Research On The Move And Generic Structure Potential In The English Translation Of The Regular Press Conference Of The Ministry Of Foreign Affairs Of China

The regular press conference of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China is an important platform to convey China’s position to domestic and foreign countries.This study attempts to analyze the speeches of the regular press conferences of China’s Foreign Affairs Ministry from the perspective of genre analysis,aiming to explore how the spokespersons achieve their communicative purposes.The author selects 56 spokesperson’s discourses from the official English version website of the China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2018 to 2020 to build a corpus of a total of 12244 words.Based on the Swales’ model of CARS and Bell’s description of the macro-structure of news stories,this study conducts qualitative and quantitative analysis on spokespersons’ discourses.Firstly,the study finds that the discourses of the spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs can be divided into seven moves: Background Introduction;Question Proposing;Describing Current Situation;Showing Attitude or Position;Providing Solutions;Expressing Hope;Comment.Secondly,Ant Conc and SPSS are used to calculate the frequencies and sequences of the seven steps,from which,the GSP(generic structure potential)of the spokespersons’ discourses is analyzed.Among the seven moves,QP is the obligatory move;BI,DCS and SAP are conventional moves;PS,EH and C are optional moves.And the occurrence of the seven moves follows some certain sequences.Finally,the spokespersons’ discourses are divided into three categories:Comment;Attitude or Position;Details of Event.It is found that among the seven moves,the move Showing Attitude or Position and the move Describing the Current Situation take the highest percentages in the three categories of spokespersons’ discourses.Therefore,through the analysis of the proportion of seven moves in the spokespersons’ discourses,it is concluded that showing China’s diplomatic principles and attitudes is the main purpose of the regular press conferences of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China.This research combines genre research with the discourse of spokespersons,which expands the field of genre research.Meanwhile,this study also provides a new perspective for readers to understand the spokesperson’s discourse.