Discursive Constructions Around Carbon Peak And Carbon Neutrality In People’s Daily Online And China Daily

To contribute to global climate governance,China put forward the Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality targets,pledging that China will reach carbon peak by 2030 and achieve carbon neutral by 2060.China Daily and People’s Daily Online,serving as bridges for communication between China and the rest of the world,are significant for the construction of China’s national image.The present study,based on Wodak’s Discourse-Historical Approach(DHA),conducts a corpus-based critical discourse analysis around Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality in China Daily and People’s Daily Online from September 22,2020(the date when the Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality targets were first officially announced)to June 30,2021.The research questions are:(1)What prominent discourses have been constructed around Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality?(2)What kind of national image of China has been reflected by the Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality discourse?(3)What linguistic devices and discursive strategies are employed to construct China’s national image in the Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality discourse?Firstly,keywords and collocation network analysis are conducted to identify the prominent discourses around Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality.Secondly,intertextuality is examined with the help of concordance lines.And lastly,discursive strategies and linguistic realization forms contributing to China’s national image construction are investigated.The research findings are as follows: First,the topics of climate change,carbon emission,economic development,energy issues,ecological and environmental issues,technological innovation,and production and lifestyle are frequently associated with the Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality discourse.And the opportunity and challenge discourse,green transition discourse,and climate change discourse are identified.Second,the implementation of manifest intertextuality and discursive strategies contributes to the construction of China’s national image.The former mainly involves discourse presentation,presupposition and allusion,and the latter,nomination strategy,predication strategy,argumentation strategy and intensification/mitigation strategy.From the topic analysis,intertextuality analysis,and discursive strategy analysis,we can see that the Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality discourse constructs a positive national image of China.As a responsible major country,China commits itself to global climate governance,multilateral cooperation with win-win results,and the construction of a community of shared future for the seek of sustainable development of all mankind.Lastly,the social context is taken into consideration.It shows that the carbon targets in essence are the narrative of China’s development in carbon reduction and environmental governance which are out of its own need of development.Meanwhile,the carbon plan reflecting Chinese wisdom is meaningful to global climate governance.Based on Discourse-Historical Approach,this study analyzed the discursive constructions of Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality in the news reports,which to some extent enriches the research scope of Carbon Peak and Carbon Neutrality.It also provides references to the country’s overseas publicity and national image construction.