Abstract:

Economic diplomacy has increasing importance in an age in which economic globalization and de-globalization are waxing and waning respectively. As a powerful tool for diplomacy, diplomatic discourse is considered to be an abundant source for research. Hence, this paper has studied Chinese leaders’ diplomatic discourse by examining both the categories and the frequency of metaphors in their special speeches at the twelve (from 2007 to 2018) annual meetings of the Summer Davos. The aim has been to explore the form of identity that China has striven to present to the international community, and how Chinese leaders have managed to accomplish this. A small corpus of 51 767 Chinese characters was created, followed by the identification, calculation, and exemplification of the uses of metaphor in the discourses. The results indicate that the three metaphors used most frequently in the discourses in question have been building, journey, and personification, presenting China as a builder, a traveler, and as a growing child respectively, thus creating a picture of the Chinese economy as constructive, progressive, and developing. It has been found that, compared to the first phase (2007-2012), both the diversity and the frequency of the metaphors in the Chinese leaders’ special addresses increased notably in the second phase (2013-2018), accompanied by the appearance of some new metaphors with Chinese characteristics. This reflects an increasingly stronger Chinese voice in diplomatic discourse, as well as growing confidence in Chinese culture, which represents China in a more positive light in the international community.

Keywords: critical metaphor analysis; diplomatic discourse; national identity; Summer Davos; corpus-based approach

摘要：

在经济全球化与逆全球化博弈的过程中,经济外交的重要性日益凸显,而外交话语作为外交活动的重要实现工具,具有极高的研究价值。因此,本文对中国国家领导人在2007—2018年夏季达沃斯论坛开幕式致辞中的隐喻类别、使用频次进行了量化研究,旨在探究我国国家领导人对国家身份的构建情况。为此,研究者收集了这些致辞,自建成51 767字的小型语料库,识别统计致辞中的隐喻使用情况,并对典型例证作定性分析。研究发现,在这些致辞中,建筑、旅程及拟人3类高频主导隐喻的使用帮助中国构建起建设者、旅行者和成长者的国家身份,彰显了中国经济的建设性、进取性和发展性特征。此外,与第一阶段（2007—2012）相比,中国国家领导人在第二阶段（2013—2018）的开幕致辞中使用的隐喻种类和频次均有显著增加,并且出现了中国特色隐喻,话语修辞潜能不断增强。这表明我国在外交话语中发出了更加响亮的中国声音,展现出中国日益增强的文化自信,更好地型塑了我国在国际社会中的国家形象。

关键词: 批评隐喻分析, 外交话语, 国家身份, 夏季达沃斯论坛, 语料库方法