The discursive creation of ideology in the contemporary Chinese political context

Abstract

The chapter focuses on a new ideological formulation introduced in 2018 in the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China. The contribution aims at studying the discursive strategy in which the item is embedded, and through which it is promoted, by analysing Chinese political discourse in a diachronic perspective between 2013 and 2019. Using a selection parameter of intertextuality, the author has compiled a corpus of texts (in the Chinese language) through which this multifaceted discursive strategy is constructed. Drawing on the discourse-historical approach (Reisigl, Wodak 2009, p. 89; Wodak 2001, pp. 65-66) in a critical discourse analysis perspective, the paper will show how the discursive strategy performs a synergic action to disseminate the new ideology formulation by addressing two sub-topics, and, in parallel, how the texts intentionally promote two main macro-topics of Chinese political discourse.