Word Changing Of A Buzzword On Sino-US Relations

In recent years, many new words which appear in the field of international relations, especially words in the field of Sino-US relations, need to be studied. By the rough search and comparison of words on Sino-US relations in recent years, the term "Chimerica" with important research value and rich materials is selected as this paper’s subject. In this paper, the term Chimerica mainly refers to the symbiotic relationship between China and the United States formed by past few years’mutual complements in economy which is coined by Niall Ferguson and Moritz Schularick at the end of2006. Later its meaning extended to Sino-US condominium of the world. Then, it also broadly referred to just "China and the United States". Carrying these specific concepts, word "Chimerica" and its deformation words (including other written forms in English and Chinese translation words) are all observed in this article.This paper plans to analyze the process of communication from the perspective of international communication, aiming to observe how the term Chimerica spread to China and with what forms and what meanings, which should be based on tracing to its source to understand the original meaning of the word. There are four reasons to select the above research view. First, the word Chimerica itself spreads internationally, and the perspective of international communication are essential. Second, in the field of international communication the researches on the term are very limited. Third, the writer is interested with the word changing in the process of communication. Forth, living in China has the advantage of collecting material in Chinese, and this word is closely related with China.The specific research idea is to analyze the term Chimerica’s communication process from British&America to China within five years started from2007. According to the term’s feature of spreading internationally, the entire communication process is divided into two stages-the communication in British&America as the stage of "original communication process" and the communication in China as the stage of "secondary communication process". And then compare with these two stages in the perspective of four factors-communication subject, communication media, communication audience including word form and word meaning.In order to get a complete picture of the word’s communication process, describe Chimerica’s communication process in chronological order firstly. We find the spread trends among Chinese Mainland, British&America and other countries are consistent, but there are significantly larger fluctuations in Chinese Mainland. Then, we summarize the word spread trend of the past five years:2007sporadic,2008amass at the end of the year,2009hot around the word,2010hot continued,2011down to peace.Then, analyze the original communication process of the term Chimerica in British&America. In the perspective of four factors, the original communication process is guided by opinion leader Ferguson. More considering Britisher&American as his communication audience, he spreads the word through a variety of media of which the book and the documentary with same name The Ascent of Money are of great importance. As to word form, he stresses that "Chimerica" is a pun on the word "chimera". As to word meaning, one of the triple meanings-"the odd economic symbiotic relationship between China and US" is the most important meaning.Finally, analyze the secondary communication process of the term Chimerica in Chinese Mainland. After comparing with the original communication process in the perspective of four factors, we find that in the process of secondary communication, lack of opinion leaders and important original media, diverse communication subjects are constituted by reporters&editors, scholars and officials. Considering Chinese strongly sensitive to politics as communication audience, they communicate the term adding new word forms and new word meanings through a variety of media.In summary, the term Chimerica is spread to the masses by Ferguson as the opinion leader in British&America through a variety of media, of which the book and documentary play a particularly important role. Although the opinion leader Ferguson consider Britisher&American as substantial audience, the word still appear in most countries around the world because of the strong position of English language and British&America. Informed of the word, diversified Chinese subjects introduce the term into China. On one hand, they keep paying attention to other countries’ understandings and attitudes of the word, and spread them to China. On the other hand they also spread the word coupled with their own interpretations. Lack of original important media, they spread the word with the help of a variety of other media. All these contribute to the word changing of the term Chimerica in forms and meanings different from original ones when it spread to China.