On Rhetorical Persuasion In Diplomatic Discourse

In the context of globalization,to tell China’s story to the world appropriately and facilitate international communication is a must path to construct China’s international discourse power and build up China’s international image.As China has gradually stepped onto the center of international stage,viewpoints of China from outside diversified on a large scale.On the one hand,China’s concept of global governance makes the international community feel the fresh air blowing from the east,on the other hand,narratives of "China threat ","China’s responsibility ",and "new colonialism" have arisen one after another.Under the background of the international public opinion,it is of great importance to operate diplomacy among great powers,vigorously promote Chinese policy and strategy,and carefully construct international discourse.As an official language of politics,diplomatic discourse incarnates the general frame of rhetorical persuasion in handling diplomatic affairs and resolving international disputes.Fu Ying,as a diplomat with years of diplomatic experience and the first female spokesperson at the press conference of the National People’s Congress,her discourse strategies are worthy of in-depth exploration.This paper attempts to probe into Fu Ying’s diplomatic speeches from perspectives of Blitzer’s rhetorical situation theory and Aristotle’s theory of rhetorical appeals,analyzing on how Fu Ying employs rhetorical strategies to achieve her purposes of diplomacy,so as to enrich the researches on rhetorical persuasion theory of diplomatic discourse.Upon the research methods,this article adopts a combination of methods of qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis as well as descriptive analysis.After collecting Fu Ying’s speeches in recent five years on different diplomatic occasions,this thesis analyses the motivation,exigence and divisions of Fu Ying’s speeches from the standpoint of rhetorical situation.And then to analyze strategies employed in these speeches from the perspective of rhetorical persuasion with the aim of elucidating how Fu Ying makes use of these strategies to effectively achieve the maximum persuasiveness among the audience,so as to make contribution to the realization of foreign exchanges and provide some references to enhance international communication.In conclusion,diplomatic discourse is persuasive in essence and the exigence of the speeches,divisions between the speaker and the audience as well as the speaker’s motivation determines the necessity and significance of employing strategies of rhetorical appeals.In order to achieve ethos,Fu Ying mainly applies techniques of expressing kindness,constructing good moral character,and establishing common ground with the audience to increase the credibility of the speech.To realize pathos,Fu Ying employs figures of speech as rhetorical questions,repetition and appealing to shared values to arouse the audience’s moral responsibility and stimulate psychological identification among the audience.In the actualization of logos,Fu Ying adopts strategies of giving definition,inductive reasoning,and reasoning via analogy and making contrast as well as a large quantity of data and examples to clarify her diplomatic stance.Through the analysis of Fu Ying’s diplomatic speeches,this paper provides a new perspective for the study of Fu Ying’s diplomatic discourse and offers some reference for the study of rhetorical persuasion theory in diplomatic discourse.