{"title":"Othering as mediated soft-power practice: Chinese diplomatic communication of discourse about China-US trade war through the British press","authors":"Liping Tang","doi":"10.1016/j.dcm.2023.100669","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>This paper examines how Chinese Ambassador to the UK has employed Othering offensive to construct China-US trade war when publishing opinion pieces in the British press to promote China’s image and seek partenership. It draws on Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Studies. The analysis demonstrates how the Ambassador has used strategies, such as nomination, predication and argumentation, to construct the US as a negative Other to delegitimize its trade policies and actions. Meanwhile, Othering serves as a foil for indirectly constructing a positive Chinese Self as a responsible major country and a positive ‘We-group’ between China and the US European allies. It sheds some light on understanding the workings of Chinese diplomatic discourse in legitimating China’s worldview on ‘rules-based international order’. It also contributes to understanding the interplay between the media logic of British/Western press and the soft-power efforts of Chinese/non-Western government. The role of British/Western press in Chinese/counterhegemonic diplomats’ mediated soft-power practice is both enabling and constraining.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":46649,"journal":{"name":"Discourse Context & Media","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.3000,"publicationDate":"2023-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Discourse Context & Media","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211695823000028","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper examines how Chinese Ambassador to the UK has employed Othering offensive to construct China-US trade war when publishing opinion pieces in the British press to promote China’s image and seek partenership. It draws on Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Studies. The analysis demonstrates how the Ambassador has used strategies, such as nomination, predication and argumentation, to construct the US as a negative Other to delegitimize its trade policies and actions. Meanwhile, Othering serves as a foil for indirectly constructing a positive Chinese Self as a responsible major country and a positive ‘We-group’ between China and the US European allies. It sheds some light on understanding the workings of Chinese diplomatic discourse in legitimating China’s worldview on ‘rules-based international order’. It also contributes to understanding the interplay between the media logic of British/Western press and the soft-power efforts of Chinese/non-Western government. The role of British/Western press in Chinese/counterhegemonic diplomats’ mediated soft-power practice is both enabling and constraining.