Collective discursive representation of the Chinese Dream by public speech and media discourse from the perspective of positive discourse analysis
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Lei Zhang
Abstract
A positive discourse analysis is conducted on the collective discursive representation of the Chinese Dream by the discourse of the sovereign state and the national media, with the aim to show how discourses at different levels could collaborate to promote the power of the Chinese Dream discourse in the domestic communication. Borrowing the dialectical-relational framework of critical discourse analysis, the present research carries out structural analysis and interactional analysis of President Xi Jinping’s speech at the closing meeting of the 12th National People’s Congress and the subsequent media discourse produced by official news outlets. The structural analysis reveals Xi’s speech on the Chinese Dream forms a genre chain with related news reports, editorials, and features within a couple of days, in which the appeal to the public is repeatedly made. The interactional analysis indicates the news discourses facilitate concreteness and enrichment of the Chinese Dream by recontextualizing various components of the original speech and adopting specific represented processes and modality to echo and promote the constructed Chinese Dream by the speech. The findings reveal the inspiring Chinese Dream discourse is produced and consumed among different official discourses, collaboratively representing a bright future for the public.
1 Introduction
President Xi Jinping proposed the concept of the Chinese Dream when he attended the exhibition “the Road of Renaissance” in Beijing in November 2012. He further elaborated on it on several domestic and foreign occasions, including international conferences, meetings with domestic representatives, and interviews by domestic and foreign media. Up to now, the Chinese Dream has gradually developed into one of the major strategies adopted by the Chinese government, reflecting the ruling party’s thought of governance. As the mainstream political concept in China today (Du and Liu 2013), the Chinese Dream addresses the concerns of the Chinese public and has become the focus of domestic and foreign media. It has also drawn the scholars’ attention in the field of discourse studies. They have explored various discursive representations of the Chinese Dream by both Western and domestic media.
The studies of Western media about the Chinese Dream merge corpus method with critical discourse analysis to examine discursive representation of the Chinese Dream in Western cultures, revealing their understating and evaluation of China’s policy with their ideological characteristics (e.g. Qian and Huang 2016; Shao and Hui 2014). The research on traditional Chinese media (e.g. Liu and Ma 2016) focuses on the discourse strategies adopted by official media in the process of English reporting practice, illustrating the features of official promotion and discussing how to elevate the discourse power that will manipulate the opinion of the readers. As for the promotion at the level of populace, the characteristics of the Chinese Dream discourse in Sina microblogs are investigated by drawing on corpus methods (e.g. Qian et al. 2018; Yu 2016). The construal of communities and the negotiation of identities in such microblogging discourse about the Chinese Dream are also discussed under the notion of affiliation in systemic functional linguistics. However, most of the research focuses on the series of speeches delivered by President Xi on various occasions. Drawing on discursive constructionism, Miao (2016) analyses the ideational, interpersonal, and textual meanings of Xi’s speech at the closing meeting of the first session of the 12th National People’s Congress, revealing how the Chinese Dream is constructed to call on the Chinese people to strive for the prosperous future. Some scholars analyze a series of his speeches, demonstrating how the transitivity system and attitudinal resources construct the Chinese Dream (e.g. Bu 2016; Chen and Zhao 2016). Zhang’s (2016) study reveals that the combination of discursive strategies of dissimilation and assimilation in these speeches constructs and justifies the positive national identity of China that promotes peace, facilitates development, and brings benefits to both its people and the world.
All these above-mentioned discourse studies demonstrate the nature of the Chinese Dream, reveal the ideologies behind domestic and foreign media’s representation, and address communal and national identities based on this concept. However, they base their findings on individual genres, covering news representation, public speeches, and social media respectively. As a result, they ignore the collaboration in the representation of the Chinese Dream between different social activities. Such a status quo in the study of the Chinese Dream discourse points to all too long a way towards a dialectical-relational research on this subject. This paper aims, hopefully, to address this lacuna by investigating the relationship between the political speeches on the Chinese Dream and the subsequent official media discourse, demonstrating the collaborative production and consumption in the process of promoting this political concept.
The rest of the paper is structured as follows: in the next section, a brief explication will be given to positive discourse analysis, the theoretical and analytical framework informing this study, after which the data collection and the analytical procedure will be explained. The penultimate section presents the detailed analysis of the Chinese Dream representation using illustrative examples from the collected data and the last section is the conclusion that summarizes the findings of the study and highlights its implications for relevant research.
2 Theoretical framework
Contrary to CDA, best known for its work on language and semiosis in the service of power whose deconstruction tends to center upon ideologically driven discrimination, positive discourse analysis (PDA) (Hu 2012; Martin 2004) highlights a positive and friendly attitude towards the content of texts in order to establish the lofty goal of “peace linguistics”, and finally build an easy, reconciliatory, and compatible human society. In other words, PDA emphasizes taking positive attitudes towards various social conflicts (Martin and Rose 2003) instead of constantly criticizing society. On the basis of analyzing social problems through discourse analysis, PDA seeks positive and constructive solutions and finds out how to conduct people to live harmoniously, leading to the promotion and creation of a harmonious society. Therefore, PDA is not so much oriented to deconstruction as to constructive social action (Martin 2004). It is proposed as a complementary perspective to CDA, aiming at progressive social change (Bartlett 2012). It aims to analyze texts that signify inspiring discursive practices and strategies by focusing on discourse that advances collective purpose, such as social equality, national unity, and political reconciliation (Bartlett 2018). To reach this goal, PDA has broadened the coverage to include discourse that inspires, encourages, and heartens. The choice of PDA for this study is motivated by its usefulness in advancing theoretical understanding of “possibilities for transformations capable of enhancing human flourishing and mitigating social ills” (Hughes 2018: 199). It provides us with a suitable perspective to analyze the how and the why of the Chinese Dream discourse’s strategies and their implications for such issues as solidarity, confidence, determination, and the role of leaders in the political process of mobilizing the whole society to take action to realize the Chinese Dream.
Martin (2004) promotes PDA through genre renovation, evaluative language, and narrative analysis. However, Bartlett (2012: 8–9) points out that PDA studies often lack a detailed analysis of context, fail to account for the ways in which the social positioning of communicators affects the meaning of texts, and rely too much on the analyst’s evaluation rather than community members’ assessments. He calls for PDA to combine with traditional CDA framework to situate discourses within wider socio-historical contexts as an essential aspect of PDA’s positive and interventionist orientations to discourse. The complementary use of PDA and CDA is now beginning to gain grounds in the literature (e.g. Bednarek and Caple 2010; Kampf and David 2019). The present paper re-echoes Bartlett’s call and integrates PDA with one of conventional CDA frameworks, the dialectical-relational framework. Previous studies on PDA have mainly emphasized discourses of resistance and emancipation, advancing the cause of marginalized or oppressed groups and promoting their shared interests (Catalano and Kohen 2020; Macgilchrist 2007; Mark and Ernanda 2020). The present research will not explore how the mainstream Chinese Dream discourse is contested by other relevant social practices in Chinese context. Instead, it will examine how the constructed values in the mainstream discourse are represented and circulated by other social practices under the guidance of the dialectical-relational framework.
According to the dialectical-relational framework, discourse is a social practice in which language users take part in social activities, represent social reality, and construct institutional, collective, and individual identities through different language forms. The political speech delivered by a national leader is a social practice by a governmental representative to explain policies, legitimate the nation’s actions, and persuade the public to take actions. Such speeches are realized as texts on the linguistic level. However, they are not isolated from other social factors but dialectically related to some social relations, identities, and cultural values in this social practice. They are networked in a particular way with other social practices like media representation, showing a specific social order. In order to reveal the link between social structure and text structure, both the structural analysis of discourse order and the interactional analysis should be carried out (Fairclough 2003). The former aims to reveal the power relationship between social subjects by exploring the hierarchical relationship between different discourses, while the latter concerns such hierarchical relationships through detailed textual analysis.
The structural analysis focuses on the order of discourse and genre chain. Order of discourse is regarded as the social structure of linguistic variation because there are different possibilities in language, but the choice amongst them is socially structured (Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999). According to Fairclough (2001), order of discourse is the semiotic aspect of social order, connecting various genres and discourses. It is a set of orderly discursive practices in a specific social area, limited by potential interactional conventions, such as social conditions and social structure (Tian 2006). The social structure determines that different discursive practices have different weight in social areas: some are dominant, others are marginal or alternative. Different genres produced in the discursive practice of the Chinese Dream have different weight in the representation of the Chinese Dream. The order of discourse analysis will reveal the unequal relationship between these relevant discourses explicitly. Order of discourse also embodies in the genre chain. It is a succession of genres ordered in a particular chronological sequence in which one genre is often a necessary antecedent to another and the subsequent ones involve systematic transformations. By analyzing the order relationship among the different genres, the unequal social structural relationship behind the Chinese Dream discourse could be revealed. PDA of such relationship in the case of the Chinese Dream aims to emphasize how genres at different levels get people together and align them around specific values, giving rise to a communal power.
Different from the structural analysis that puts emphasis on power relation in social practice, the interactional analysis focuses on textual analysis, realized by interdiscursive analysis, linguistics, and semiotics analysis. The interdiscursive analysis will show the interaction between different texts while linguistic and semiotic analysis concerns textual structures and systems of modality, transitivity, and theme at the clause level. The interdiscursive analysis is often conducted from the perspective of recontextualization, in which a discourse is moved from its original production site to another where it is changed as related to other discourses. In this dynamic transformation non-discourse factors such as ideology and power are involved, so recontextualization is often implemented in a mixture of “new” recontextualized elements and “old” elements, such as specific words, expressions, and rhetorical devices (Bernstein 1990; Chouliaraki and Fairclough 1999). This thesis will conduct structural and interactional analysis of different Chinese Dream discourses with the aim to show their cooperation in the enhancement of the political concept of the Chinese Dream. In this way, the borrowing of the dialectical-relational framework of CDA will help us to reveal how the power of the Chinese Dream discourse initiated by the sovereign state will circulate through communities by the support rather than the contest from official media discourse.
3 Research methodology
In order to demonstrate the cooperative representation of the Chinese Dream by different social, verbal practices, we collected the political speech and media texts about the Chinese Dream from 17 March to 19 March, 2013. On 17 March, at the closing meeting of the 12th National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the newly-elected President Xi Jinping delivered a speech, in which he elaborated on the Chinese Dream again. The speech aroused intensive interest in domestic media within a couple of days. We searched Xinhua Net,[1] Chinanews Net,[2] National People’s Congress Net,[3] and the websites of People’s Daily [4] and Beijing Daily [5] with the Chinese key term of “中国梦” (Zhongguo meng, ‘the Chinese Dream’). Xinhua Net and Chinanews Net are two significant news information service portals in China, affiliating respectively to the national news agencies of Xinhua News Agency and China News Service. Xinhua Net has become China’s largest official news publishing platform. National People’s Congress Net is the official website of the Standing Committee of NPC. As the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government, People’s Daily was first issued in 1948. Now, it is issued nationwide, covering cities and villages, publicizing policies to the public. Beijing Daily was founded on 1 October, 1952, as the official newspaper of the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee. Nowadays, it is the daily newspaper with the largest circulation in the capital area, where NPC and CPPCC are held annually.
In all, we got the following texts illustrated in Table 1. It can be seen that the media texts feature different genres, including news reports, features, and editorials.
Collected data on the Chinese Dream (17 March, 2013–19 March, 2013).
| Time | Texts | Source | Genre |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17 March, 2013 | 实现中华民族伟大复兴的中国梦 (Shixian zhonghua minzu weida fuxing de zhongguo meng, ‘Realization of the Chinese Dream of the Great National Rejuvenation’) | Xi Jinping | Speech |
| 17 March, 2013 | 奋斗, 为了美丽的“中国梦”——写在2013年两会闭幕之际 (Fendou, weile meili de “zhongguo meng” – xie zai 2013 nian lianghui bimu zhiji, ‘Struggle for the Beautiful Chinese Dream – Written at the Closing Meeting of NPC and CPPCC in 2013’) | National People’s congress net | News reports |
| 17 March, 2013 | 习近平在十二届全国人大一次会议闭幕会讲话侧记 (Xi Jinping zai shier jie quanguo renda yici huiyi bimuhui jianghua ceji, ‘Sidelights of Xi Jinping’s Address at the Closing Meeting of the First Session of the 12th National People’s Congress’) | Xinhua net | Sidelight |
| 17 March, 2013 | 中国梦的新起点 (Zhuangguo meng de xin qidian, ‘A New Starting Point for the Chinese Dream’) | Xinhua net | News reports |
| 18 March, 2013 | 开启实现中国梦的新征程 (Kaiqi shixian zhongguo meng de xin zhengcheng, ‘Start a New Journey to Realize the Chinese Dream’) | People’s Daily | Editorial |
| 19 March, 2013 | 接力奋斗实现中国梦 (Jieli fendou shixian zhongguo meng, ‘Unremitting Efforts to Realize the Chinese Dream One Generation after Another’) | Beijing Daily | News reports |
| 19 March, 2013 | 奋进在成就梦想的中国道路上 (Fenjin zai chengjiu mengxiang de zhongguo daolu shang, ‘Forge ahead on the Chinese Path of Achieving Dreams’) | Xinhua net | Editorial |
| 19 March, 2013 | 习近平九提“中国梦” (Xin Jinping jiu ti “zhongguo meng”, ‘Xi Jinping Mentions the Chinese Dream Nine Times’) | Chinanews net | Feature |
In the present research, the structural analysis examined the genre chain produced by these collected texts. As for the interactional analysis, we chose the feature story produced by Chinanews Net on 19 March, 2013 to examine how it recontextualizes the Chinese Dream addressed by Xi in his speech through a different linguistic mechanism. Chinanews Net was initiated in Hongkong as early as 1995 and makes China News Service the earliest Chinese media to go online in Asia. The interactional analysis revealed the role played by this governmental news outlet in the representation of the Chinese Dream.
4 Analysis of the Chinese Dream representation
In this section, we will first go to the structural analysis of the collected data, illustrating the power relation between the original political speech and those subsequent media discourse, which will reveal how the Chinese Dream is produced and reproduced at different levels of social practice in Chinese context. This will be followed by the interactional analysis covering textual analysis that includes interdiscursive analysis, linguistics and semiotics analysis.
4.1 Structural analysis
The structural analysis aims to explore the relationship between different texts produced in the social practice of the Chinese Dream representation by looking into the relevant genre chain. As a social practice, Xi’s speech on the Chinese Dream at the closing ceremony of NPC and CPPCC expresses the vision of the Chinese government, transmits the government’s policy, and calls on the people to realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. Its delivery quickly aroused widespread reports and discussions in various domestic media. Most of these media concerned are official news outlets, acting as the windows of the Chinese government to interact with readers and working as the platform for displaying China’s national image and culture to foreign countries. Their reports elaborate on the Chinese Dream and the relevant discussions in them concern the response from the public. It seems that the speech and the corresponding texts in the media achieve a dialogue between the government and the public. They link together to form a specific public genre chain. The data listed in Table 1 show that apart from Xi’s public speech of the Chinese Dream, related news reports, editorials, and other genres in the media were produced successively by the official media and distributed through different channels. They formed a chain in the chronological order of publication.
All the texts in this genre chain concern the same topic of the Chinese Dream. On 17 March, 2013, the first report about the speech was released at the closing ceremony of the First Session of the 12th National People’s Congress by National People’s Congress Net. The title features a positive epithet “美丽的” (meili de, ‘beautiful’), implying high appraisal of the media. The thematized verb “奋斗” (fendou, ‘struggle’) in the imperative structure appeals to the readers for their contribution. On the same day, Xinhua net produced a piece of sidelight. This kind of text usually reports an aspect of the speech, or describes some fragments that the readers are probably interested in. The same news source also released a news report with a nominal group “中国梦的新起点” (zhongguo meng de xin qidian, ‘a new starting point for the Chinese Dream’) as the title. This is a metaphorical expression with explicit source and target domains, in which the realization of the Chinese Dream is compared to a journey. In the following two days, the JOURNEY metaphor was repeatedly used in the titles of the two editorials. It is realized by the nouns “征程” (zhengcheng, ‘journey’) and “道路” (daolu, ‘path’), the verb “奋进” (fenjin, ‘forge ahead’), forming a political conceptual metaphor: REALIZAITOAN THE CHINESE DREAM IS TRAVELLING ALONG A PATH TOWARDS A DESTINATION (Charteris-Black 2004: 74). In this metaphor, the starting point of a journey is mapped into the initiation of the dream pursuit, the path stands for the specific guidelines to follow in order to realize this dream, and going forward along the path just depicts the progress in the pursuit of the dream. The shared cognition of a journey reminds the reader of the rich implications that could be projected into the realization of the Chinese Dream: it includes the initial stage, the middle stage, and the destination, constructing what participants will experience if they follow specific guidelines to approach the goal. The JOURNEY metaphors are embedded into the imperatives with the powerful verbal groups “开启旅程” (kaiqi lvcheng, ‘start the journey’), “接力奋进” (jieli fenjin, ‘forge ahead one generation after another’), “实现中国梦” (shixian zhongguo meng, ‘realize the Chinese Dream’). They enhance the appeal to the public to take corresponding actions. The Chinese word “接力” (jieli, ‘in relay’) implies the realization of the Chinese Dream can not be achieved by individuals. Rather, it needs the collective and continuous efforts of all the Chinese people. In this way, the subsequent news discourse seems to give a more concrete interpretation of the Chinese Dream and stimulate the people to pursue it.
The analyzed Xi’s speech, relevant news reports, features, sidelights, and editorials are different forms of social practice, constructing different status, roles, positions, attitudes of different social subjects (such as leaders, representatives, media, and people of all ethnic groups). The leader, who initiated the Chinese Dream discourse, is the authoritative and powerful advocator. The Chinese people who are reported and addressed in the news reports are the implementers and beneficiaries of the Chinese Dream. So, the genre chain has become a discourse order that reflects structural relations, showing the dominant position of government discourse in the practice of the Chinese Dream discourse. It initiates the spread of other discourses that reinterpret and evaluate its original content in new situations. Such systematic interrelationship in the genre chain will be revealed in detail through further interactional analysis.
4.2 Interactional analysis
In this section, we singled out the feature from Chinanews Net for interactional analysis. It was produced in two days after Xi’s original speech at the closing ceremony of NPC and CPPCC. The analysis of recontextualization will be first conducted, followed by that of the linguistic and semiotic features.
4.2.1 Interdiscursive analysis of recontextualization
In terms of PDA, the feature recontextualizes different aspects of the original speech by providing support as its authoritative interpretations and feedback. We can see in Table 2 that the feature constructs the general situation of the original Chinese Dream discourse by recontextualizing the time and place of the speech and the significant political occasion on which it was delivered. It mentions the time and place when and where the concept was first put forward and highlights its further elaboration over NPC and CPPCC. The two sessions elected Chinese central leadership, signifying the critical period of China’s development and the tough period of reform and opening up China is experiencing. The awareness of the role these two conferences play in Chinese social life draws the readers’ attention to the significance of this key political concept.
Recontextualization of the time, place, main event, and social actors.
| Subject | Speech | Feature |
|---|---|---|
| Time | 今天 (jintian, ‘today’) | 3 月 17 日 (3 yue 17 ri, ‘17 March’); 2012 年 11 月23日 (2012 nian 11 yue 23 ri, ‘23 November, 2012’); 今天 (jintian, ‘today’) |
| Place | 北京人民大会堂 (Beijing renmin dahui tang, ‘The Great Hall of the People’); 博物馆 (bowu guan, ‘museum’) | |
| Main event | 这次会议 (zhe ci huiyi, ‘this conference’) | 12届全国人大一次会议闭幕会 (shier jie quanguo renda yici huiyi bimu hui, ‘the closing meeting of the first session of the 12th National People’s Congress’) |
| Social actors | 各位代表 (ge wei daibiao, ‘representatives’); 全国各族人民 (quanguo gezu renmin, ‘people of all nationalities’); 我们 (women, ‘we’) | 中国新任国家主席习近平(zhongguo xin ren guojia zhuxi Xi Jinping, ‘Xi Jinping, the new President of China’); 习近平(Xi Jinpin); 他(ta, ‘he’); 代表们 (daibiao men, ‘representatives’); 新疆代表团的锡伯族代表富春丽 (xinjiang daibiao tuan de xibo zu daibiao Fu Chunli, ‘Fu Chunli, representative of Xibo ethnic group from the Xinjiang delegation’); 台湾代表团的孔令智 (Taiwan daibiao tuan de Kong Lingzhi, ‘Kong Lingzhi of the Taiwan delegation’); 黑龙江佛教协会会长、哈尔滨极乐寺方丈静波 (Heilongjiang fojiao xiehui huizhang, ha’erbin jilesi fangzhang Jingbo, ‘Jing Bo, President of Heilongjiang Buddhist Association and Abbot of Harbin-based Jile Temple’); 云南代表团黎族代表杨浦旺 (Yunnna daibiao tuan li zu daibiao Yang Puwang, ‘Yang Puwang, representative of Li ethnic group from the Yunnan delegation’); 解放军代表、第二炮兵第22基地司令员莫俊鹏 (Jiefang jun daibiao di’er paobing di 22 jidi silingyuan Mo Junpeng, ‘Mo Junpeng, representative of the People’s Liberation Army and commander of the 22nd base of the Second Artillery Force’); 武警重庆总队政委董书民 (Wujing Chongqing zongdui zhengwei Dong Shumin, ‘Dong Shumin, the political commissar of Chongqing Armed Police Corps’) |
As for the social actors, the feature labels the audience of the original speech, whom Xi referred to as “各位代表” (ge wei daibiao, ‘representatives’). The producer of the feature has the choices to mention different representatives, and their representational strategies (van Dijk 1988) will reflect which aspect of a representative’s identity is considered valuable. Instead of only giving a general reference, the feature adopts both nomination and categorization to identify individual representatives (van Leeuven 2008; Zhang and Caple 2021). Apart from semiformal proper nouns (given name and surname) that realize nomination, affiliations are found in the feature to demonstrate the institutes the representatives belong to, the nationalities and the areas they represent, such as “新疆代表团的锡伯族代表” (xinjiang dabiao tuan de xibo zu daibiao, ‘xibo representative of the Xinjiang delegation’) and “台湾代表团的孔令智” (Taiwan daibiao tuan de Kong Lingzhi, ‘Kong Lingzhi of the Taiwan delegation’). The representatives are also categorized in terms of functionalization, concerning what they do, which is realized by the nominal groups representing their professions or social activities, including “佛教协会会长” (fojiao xiehui huizhang, ‘President of the Buddhist Association of China’), “方丈” (fangzhang, ‘abbot’) and “司令员” (silingyuan, ‘commander’). The functionalization shows that the representatives come from a variety of lines with high prestige. In conclusion, the rich and varied labeling reflects the extensive reach of Xi’s speech, revealing its profound influence and implying the nature of the Chinese Dream as a collective one.
The feature also recontextualizes the content of Xi’s speech by projecting his words in different modes of reported speeches. Nearly half of its 28 clauses (11 clauses) are adopted to represent his words. According to Volosinov (1973: 115), there are two discourse events in the representation of Xi’s speech: the representing discourse which the feature is made and the represented discourse about which the feature is made. The former includes the reporter, the general reader, the context of the reporting, and most importantly, the reporting utterance; the latter includes a reported speaker (President Xi), a reported addressee, and its original context. Boundary maintenance between these two discourse events is largely a matter of making choices among different modes of speech reporting, including free direct speech, direct speech, indirect speech, and narrative report of speech act and the mixture of different modes.
Among the 11 reported speeches in the feature, seven are direct speeches with the presence of quotation marks and the introductory part of the reporting clause “他说” (ta shuo, ‘he said’) or “习近平称” (Xi Jinping cheng, ‘Xi Jinping claimed’). The direct quotation of Xi’s words has little intermediacy of the reporter and gives Xi’s voice certain autonomy, allowing him to communicate with the populace directly. In two cases, the reporting clauses do not appear until the end of the projection, which highlights the very words in the original speech. However, the direct speech is not an exact copy of the original speech. All quotations involve selection and “filtering” (Waugh 1995), or the “leakage” of the quoting voice onto the quoted (Besnier 1992). The feature only gives space to a part of the original speech that is helpful to impart the media’s intended message. The original speech covers related historical and cultural background, the nature of the Chinese Dream, the way to realize the dream and China’s international and national conditions. The direct quotations in the feature focus on the nature of the Chinese Dream, especially the dream of the people who are both the implementer and beneficiary of the Chinese Dream. A case in point is the projected words in Example (1), by which Xi clarifies the position that the Chinese Dream is not only about the prosperity of the whole nation, it also concerns the expectation of every Chinese. In this way, the mediated newspaper practice aligns readers around the shared dream, which facilitates the solidarity of the Chinese people.
| “中国梦是民族的梦, 也是每个中国人的梦。” 习近平称。 (“Zhongguo meng shi minzu de meng, ye shi mei ge zhongguo ren de meng”, Xin Jinping cheng. ‘“The Chinese Dream is the dream of our nation and every Chinese”, Xi Jinping said.’)[6] |
The indirect speech has a lower incidence in the feature. Compared with the direct speech, there is much more variability in the indirect speech, including some compression of the original words. For example, the feature condenses the detailed measures to realize the Chinese Dream by only keeping the three theme sentences without giving further explanation as Xi did in his speech. They are introduced by the narrative report of the speech act (NRSA) (Leech 2001 [1981]: 323–324) in the following statement:
| 他还用了三个“必须”来指明实现“中国梦”的途径: [⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅] (Ta hai yong le sange “bixu” lai zhiming shixian “zhongguo meng” de tujing: […], ‘He also used three necessities to indicate the way to realize the Chinese Dream […]’) |
NRSA in Example (2) provides only an inference of Xi’s illocutionary act. Another example in point is the verb “阐释” (chanshi, ‘to interpret’) that describes Xi’s explanation about the Chinese Dream. Although the indirect speech is much farther away from the original than the direct speech, when we compare the feature’s representation with Xi’s original speech (Fairclough 1995: Ch. 2), we find that the original utterances experience little change in the indirect reported speech. The reporter’s voice only intervenes in such a reporting clause as “他表示” (ta biaoshi, ‘he said’) in the following example:
| 他表示, 中国仍处于并将长期处于社会主义初级阶段, 实现中国梦, 创造全体人民更加美好的生活, 任重而道远 [⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅] (Ta biaoshi, zhongguo reng chuyu bing jiang changqi chuyu shehui zhuyi chuji jieduan, shixian zhongguo meng, chuangzao quanti renmin gengjia meihao de shenghuo, ren zhong er dao yuan […], ‘He said that China is still in the primary stage of socialism and will remain so for a long time to come. There is still much to do and a long way to go before we can realize the Chinese Dream and create a better life for all our people […]’) |
This highlights the authenticity of the original speech and the loyalty of the official media to the speech. Such synergy facilitates the transmission of the policies and governing ideas of the leadership to the public.
4.2.2 Analysis of represented processes
The system of transitivity is primarily used to describe human activities and various events in the world on the level of clauses, composed of processes, participants, and circumstantial components. The various processes are the central part of this system, including material process, behavioral process, relational process, mental process, verbal process, and existential process.
According to Table 3, we can see that material and relational processes are the most frequently used processes in Xi’s speech. The material process is used extensively in Xi’s speech when he elaborates on the achievements in the past and depicts the outlook of the future. The actors of these material processes are the Chinese people, the Party, and the government. The goals include the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics, economic and scientific development, the leadership of the Communist Party and its main policies. The verbs in these processes, such as “创造” (chuangzao, ‘to create’), “拓展” (tuozhan, ‘to expand’), “坚持” (jianchi, ‘adhere to’), “推进” (tuijin, ‘to advance’), “建设” (jianshe, ‘to build’), “巩固” (gonggu, ‘to consolidate’) and “加强” (jiaqiang, ‘to strengthen’) demonstrate that Xi’s speech tells the audience what efforts the government and the Chinese people have made for the realization of the Chinese Dream (Example 4) as well as what they should do in the future (Example 5).
Distribution of processes in Xi’s speech.
| Processes | Material | Relational | Mental | Behavioral | Verbal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Instances | 111 | 39 | 7 | 1 | 1 |
| Percentage | 69.81% | 24.53% | 4.40% | 0.63% | 0.63% |
Distribution of processes in the feature.
| Processes | Verbal | Relational | Material |
|---|---|---|---|
| Instances | 19 | 5 | 4 |
| Percentage | 67.86% | 17.86% | 14.28% |
Modal verbs in Xi’s speech.
| Modal verbs | 要 (yao,‘should’) | 必须 (bixu,‘must’) | 能/不能 (neng/bu neng, ‘can/can not’) | 将 (jiang, ‘will’) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frequency | 19 | 7 | 5 | 2 |
| Percentage | 57.58% | 21.21% | 15.15% | 6.06% |
Modal verbs in the feature.
| Modal verbs | 必须 (bixu, ‘must’) | 会 (hui, ‘will’) | 要 (yao,‘should’) | 能 (neng, ‘can’) | 将 (jiang, ‘will’) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frequency | 5 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Percentage | 35.71% | 21.43% | 14.29% | 14.29% | 14.29% |
| 是我们共同创造的美好家园, 是我们共同培育的民族精神。(Shi women gongtong chuangzao de meihao jiayuan, shi women gongtong peiyu de minzu jingshen., ‘It is the beautiful homeland we have built together and the national spirit we have nurtured together.’) |
| 我们要坚持党的领导, [⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅] 坚持人民主体地位, 扩大人民民主, 推进依法治国 [⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅] ! (Women yao jianchi dang de lingdao, […] jianchi renmin zhuti diwei, kuoda renmin minzhu, tuijing yifa zhiguo […] !, ‘We must uphold the leadership of the Party, […] maintain the principal position of the people, expand people’s democracy, and promote the law-based governance […]’) |
The relational process ranks the second in the speech. Most of them are identifying relational processes that give clear definitions to the Chinese Dream and offer explanations to its connotations, such as the following assertion:
| 中国梦归根到底是人民的梦 [⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅] (Zhongguo meng guigen daodi shi renmin de meng […], ‘The Chinese Dream is, in the final analysis, the dream of the people […]’) |
In the feature, the most frequent process (see Table 4) is the verbal process, which is followed far behind by relational and material processes. Xi is represented as the Sayer in more than 60% of the verbal processes. A detailed analysis has been conducted in Section 4.2.1 to examine how his original speech has been decontextualized and recontextualized by the feature. In the rest of the total verbal processes, the individual representatives across China are depicted as Sayers with rich naming strategies identifying them (see Section 4.2.1). In the verbal processes, they share their understanding of the Chinese Dream and express their confidence to make it come true. They also touch on their own responsibilities and those of the social groups they represent. Their understanding reiterates Xi’s interpretation of the Chinese Dream, such as the relationship between the dream of every Chinese and that of the whole nation addressed in Example (7) by the representative Kong Lingzhi. Their confidence in the Chinese Dream is embedded in the FORWARD metaphorical scenario activated by the expression “加快步伐” (jiakuai bufa, ‘speed up the pace’) in Example (8). It implies that Xi’s speech is persuasive, and the promising outlook depicted in his original speech meets people’s expectations. Their promise to take specific responsibilities (Example 9) indicates that the public respond positively and actively to the call made by Xi in his speech to rally the Chinese people to contribute to the realization of the Chinese Dream.
| 孔令智表示, 每一个人的梦是不一样的, 个体的梦是实的, 汇聚到一起之后, 就是中华民族的伟大之梦。(Kong Lingzhi biaoshi, mei ge ren de meng shi bu yiyang de, geti de meng shi shi de, huiju dao yiqi zhihou, jiu shi zhonghua minzu de weida zhi meng., ‘Kong Lingzhi said that everyone’s dream is different. Individual dreams are real. When they come together, it is the great dream of the Chinese nation.’) |
| 云南代表团的黎族代表杨浦旺说, “[⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅] 我们一定会加快实现中国梦的步伐 [⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅]” (Yunnan daibiao tuan de li zu daibiao Yang Puwang shuo, “[…] Women yiding hui jiakuai shixian zhongguo meng de bufa […]”, ‘Yang Fuwang, representative of the Yi ethnic group from the Yunnan delegation, said, “ […] We will certainly speed up the pace of realizing the Chinese Dream […]”’) |
| 武警重庆总队政委董书民表示, 武警官兵将忠实履行神圣使命, 为实现中华民族的伟大复兴的中国梦营造安全环境。(Wujing Chongqing zongdui zhengwei Dong Shuming biaoshi, wujing guanbing jiang zhongshi lvxing shensheng shiming, wei shixian zhonghua minzu de weida fuxing de zhongguo meng yingzao anquan huanjing., ‘Dong Shumin, political commissar of the Chongqing Armed Police Corps, said that the armed police officers and soldiers will faithfully perform their sacred mission and create a safe environment for realizing the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.’) |
4.2.3 Analysis of modality
Modality is the language user’s judgment of the probabilities or obligation involved in what is saying (Halliday 2000 [1994]: 75). It is further categorized into modalization and modulization. The former concerns the exchange of information and could be divided into probability and usuality, while the latter is related to the exchange of goods-&-services and could be sorted into obligation and inclination. In the analyzed speech, almost all the modality is realized by using modulization with high degree, including “要” (yao, ‘should’), “必须” (bixu, ‘must’), “能” (neng, ‘can’) or “不能” (buneng, ‘can not’) and “将” (jiang, ‘will’) with medium degree (see Table 5).
These Chinese modal operators are dependent verbs that could only form positive imperative with a Predicator after them (Ma 1992: 49–50). The modal operator “必须” (bixu, ‘must’) is used repeatedly when Xi points out the path to realize the Chinese Dream, such as in the following declarative clauses (10)–(12):
| 实现中国梦必须走中国道路。(Shixian zhongguo meng bixu zou zhongguo daolu., ‘To realize the Chinese Dream, we must take our own path.’) |
| 实现中国梦必须弘扬中国精神。(Shixian zhongguo meng bixu hongyang zhongguo jingshen., ‘To realize the Chinese Dream, we must foster the Chinese spirit.’) |
| 实现中国梦必须凝聚中国力量。(Shixian zhongguo meng bixu ningju zhongguo liliang., ‘To realize the Chinese Dream, we must pull the Chinese strength.’) |
They reveal Xi’s close adherence to some basic principles in the pursuit of the Chinese Dream and imply his confidence on the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the strength of united people of all ethnic groups, the Chinese national spirit and its reform and innovation. The modal operator “要” (yao, ‘should’) with the highest incidence in the speech is a common way in Chinese to show actors’ strong will or intensive expectation imposed on them. It is adopted by Xi to indicate both obligation and inclination, depending on who is the actor in the represented action. If the actor is “我们” (women, ‘we’), it shows the Chinese people’s strong determination to pursue the Chinese Dream. However in most cases when Xi aims to arouse the enthusiasm of the Chinese people, “要” (yao, ‘should’) emphasizes what should be implemented by workers, farmers, intellectuals, compatriots in the Special Administrative Regions of Hong Kong and Macao, overseas Chinese and the Communist Party. It is used together with the modal adjunct “一定” (yiding, ‘definitely’) to enhance Xi’s appeal, reflecting his ardent expectations of the Chinese people.
The adherence to the important principles in the pursuit of the Chinese Dream is reiterated in the feature (see Table 6) by quoting Xi’s words with the high degree of modal operator “必须” (bixu, ‘must’). The obligation highlighted in the original speech is responded by the inclination realized by “要” (yao, ‘should’) and “将” (jiang, ‘will’) in the utterances of the representatives from all walks of life. The predicators following “要” (yao, ‘should’) and “将” (jiang, ‘will’) in their utterances (13)–(15) indicate their willingness to contribute themselves to the realization of the Chinese Dream.
| “[⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅] 宗教界要引导人们向善。” (“[…] zongjiao jie yao yindao renmen xiang shan.”, “‘[…] The religious community should guide people to the good.”’) |
| “我们要用强军梦去支撑中国梦。” (“Women yao yong qiangjun meng qu zhicheng zhongguo meng.”, ‘We should use the strong army dream to support the Chinese Dream.’) |
| “武警官兵将忠实履行神圣使命, 为中国梦营造安全环境。” (Wujing guanbing jiang zhongshi lvxing shensheng shiming, wei zhongguo meng yingzao anquan huanjing., ‘The armed police officers and soldiers will faithfully fulfill their sacred mission and create a safe environment for the Chinese Dream.’) |
The modal operator “能” (neng, ‘can’) performs different functions in the speech and the feature. In the speech, it highlights the requirement Xi raises to the public, regulating their behavior. For example, in the following negative assertions Example (16), he reminds the Chinese people that facing the current national and international environment they can not be satisfied with the achievements they have made up to now. The repeated similar syntactic structure and the adverb “丝毫” (sihao, ‘slightest’) strengthen his warning tone.
| 我们不能有丝毫自满, 不能有丝毫懈怠 [⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅] (Women bu neng you sihao ziman, bu neng you sihao xiedai […], ‘We must not become complacent or slacken off in the slightest […]’) |
While in the feature, “能” (neng, ‘can’) shows the possibility and feasibility of the Chinese Dream, such as in the assertion Example (17) uttered by one of the representatives.
| 中华民族伟大复兴的梦想一定能实现。(Zhonghua minzu weida fuxing de mengxiang yiding neng shixian., ‘The dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will surely be realized.’) |
The modal adjunct “一定” (yiding, ‘surely’) enhances the tone, echoing the firm belief in the Chinese Dream transmitted by Xi’s speech. The predicted possibility of the positive feature is also realized by the modal operator “会” (hui, ‘will’) and “将” (jiang, ‘will’) in the following utterances:
| “实现中国梦, 我觉得每个人努力一定会有希望” (“Shixian zhongguo meng, wo juede mei ge ren nuli yiding hui you xiwang.”, ‘To realize the Chinese Dream, I think everyone will have hope if they work hard.’) |
| “[⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅] 我们一定会加快实现中国梦的步伐 [⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅⋅]” (“[…] Women yiding hui jiakuai shixian zhongguo meng de bufa […]”, ‘“[…] We will certainly speed up the pace of realizing the Chinese Dream […]”’) |
| “少数民族会更加团结、更加繁荣。” (“Shaoshu minzu hui gengjia tuanjie, gengjia fanrong.”, ‘“Minorities will be more united and prosperous.”’) |
Although “会” (hui, ‘will’) is a Chinese modal operator in low degree (Peng 2000: 121), the neighboring modal adjunct “一定” (yiding, ‘definitely’) and the adverbs “更加” (gengjia, ‘more’) enhance the force of these utterances given by the representatives. The produced confidence in a brighter future echoes Xi’s voice when he describes the outlook of China in his speech.
Through the structural and interactional analysis of President Xi’s political speech on the Chinese Dream and its related news discourse at home, this research reveals linguistic resources and features in the collaborative representation of the Chinese Dream. The different genres interact with each other through genre chain and recontextualization. The original speech employs material and relational represented processes and adopts specific modality to promote the government’s policy and motivate the public to take concrete actions. The dominant verbal processes and similar modality used in the news texts reiterate the original interpretation of the Chinese Dream and indicate the loyalty and determination of the public to the initiative of the government.
5 Conclusion
Positive discourse analysis is conducted on the discursive representation of the Chinese Dream, explaining how it could become an impetus for the development of the country by revealing its nature, path and goal. Instead of focusing on the original speech about the Chinese Dream delivered by President Xi, the present research has paid attention to the collaborative discursive representation of the Chinese Dream by the sovereign state and the national media discourses at different levels in the promotion of the Chinese Dream discourse. Such positive discourse analysis addresses the process of production and consumption of the Chinese Dream discourse, in which concepts and values constructed by the original sovereign state discourse are circulated and enhanced by the official media discourse, which gives rise to communal power of the Chinese Dream discourse.
In order to show the interrelationship between governmental discourse and media discourse as different social activities, the present positive discourse analysis borrows the dialectical-relational framework of critical discourse analysis to conduct both structural and interactional analysis of President Xi’s speech at the closing meeting of the 12th National People’s Congress and the subsequent news reports, editorials and features produced by Chinese official media in the following couple of days. The research proves that dialectical-relational framework can not only help us to uncover ideologically driven discrimination in the service of abusive power or contested discourse to enact a better world, but can also assist us to demonstrate how texts produced at different levels collaborate to enhance inspiring discourse that leads to the solidity of a community. This enriches the analytical path of positive discourse analysis.
The structural analysis shows the unequal relationship between sovereign state discourse and official media discourse in the formed genre chain. The political speech delivered by the leader of a sovereign state transmits authoritative ideas and arouses the audience’s enthusiasm and motivation, while the media discourses report about it and describe the public’s understanding and evaluation as an intermediate between the government and the public. The interactional analysis indicates how news discourse facilitates concreteness and enrichment of the Chinese Dream by recontextualizing the various components of the original speech and adopting specific represented processes and modality to echo and promote the constructed Chinese Dream in the speech.
As an attempt for the complementary use of PDA and CDA, the present research only focuses on the collaborative representation of the Chinese Dream by governmental discourse and official media discourse through adopting one analytical framework in CDA. Future relevant research could extend to include other discourses or absorb analytical frameworks and methods from the field of ethnography, exploring the reception of the Chinese Dream.
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© 2021 Lei Zhang, published by De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston
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- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- A systemic functional analysis of the “ngp1 + vgp + ngp2 + ngp3” construction in English
- A corpus-based study of grammatical post-metaphorical expressions
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- A systemic functional analysis of the “ngp1 + vgp + ngp2 + ngp3” construction in English
- A corpus-based study of grammatical post-metaphorical expressions
- Collective discursive representation of the Chinese Dream by public speech and media discourse from the perspective of positive discourse analysis
- An interpersonal framework of international ecological discourse
- Readability and adaptation of children’s literary works from the perspective of ideational grammatical metaphor
- Language politics in Nepal: A socio-historical overview
- Emotional positioning in British news reports about Dover and Essex migrant tragedies: A corpus-based study
- Book Review
- James R. Martin, Yaegan J. Doran & Giacomo Figueredo: Systemic functional language description: Making meaning matter
