates,and concordance lines.Based on the keyword lists,this research classifies the keywords,and conducts an analysis of collocates and concordance lines according to the four topics of major political agents,areas of focus in security strategies,security and its adjacent concepts,and a dynamic of “threats”,challenges and urgency.On this basis,the changes in the connotation of “security” in the US and EU security strategies in different periods are discussed from the perspective of intertextuality.Meanwhile,combined with the three-dimensional model of Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA),the economic and social backgrounds of the US and EU will be studied.The qualitative analysis explores the similarities and differences between the two and the underlying reasons.The study found that the US uses more aggressive language in its national security strategies,especially in the military and political fields that it focuses on,emphasizing the importance of ideology and taking sides.By contrast,the EU uses words like “cooperation” and “common” in its security strategies,seeking multilateral cooperation and attaching great importance to the role of the United Nations(UN).Secondly,the US and the EU mention cooperation in their security strategies.However,the US advocates a self-centered cooperation model that protects its interests,while the EU supports a “new,rules-based” international cooperation order facing various forms of challenges.This research explores the linguistic similarities and differences of the US and EU security strategic discourse,expands the application of CDA and CL,enriches the methods of security strategy analysis,and provides China with approaches and insights to examine the world conditions in drafting and advancing the national security strategy.