Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China

Editors

Qing Cao | Durham University

Hailong Tian | Tianjin University of Commerce

Paul Chilton | Lancaster University

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027206459 | EUR 95.00 | USD 143.00

e-Book – Open Access Download from our e-platform

ISBN 9789027270368

After three and a half decades of economic reforms, radical changes have occurred in all aspects of life in China. In an authoritarian society, these changes are mediated significantly through the power of language, carefully controlled by the political elites. Discourse, as a way of speaking and doing things, has become an indispensable instrument for the authority to manage a fluid, increasingly fragmented, but highly dynamic and yet fragile society. Written by an international team of leading scholars, this volume examines socio-political transformations of contemporary Chinese society through a systematic account, analysis and assessment of its salient discourses and their production, circulation, negotiation, and consequences. In particular, the volume focuses on the interplay of politics and media. The book’s intended readership is academics and students of Chinese studies, language and discourse, and media and communication studies.

As of February 2020, this e-book is Open Access CC BY-NC-ND, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched.

[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 54] 2014. vi, 213 pp.

Publishing status: Available

Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.54

Table of Contents

Introduction: Legitimisation, resistance and discursive struggles in contemporary China

Qing Cao | pp. 1–22

Part 1: Political discourse

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

Maurizio Marinelli | pp. 25–46

Chapter 2. ‘Stability overwhelms everything’: Analysing the legitimating effect of the stability discourse since 1989

Peter Sandby-Thomas | pp. 47–76

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

Yufang Qian and Hailong Tian | pp. 77–96

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

Florian Schneider | pp. 97–120

Part 2: Media discourse

Chapter 5. Discourse of journalism and legitimacy in post-reform China

Jingrong Tong | pp. 123–144

Chapter 6. China’s Road to Revival: “Writing” the PRC’s struggles for modernization

Florian Schneider and Yih-jye Hwang | pp. 145–170

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

Qing Cao | pp. 171–194

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

Hailong Tian and Paul Chilton | pp. 195–208

Author biography | pp. 209–210

Index | pp. 211–214

“This book is to be welcomed as a contribution to elucidating important discursive aspects of the major transformations which are taking place in China.”

Norman Fairclough, Lancaster University

“ Discourse, Politics and Media in Contemporary China offers a radical, innovative and timely analysis of the production and flow of discourses in modern China. Drawing together a wide range of perspectives from a team of renowned international scholars, this volume is an important contribution to our understanding of how communications, the media and politics interact with, and impact on each other in the PRC.”

Gary Rawnsley, University of Aberystwyth, UK

“Every polity has its political language, often opaque to those outside the policy world, yet something which analysts need to construe. None more so than China's, where the world's oldest tradition of statecraft has been infused with communist discourse and is being further injected with the jargon of market liberalism. Understanding this lore is essential to interpreting the country's political direction and its leaders' rationalisations. These scholars have given us invaluable multidisciplinary exegeses of many aspects of this fascinating subject.”

Hugo de Burgh, University of Westminster / Tsinghua University

“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. [...] 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.”

Sibo Chen, Simon Fraser University, on Linguist List 26.405, 21 January 2015

“This volume might be taken as a useful reference for researchers and students interested in CDA, media and communication studies, politics and studies of contemporary China.”

Yunhua Xiang, Jilin University, in Journal of Language and Politics 16:6 (2017)

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Cited by seven other publications

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Tian, Hailong

2018. QingZhang. Language and Social Change in China: Undoing Commonness through Cosmopolitan Mandarin. New York and London: Routledge. 2018. 198 pp. Hb (9780425708074) £110.00, Pb (9780425708081) £29.99, eBook (9781315886251) £15.00.. Journal of Sociolinguistics 22:4 ► pp. 473 ff.

Lams, Lutgard

2017. Othering in Chinese official media narratives during diplomatic standoffs with the US and Japan. Palgrave Communications 3:1

Lams, Lutgard

2018. Examining Strategic Narratives in Chinese Official Discourse under Xi Jinping. Journal of Chinese Political Science 23:3 ► pp. 387 ff.

Wang, Jiayu

2016. Narrative mediatisation of the “Chinese Dream” in Chinese and American media. Journal of Language and Politics 15:1 ► pp. 45 ff.

Wang, Wei & Linda Tsung

2015. Contemporary Chinese Discourse from Sociolinguistic Perspectives. In Contemporary Chinese Discourse and Social Practice in China [Studies in Chinese Language and Discourse, 4], ► pp. 1 ff.

[no author supplied]

2015. Publications Received. Language in Society 44:1 ► pp. 133 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 6 september 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

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