Abstract
“A community with a shared future for humankind” has become a dominant concept in China’s foreign policy in the last decade. Although this concept has been investigated by several studies in different domains, little attention has been given to its discursive legitimation in China’s media communication from a linguistic perspective. To fill this gap, the present study employs critical metaphor analysis to investigate how the aforementioned concept is legitimised via the predominant discourses associated with COVID-19 in 111 news articles collected from China Daily, a state-owned Chinese English-language newspaper. The findings show that COVID-19 is represented as a common enemy of humankind, other nations of the world are constructed as China’s allies, and the World Health Organisation is depicted as the leader of the global fight against the pandemic. These representations are constructed by the interplay of “war” metaphors and other linguistic processes, and hold ideological implications for collectivism and humanitarianism. The findings shed light on the use of language by China Daily in promoting official ideologies, projecting China’s national image, and improving China’s international relations amid a global health crisis.
Presenters
Yating YuPostdoctoral Fellow, Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
COVID-19, CRITICAL METAPHOR ANALYSIS, DISCURSIVE LEGITIMATION
