26.405, Review: Discourse Analysis; Socioling: Cao, Tien, Chilton (2014)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-26-405. Wed Jan 21 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.405, Review: Discourse Analysis; Socioling: Cao, Tien, Chilton (2014)

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Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2015 15:23:43
From: Sibo Chen [siboc at sfu.ca]
Subject: Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-2113.html

EDITOR: Qing  Cao
EDITOR: Hailong  Tian
EDITOR: Paul  Chilton
TITLE: Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China
SERIES TITLE: Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 54
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Sibo Chen, Simon Fraser University

Review's Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

China’s economic reforms since the 1980s have brought radical changes to all
aspects of life in this country. These changes are occurring not only in
domains such as economics, politics, and culture, but also in discourse.
Because of China’s unique socio-political context, discourse has become a
central battleground for struggles over meanings among various voices; and
this has had a significant impact on China’s pursuit of a viable road to
prosperity. 

Edited by Qing Cao, Hailong Tian, and Paul Chilton, “Discourse, Politics and
Media in Contemporary China” presents a series of studies on the profound
changes in China’s post-reform era through the lens of critical discourse
analysis (CDA). The central concern of this edited volume is how political and
media discourses are constructed via various discursive strategies and how
these discourses shape the framing of crucial socio-political issues and
envisage future transformations in China. The volume consists of two sections:
Section 1 “Political Discourse” (Chapters 1-4) examines the discursive
constructions of China’s key political issues while Section 2 “Media
Discourse” (Chapter 5-8) scrutinizes the dynamic interactions between politics
and mass media in China.

Introduction: Legitimization, resistance and discursive struggles in
contemporary China

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the volume’s theoretical
frameworks and methodological approaches. It also offers a brief genealogy of
the development of the discursive regime in China. This genealogy’s key
argument is that China’s 3000-year-old writing system, along with a small pool
of canonical texts (e.g. “Analects” by Confucius), has been crucial for
maintaining the integrity of Chinese society and culture. As such, textual
authority confers moral power following the Confucian tradition, which then
can be translated into political legitimacy. Thus, “truth”, to a large extent,
is discursively constructed (Foucault, 1972). Following the preceding
argument, the chapter probes the historical, cultural and socio-political
conditions in post-reform China and how these factors contribute to the
transformative nature of China’s contemporary discursive practices.
Specifically, Cao argues that China’s political communication is changing from
a controlling model to a negotiated model as the country’s ideology has become
pragmatic and fractured, which has created a unique “ideological duality”: on
the one hand, the official discourse continues to rely upon ritualized, rigid,
or even fossilized discursive conventions (e.g. slogans, speeches, and policy
papers) to guide the public and constrain potential alternatives; on the other
hand, a de-centered and heterogeneous discourse has emerged from bottom-up
voices, offering diverse and sometimes even subversive interpretations of
China’s reality. The chapter ends by providing an overview of the following
chapters in the volume.

Chapter 1: Disembodied words: The ritualistic quality of political discourse
in the era of Jiang Zemin

This chapter addresses the political use of formalized language in the era of
Jiang Zemin (1989-2003), which has redefined the notions of culture, history,
and nation in the post-Tiananmen China. Through a discourse-historical
approach (Reisigl and Wodak, 2009), Marinelli delineates the “evolution”,
“involution”, and “devolution” patterns of political discourse in Jiang’s
formal addresses, which reaffirm “stability” as a core concern of the Party
leadership. Marinelli further argues that such discursive strategies have
created a new political discourse, rehabilitating Chinese intellectuals in a
fresh socio-political context based on market economy.  

Chapter 2: “Stability overwhelms everything”: Analyzing the legitimating
effect of the stability discourse since 1989

Chapter 2 continues to discuss the discursive construction of legitimacy in
the post-Tiananmen era. Based on a historical discourse analysis of three
events (i.e. the 1989 “Beijing Spring”, the 1999 “anti-Falun Gong”, and the
2005 “anti-Japan” demonstrations) reported in the “People’s Daily” (China’s
state newspaper), Sandby-Thomas demonstrates how the Chinese Communist Party
(CCP) has actively adopted the stability discourse to legitimize its authority
since 1989. The chapter’s major conclusion is that the CCP’s use of the
stability discourse throughout the post-Tiananmen period is based on
“consequentialist arguments”, which present maintaining stability as an issue
of national interest. As such, Sandby-Thomas argues that the case of China
challenges Max Weber’s (1964) overly structuralist approach to legitimation
since the legitimacy of the CCP is, to a large extent, “discursively flexible”
and “contextually sensitive”.

Chapter 3: A decade’s change in China: A corpus-based discourse analysis of
ten government work reports

This chapter examines the Chinese government’s annual reports to the National
People’s Congress during a 10-year period (1999-2008). Applying a corpus-based
CDA method, Qian and Tian’s analysis captures the dialectical relationship
between discourse and social change in this 10-year period. The key finding of
this chapter is the shift from ideological rhetoric to a pragmatic based
discourse during the decade and such discursive shift, according to Qian and
Tian, has generated positive impacts in dealing with China’s pressing
socio-economic changes in the post-reform era.

Chapter 4: It’s a small world after all? Simulating the future world at the
Shanghai Expo

This chapter focuses on China’s re-imaged identity, values, and future visions
in the beginning of the 21st century. The chapter examines the high profile
Shanghai Expo in 2010 and analyzes the Expo site via a multi-model discursive
perspective. In particular, Schneider details the grand narrative offered by
the China pavilion, which collapses modern Chinese history into 30 years of
successful economic reforms that elevate China from the “sick man of Asia” to
a major world power. Overall, the chapter shows how the institutional
constraints at the Shanghai Expo have reinforced the political ideals of the
Chinese authorities.

Chapter 5: Contesting journalism legitimacy: Discourse of Chinese journalism
in the post-reform era

This chapter discusses how Chinese journalism maintains its legitimacy through
discursive constructions and contestations since the 1980s. Along with the
decline of party journalism, Tong identifies three types of discourse on
defining journalism: the 1980s “liberal discourse”, the 1990s “populist
discourse”, and the 2000s “professional discourse”. On the one hand, these new
sets of journalism discourse, according to Tong, have established a “public
journalism” that redefines the practices, roles, and values of Chinese
journalism. On the other hand, Chinese journalism today still heavily relies
upon state apparatus for its authority and discursive power. Thus, the
journalism discourse discussed here re-confirms the coexistence of the party
line and the commercial line in current Chinese journalist practices (Zhao,
1998).

Chapter 6: China’s road to revival: “Writing” the PRC’s struggles for
modernization

This chapter moves the discussion to media narrative of modern historiography.
Focusing on the TV documentary series “Road to Revival” and its accompanying
multi-media opera, Schneider and Hwang explore how the Party and the state
deploy a range of discursive strategies to re-write China’s modern history,
creating a re-worked narrative to justify the CCP as China’s ruling party.

Chapter 7: China’s soft power: Formulations, contestations, and communication

This chapter presents a critical analysis of the media’s role in constructing
and mediating the “soft power” discourse in China. Following Fairclough’s
(1995) notion of “media as a discursive site”, Cao explores how different
views of “soft power” compete for recognition, legitimation, and authority in
China’s media realm. The chapter’s key argument is that the conceptualization
of “soft power” in China is significantly different from the original concept
elaborated by Joseph Nye (2004). The Chinese version of “soft power”, to a
large extent, has functioned as a reconstruction of cultural identities in the
intellectual discourse and an ideological reformulation in the official
discourse.

Chapter 8: Issues in discourse approach to social transformations in China: A
synopsis

In the final chapter, Tian and Chilton discuss theoretical and methodological
issues of applying CDA in the Chinese context. The authors argue that China’s
unique social, cultural, and political contexts require a reconfiguration of
the Western originated paradigm of CDA when it is applied in China.
Specifically, Tian and Chilton review four relevant issues: (1) a “wider”
angle critical perspective (i.e. the critical perspective in CDA should be
more flexible in the Chinese context), (2) a focus on the functionality of
discourse (i.e. more research attention should be given to the social actors
within discursive practices), (3) the emergent public sphere, and (4)
qualitative research methods.

EVALUATION

This edited volume presents an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of China’s
socio-political transformations through the lens of CDA. Covering a wide range
of topics, the volume effectively demonstrates the complexity of political and
media discourses in contemporary China and offers a systematic account of
these discourses’ production, circulation, and (potential) implications.
Throughout the volume, the legitimization effect of discourse has been given
special attention and the relevant discussions have made an important
contribution to our understanding of how discourse has become a key
“battleground” in China’s post-reform era. As such, this volume can be an
informative reading for academics and students in communication and media
studies, Chinese studies, and language and discourse studies.

Unfortunately, the current version also has some minor limitations, which
might be addressed in future editions. First of all, the critics and
discussions made in the chapters, though valid as well as impressive, only
provide liberal-pluralist interpretations regarding China’s current
socio-political context. As Cao acknowledges in the Introduction, various
perspectives (e.g. liberal-pluralist and radical-Marxist) have been applied in
studying different dimensions of China’s radical transformations. Thus, one
potential improvement for future editions is to include more studies from the
radical-Marxist perspective, which would offer a more holistic picture of the
heated debates occurring in China’s intellectual discourse. Second, the
current version has several notable editorial errors, especially in some key
terms’ Chinese translations. On page 179, for instance, the term “scientific
approach to development” is translated as “和谐发展观” (the meaning of this
translation is “harmonious view of development”) and similar mistakes can be
found in other chapters as well. Last but not least, the historical
perspective adopted by many chapters in this volume means that many
discussions here are made from a macro perspective, and as a result, readers
without sufficient knowledge regarding China’s political economy may find some
arguments seem to lack empirical evidence. One desirable improvement for
further revisions is to include more background explanations of China’s
current political economy in the Introduction. 

Nonetheless, overall the volume is ideal reading for academics interested in
political and media discourses in contemporary China, and it can be useful
recommended reading for related graduate courses as well.  

References

Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London and New York: Edward Arnold.

Foucault, M. (1972). The archaeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock
Publications.

Reisigl, M. and Wodak, R. (2009). The discourse-historical approach. In R.
Wodak and M. Meyer (eds.), Methods of critical discourse analysis 2nd ed. (pp.
87-121). London and Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Nye, J. (2004). Soft power: the means to success in world politics. New York:
Public Affairs

Weber, M. (1964). The theory of social and economic organization (A. M.
Henderson, Trans. and T. Parsons. Ed.). New York: The Free Press.

Zhao, Y. (1998). Media, market and democracy in China: between the Party Line
and Bottom Line. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Sibo Chen is a PHD student in the School of Communication, Simon Fraser
University. He received his MA in Applied Linguistics from the Department of
Linguistics, University of Victoria, Canada. His major research interests are
language and communication, discourse analysis, and genre theories.








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