| Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers(ICANN),which is one of the most important non-profit and non-governmental international organization in the field of technology management and allocation of key resources of the Internet,has long been criticized for political interference and the lack of transparency.For deeply exploring how the ideological and political nature behind ICANN’s governance paradox is reflected in its governance discourse,this corpusbased study conducts a detailed critical discourse analysis(CDA)based on a self-built corpus consisted of textual resources concerning ICANN governance.With the combinative method of quantitative and qualitative analysis,the study adopts the framework of Wodak’s discoursehistorical approach(DHA),with three analytical dimensions including general topics,discursive strategies and four-layer context of the targeted discourse.Through(key)wordlist statistics,the study has firstly revealed the characteristics of integrity and consistency in ICANN governance are being established;most macro-topics highlight its functional and technical aspects of specific fields;there is the hierarchy reflecting varying important levels of its management;and it has formed a rather stable governance mechanism.The open and hybrid(sub)genres and(sub)topics form a complex bundle of semiotic types reflecting intertextuality.Through semantic annotations,several remarkable fields of action can be recognized,including community link,technical functions,power hierarchy,actor participation and work and employment,etc.Through detailed textual analysis via collocates,concordances and co-text review,the findings suggest that there are at least four types of discursive strategies at the macro level,including nomination and referential strategy,formalized and legitimated procedures,strategies of argumentation and presupposition and predication.Apart from the context of co-text,the study also focuses on three deeper layers of context in DHA framework for linguistic realizations of ICANN’s governance discourse,including intertextuality,institutional frames and historical variables,in order to mine the hidden hegemony and power relationship within the discursive practice.It is found that a small group of elites are playing a prevailing role in ICANN’s integral operation and internal rulemaking,while the crucial governance concept--Multistakeholder Model(MSM)--is legitimated by shaping its connection with the conceptualization of“community” in the process of certain discourse construction Discursive strategies are employed to surreptitiously empower certain in-group actors and diminish potential opposition while maintaining existing power relations in ICANN’s present hierarchy framework.The study successfully to realize the integration for the studies of digital humanities and applied linguistics,which has not only drawn some deep findings on ICANN governance,but also provide meaningful insights for critical discourse studies as well as corpus-based studies.Future research should focus on the mechanism of discourse evolution in different stages of ICANN governance from a synchronic and diachronic perspective. |
