Discursive representations of a dissident: The case of Liu Xiaobo in China’s English press (original) (raw)
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The Language of Ideology in China’s English Press: Representations of Dissent 中國英文報紙中的意識形態語言: 對不同政見的描述, 2014
This work presents a critical analysis of media discourses produced by China’s state-run English press (China Daily, People’s Daily Online, and Xinhua News Agency) on two famous dissenters, Liu Xiaobo (Nobel Peace Prize 2010 awardee), and Chen Guangcheng (blind human rights activist and recipient of Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize 2012). The thesis begins with the building of the socio-political context through an overview of key theoretical elements such as the Chinese people’s struggle for ‘dignity’ (Lee 2012) set against the backdrop of conflicting orders of discourse involving ‘human rights’ and ‘sovereignty’. The discussion of the polarization within Chinese society is augmented by definitions of what it means to be Chinese and what social actions result from this belief. Currently conflicting discourses are the centripetal forces of Maoism vs. the centrifugal forces of democracy as seen in pro-government vs. pro-democracy confrontations at the recent Southern Weekend protests in Guangzhou (Lam 2012, Gao 2013). China’s laws on subversion have attracted criticism for their ‘malleability’ (Béja, Fu and Pils 2012). In its defense, Beijing has embarked on its own ‘discourse of rights’, which gives the impression of offering a diverse range of rights except the one kind that matters most (Habermas 2010, Donnelly 2003). As a result, China’s media, in lockstep with CCP policies, is set in array against the wider world, and, at the same time, is paradoxically attempting a charm offensive through ‘soft power’ (Nye 2004; Kurlantzick 2006, 2007; Shambaugh 2013). Discourses of alterity, as a means of Othering, are investigated in this thesis through a historical perspective touching on the Confucian principle of zhengming (rectification of names) and ‘labeling’ as a practice of ‘class struggle’ during the Cultural Revolution. I argue that traces of the predilection for ‘strongly demarcating’ the enemy through categorization (Dittmer 1987), as promoted by Mao, continues its relevance in government discourse particularly regarding the West and dissidents who are framed as ‘traitors’ by their alignment with discourses of democracy. To open the way for economic development China had to reformulate its recent history, which lead to a 1981 document called the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China, which in turn essentially re-structured the national myth and Mao’s role in it. This meant that the heterodox became orthodox, by which once sacrosanct doctrines were altered to make way for the ‘anathema’ of capitalism (Kluver 1996). This change in ideology precipitated a changing ‘order of discourse’ (Gu 2001) from ‘class struggle’ to ‘economic development’, the residues of which are still in conflict today. Based on the ‘ideological square’ (van Dijk 1998b, 2011) and ‘representation theory’ (Hall 1997), this study looks at how the CCP legitimizes its treatment of dissidents through discursive strategies such as trivialization and criminalization entextualized throughvpositive-Self/negative-Other representations. Discourses of victimhood, triumphalism, nationalism, national sovereignty, and ressentiment (Fitzgerald 1999) are also utilized by the state media as attempts to reconcile the ideological gap between the orders of discourse. Theoretically, the analysis is influenced by Norman Fairclough’s work on media discourse (1995a), Ruth Wodak’s discourse-historical method (2001), John B. Thompson’s depth hermeneutics (1984, 1990), van Leeuwen’s social actor network (2008), and Teun van Dijk’s (1998b, 2011) research on the analysis of ideology and its influence in biased and discriminatory discourses. The influence of ideology and its manifestation as positive-Self/negative-Other representation (Us vs Them discourse) is problematized, theorized, and then applied to the collected data through analysis of certain aspects of systemic functional linguistics such as transitivity, passivization, agency, appraisal/evaluation, and particularly relational clauses (identifying and attributive). By this, I show how rhetorical strategies of Us vs Them discourses are realized linguistically in China’s state-run English press. From this analysis, salient linguistic features emerge and I am able to interpret the impact of language, ideology, and power inherent in the discourse. Of interest is how these individuals (Liu and Chen), whose qualities are admired in the West, are delegitimized in the Chinese media. The findings show how Liu and Chen are discursively stigmatized (i.e. ‘strongly demarcated’) as outgroup members (Liu ‘a criminal’; Chen a ‘mob organizer’) involved in treachery and collusion with ‘external forces’. Meanwhile, through the same mediatized political discourse, the interests of the governing elite are legitimized, protected and advanced.
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Chapter 1. Representations of Dissent
Representations of Dissent, 2014
ABSTRACT The Language of Ideology in China’s English Press: Representations of Dissent This thesis presents a critical analysis of media discourses produced by China’s state-run English press (China Daily, People’s Daily Online, and Xinhua News Agency) on two famous dissenters, Liu Xiaobo (Nobel Peace Prize 2010 awardee), and Chen Guangcheng (blind human rights activist and recipient of Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize 2012). The thesis begins with the building of the socio-political context through an overview of key theoretical elements such as the Chinese people’s struggle for ‘dignity’ (Lee 2012) set against the backdrop of conflicting orders of discourse involving ‘human rights’ and ‘sovereignty’. The discussion of the polarization within Chinese society is augmented by definitions of what it means to be Chinese and what social actions result from this belief. Currently conflicting discourses are the centripetal forces of Maoism vs. the centrifugal forces of democracy as seen in pro-government vs. pro-democracy confrontations at the recent Southern Weekend protests in Guangzhou (Lam 2012, Gao 2013). China’s laws on subversion have attracted criticism for their ‘malleability’ (Béja, Fu and Pils 2012). In its defense, Beijing has embarked on its own ‘discourse of rights’, which appears to offer a diverse range of rights except the one kind that matters most (Habermas 2010, Donnelly 2003). As a result, China’s media, in lockstep with CCP policies, is set in array against the wider world, and, at the same time, is paradoxically attempting a charm offensive through ‘soft power’ (Nye 2004; Kurlantzick 2006, 2007; Shambaugh 2013). Discourses of alterity, as a means of Othering, are investigated in this thesis through a historical perspective touching on the Confucian principle of zhengming (rectification of names) and ‘labeling’ as a practice of ‘class struggle’ during the Cultural Revolution. I argue that traces of the predilection for ‘strongly demarcating’ the enemy through categorization (Dittmer 1987), as promoted by Mao, continues its relevance in government discourse particularly regarding the West and dissidents who are framed as ‘traitors’ by their alignment with discourses of democracy. To open the way for economic development China had to reformulate its recent history, which lead to a 1981 document called the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China, which in turn essentially re-structured the national myth and Mao’s role in it. This meant that the heterodox became orthodox, and that which was once sacrosanct was altered to make way for the ‘anathema’ of capitalism (Kluver 1996). This change in ideology precipitated a changing ‘order of discourse’ (Gu 2001) from ‘class struggle’ to ‘economic development’, the residues of which are still in conflict today. Based on the ‘ideological square’ (van Dijk 1998b, 2011) and ‘representation theory’ (Hall 1997), this study looks at how the CCP legitimizes its treatment of dissidents through discursive strategies such as trivialization and criminalization entextualized through positive-Self/negative-Other representations. Discourses of victimhood, triumphalism, nationalism, national sovereignty, and ressentiment (Fitzgerald 1999) are also utilized by the state media as attempts to reconcile the ideological gap between the orders of discourse. Theoretically, the analysis is influenced by Norman Fairclough’s work on media discourse (1995a), Ruth Wodak’s discourse-historical method (2001), John B. Thompson’s depth hermeneutics (1984, 1990), van Leeuwen’s social actor network (2008), and Teun van Dijk’s (1998b, 2011) research on ideology and its influence in biased and discriminatory discourses. The influence of ideology and its manifestation as positive-Self/negative-Other representation (Us vs Them discourse) is problematized, theorized, and applied to the collected data through analysis of certain aspects of systemic functional linguistics such as transitivity, passivization, agency, appraisal/evaluation, and particularly relational clauses (identifying and attributive). By this, I show how rhetorical strategies of Us vs Them discourses are realized linguistically in China’s state-run English press. From this analysis, salient linguistic features emerge and I am able to interpret the impact of language, ideology, and power inherent in the discourse. Of interest is how these individuals (Liu and Chen), whose qualities are admired in the West, are delegitimized in the Chinese media. The findings show how Liu and Chen are discursively stigmatized (i.e. ‘strongly demarcated’) as outgroup members (Liu ‘a criminal’; Chen a ‘mob organizer’) involved in treachery and collusion with ‘external forces’. Meanwhile, through the same mediatized political discourse, the interests of the governing elite are legitimized, protected and advanced.
Discursive strategy in social movements in China has received limited scholarly attention. This paper systemically examines the way in which contentious discourse in China is informed by its cultural repertoire and illustrates how activists strategically frame their culturally informed discourse in coordination with the usage of media platforms. We analyzed 143 slogans and banners from 22 environmental and land requisition protests, and found that activists in China draw heavily on Chinese cultural repertoire. They embed family values in a rank system that is mapped onto two axes – space vs. time and us vs. them – with family/self at the center, to frame diagnostic, motivational, and prognostic collective action frames. In order to unpack the dynamic process of strategic framing, we paid special attention to activists’ coordination mechanisms with media in our analyses drawn from extensive participatory observation and interviews in two protest cases. We found strategic framing (such as frame bridging, amplification, extension, transformation and borrowing) was used in coordination with both traditional and new media in an effort to adjust their contentious discourse to achieve consensus mobilization, action mobilization, and social mobilization at various stages of protest. This study brings cultural repertoire back into the study of contentious discourse in China and highlights the dynamic nature of strategic framing that is often practiced in coordination with media.
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This article examines the response of Chinese mainstream journalists towards their citizen counterparts, through an analysis of how journalists constructed a discourse of ‘netizens’ and journalism in the case of Deng Yujiao. The analysis is mainly drawn from a discourse analysis of the newspaper coverage of this case in the Southern Metropolitan Daily (SMD) and the relevant journalists’ reflexive articles on the same topic published in the Journal of Southern Media Studies (JSMS). The discourse analysis is supplemented by interviews with 60 journalists in 2011 concerning their views of netizens in general and of the conflict between journalism and netizens in this particular case. Based on these three elements of analysis, this article offers an account of how institutionally-shaped journalistic norms and values have been used to set up and maintain the occupational boundaries of Chinese journalism, in an attempt to defend journalistic legitimacy by making a clear distinction betwee...