A Contrastive Study Of Dissimulative Language Strategies In Chinese And English Political Discourse

Political discourse is equipped with four strategic functions:coercion,resistance&protest,legitimation&delegitimation and dissimulation.Participants of political activities tend to count on some strategic language to "dissimulate" the critical information when answering sensitive questions from reporters.Political game is like the game of language.Dissimulative strategic language is the embodiment of the wisdom of politicians.These strategies help spokesmen safeguard their national secrets and interests without violating the face of reporters.The study is based on a corpus of 26 texts on 8 different topics of Chinese and English political press meetings.The researcher makes a contrastive study of the dissimulative language strategies in political discourse between Chinese and English.Unlike other relevant studies,the corpus of this study is of conversational and colloquial features.To guarantee the objectivity of the choice of corpus,the researcher did a reliability test with SPSS 21.0.Through contrastive analysis,it is found that there are six different language strategies that are used by both Chinese and American spokesmen to realize their goal of "dissimulation".They are direct refusal,indirect refusal(expressing ignorance and shifting responsibility to others&overlooking questions and changing topic),quoting or referring to third-party information,the use of modal verb,the use of rhetorical device and the use of passive voice.It is shown in the contrastive study that there are some similar and different quantitative features in Chinese and English dissimulative language strategies.Based on the results,the researcher makes a summary of similarities and differences of the characteristics of using Chinese and English dissimulative strategies.It is found that both Chinese and American spokespersons use dissimulative language strategies in political activities and the indirect way of dissimulation is of more popularity.Some differences lie in:(1)English speakers are more "direct" while Chinese are more "indirect" in using dissimulative language strategies;(2)English speakers use more passive voices and modal verbs in dissimulation;(3)Chinese use more rhetorical devices in dissimulation and the language is more flowery.Based on the findings of the contrastive study,the researcher provides a theoretical interpretation of the language phenomenon "dissimulation" under the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)and Face Theory.The researcher also discusses the complicated reasons for different choices of strategies between Chinese and Americans from the perspective of history,culture,the mode of thinking and language itself.A model of "dissimulation" in political language is put forward which can depict the whole operating process of dissimulation.Dissimulation is triggered by questions concerning three aspects:attitude&standpoint,agent and commitment&prediction.Then taking political,social and cultural factors into consideration,the speaker will make a decision on dissimulation.This model helps researchers to identify dissimulative language strategies in political discourse and is beneficial for people to have a deeper understanding of political language."Dissimulation" is a common language phenomenon in political discourse.Relevant studies on these language strategies help people know more about national differences.As a kind of interdisciplinary study,it can bring enlightenment to both politics and linguistics studies.