An Analysis of Diplomatic Discourse about COVID-19 Based on Engagement System: Taking Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang’s Discourse as an Example

Abstract

With the background of deficient studies on Foreign Ministry spokesperson’s discourse from an engagement system and certain spokesperson’s characteristics, this paper applies the theoretical framework of engagement system to analyze diplomatic discourse by spokesperson Geng Shuang on regular press conferences. The current study aims to investigate how Foreign Ministry spokesperson technically and politely employed engagement resources to contract and expand dialogic space for preserving Chinese image and minimizing the provocation on COVID-19. Through small-scale quantitative and qualitative methods, it is concluded that the distribution of dialogic contraction resources is more than expanded ones and a great range of “deontic” modality has been employed in dialogic expansion.

Keywords: engagement system; diplomatic discourse; dialogic space

DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/78-06

Publication date: April 30^th 2021