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Article published In: Journal of Language and Politics
Vol. 22:4 (2023) ► pp.534–558

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Inside the echo chamber

Legitimation tactics in the People’s Daily commentaries about the China-USA trade dispute

ORCiD logo with link | Shanghai University
Published online: 7 February 2023
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.22119.che
Abstract
In the context of the China-USA trade dispute, this study reports a discourse analysis of legitimation tactics used in the People’s Daily, a major English-language news outlet produced by the Communist Party of China (CPC). My analysis centres on a dataset of 65 commentaries between March 2018 and January 2020, and identifies the five key tactics at work: authorization, moralization, rationalization, hypothetical future, and integration. These tactics (and their sub-tactics) are deployed for delegitimating the US-initiated “America First” trade policy, and for legitimating the Chinese state’s position and countermeasures. Orienting to Western scholarship about the news media’s role as an “echo chamber” for State/political agendas, I compare the pattern of legitimation in the People’s Daily commentaries with the pattern previously found in an analysis of Chinese state white papers. This comparison highlights key similarities but also differences in terms of genre, language, and ideological coherence.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The China-USA trade dispute
  • 3.Discursive construction of legitimation and recontextualization of discourse
  • 4.Data and method
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1Tactics of (de-)legitimation in the People’s Daily commentaries
      • 5.1.1Authorization
      • 5.1.2Moralization
      • 5.1.3Rationalization
      • 5.1.4Hypothetical future
      • 5.1.5Integration
    • 5.2Legitimation patterns – the People’s Daily and state white papers
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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