A Comparative Study Of Discourse Construction Of Institutional Identity In Chinese And American Museums

In recent years,Chinese economy development has remained strong,and it has been steadily advancing,attracting the attention of the whole world.At the same periods,"cultural confidence" and the strategy of building China’s international discourse system has highlighted that China emphasizes on economic and cultural construction,and also closely link linguistics with international relations.Museums,as an important inheritance and propaganda carrier of Chinese culture,it is particularly important to establish an open,confident and inclusive institution identity in Chinese cultural exchanges and internal communications.This paper combines the corpus method and critical discourse analysis,the corpus is selected from the authoritative global survey report---2017 Museum Report jointly published by the Theme Entertainment Association and AECOM,the top 20 museum curator’s speech in China and America.After the feature analysis of English version of the curator’s welcome speech of Chinese Museum and the curator’s welcome speech of the chosen American museum,the author try to discuss how the Chinese and American museums used discourse strategies to achieve different identity construction.That is,using the personal function system of SFG and Appraisal Theory as the description tools,through the corpus retrieval of the keywords and the analysis of the index line of identity words,this paper tries to explore the following questions:(1)What kind of institutional identity the Chinese and American museum had made through the curator’s welcome speech?(2)What is the difference in discourse expression process of institutional identity construction between Chinese and American museums?(3)What is the reference and improvement of Chinese museums in the identity construction and cultural communication.Based on corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis framework,firstly this paper carries out data analysis by Appraisal Theory,attitude resources and personal systems,and analyzes the keywords,identity words and indexes line in corpus.Then combined with cultural background to study the identity construction function of discourse,analyze the context of discourse from the political and economic level,and the influence of ideology on the construction of museum institution identity.Finally,combined with current affairs politics,it indicates the current construction of Chinese museum identity,the problems encountered in the worldwide cultural exchange and dissemination,and proposes corresponding measures.This paper has the following three points according to research:(1)American museum has established an affinity for public service organizations through the curator’s speech.The Chinese museum has established an authoritative cultural institution identity through the curator’s speech.(2)The American Museum Corpus effectively use the first and second person pronouns,a large number of affect resources,positive and negative attitudes and rich psychological process verbs,the discourse is characterized by audience-centered,institutional discourse reflects affinity.The Chinese corpus rarely uses affect resources and personal pronouns,including a completely positive attitude and a large number of material processes,which construct the image of an authoritative cultural institution that collects and displays artworks and serves professionals.(3)The research concludes that Chinese museums should learn from the institutional discourse patterns of advanced western museums in the process of institutional discourse construction,adopt the public demand-oriented,use personal pronouns and affect attitude resources in the discourse,to express the affinity of discourse,and change the relationship between the museum and the audience in the past time,and re-establish the intimate and equal interaction between the two sides.In the process of institutional discourse construction,American museums should also learn from Chinese construction model and pay more attention to the role of government in the process of institutional identity construction,so as to build a more authoritative institutional identity of museums.This paper also noticed that Chinese curator’s welcome speech shows a new development concept of disseminating scientific culture,close to the needs of the audience,and achieving the effectiveness of popular science.The Chinese museum is gradually turning to make the cultural relics more dignified and let the audience more dignified,a more open-minded institutional identity.