From Monologue To Dialogue:Discourse Changes Of Chinese Presidents’ New Year Address(1991-2023)

Discourse refers to the communication and social practices that are formed around a specific text in a specific context,which is one of the core concepts in the study of linguistics,sociology and communication.As a window of observing China striving towards the world,the New Year Address of Chinese presidents has made a series of changes in response to the development,creating a kind of discourse that has recorded the profound changes in China over the past 32 years and is a key to understanding Chinese society and culture.Using critical discourse analysis as a theoretical basis,this paper reviews and examines the history of the New Year Address in 32 years through a combination of corpus-assisted discourse analysis and textual analysis,and sorts out their discursive themes and visual narration features at different stages of 1991-2003,2004-2013 and 2014-2023,so as to reveal the concrete changes of the New Year Address and their underlying causes.The study finds that the New Year Address,as a ritual communication activity at new year,has received increasing attention.Through the selection of events,the New Year Address completes the writing of the past,present and future,and becomes an important carrier of collective memory with its interaction with social construction.In different stages,the discursive themes,the rhetorical strategies such as intertextuality and metaphor,as well as the focus of the visual narration of the New Year Address,vary considerably over time.In this way,the study concludes that the New Year Address has changed in three aspects: from external to internal and external,from verbal to audio-visual communication,and from official monologues to civil dialogues.The development of comprehensive national strength,impact of visual communication and enhanced audience engagements are the main reasons for the changes in the discourse of the New Year Address.In the future,it can get better in terms of improving the acceptance of translation,innovating the discourse modes and strengthening the emotional resonance of the narrative.