Meaning Generation in Chinese Official Media Discourse

Drawing on approaches from Linguistic Pragmatics, Critical Discourse Analysis, Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Social Actor Representation Theory, and Framing Theory, this book critically explores the various linguistic devices and pragmatic strategies that concern meaning generation in the context of Chinese official media discourse.

The volume rests on eight chapters that—using different analytical lenses, with either a culture-specific perspective or a cross-cultural one—take language analysis as their point of departure, in order to investigate how meaning is generated in situated discourse, such as media accounts about specific issues within the socio-political, cultural, or economic sphere. Each chapter is empirically grounded, and either focuses on a specific genre, such as the documentary and the press conference, or explores social and political events and initiatives that have been topical in recent years: the Covid-19 and SARS crises, the US-China trade conflict, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and the 2021 Hong Kong electoral system reform.

By bringing back the linguistic analysis to the core of the analytical approach, the volume shows the interconnection of text and context, reminding the reader about the key role of language users both on the production and reception side.

This book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in the relation between language and politics and, in particular, in understanding meaning-making and meaning-moulding processes in discourses articulated in an official Chinese context aimed both internally and internationally.

Lutgard Lams is a Professor of Media Discourse Analysis, Language Pragmatics, and Intercultural Communication at KU Leuven, Campus Brussels, Belgium. Her research focuses on the dynamics of language and ideology in institutional discourses, framing practices, media discourses in and about the Chinese region, and strategic narratives in political communication.

Rui Zhang is an Associate Professor in the School of Foreign Languages, Dalian University of Technology, China. Her main academic interests and recent work are in interpreted and translated Chinese political and media discourse, the role of interpreting and translation in China’s international communication, and interpreting pedagogy.

Emma Lupano is an Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Culture at the University of Cagliari, Italy. Her research focuses on cultural and political aspects of contemporary China and their linguistic manifestations in the institutional and media discourses. Her works have investigated LSP in journalism, keywords in public discourse, and genres in news writing.