The Study On Rhetorical Strategies In Smart City Discourse In China Daily

Nowadays,as a new type of urban model,the smart city has attracted much attention from academic scholars and city practitioners.Many scholars have done a lot of related studies on smart cities from the perspective of urban construction.However,few people examine the construction of the smart city image from the perspective of discourse analysis.As an important aspect of a smart city,smart city discourse not only defines the concept of the smart city,but also promotes the image of the smart city.Among them,newspaper,as a representative of mass media,plays a pivotal role in smart city publicity.Therefore,this study takes the smart city discourse in China Daily as the study object.With the rhetorical strategy system of Connor et al.and Burke’s identification strategies as a reference,based on Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals theory and Burke’s "Identification" theory,this paper conducts an in-depth study on the rhetorical strategy of the smart city discourse in China Daily,especially on the distribution characteristics of the rhetorical appeals,and the realization of identification strategy.This study takes 77 news reports on smart cities as the corpus.The report topics cover five aspects: economy,governance,transportation,public health,and tourism.The smart city discourse of China Daily not only aims to inform the audience but also makes every effort to make people accept what it reports.As a special kind of discourse,the smart city discourse of China Daily is actually rhetorical and its essence is persuasive.In order to achieve persuasiveness,news writers use different rhetorical strategies in their discourse to construct the image of a smart city Through the rhetorical analysis of news reports,this study has found:(1)The rhetorical strategy used in the smart city discourse in China Daily can be categorized into two aspects: rhetorical appeal strategy and rhetorical "identification" strategy.(2)The results of the application of the rhetorical appeals system to 77 smart city news reports in China Daily show that all three major types of appeals are used: rational,credibility,and affective.However,the extent of the use of these appeals in the smart city discourse in China Daily is not equal.As the study shows,the writers of China Daily choose,for the most part,to persuade the audience through the use of rational appeal.As a matter of fact,in some fields,it is used almost twice as much as credibility and affective appeals combined.As far as the use of individual appeals is concerned,we can conclude that the most extensively used rational appeals are the ones that provide the audience with the beneficial results or consequences of a particular smart city program(R8),and those appeals that provide the reader with information about the authoritative organization(R12).The credibility of the organization is often achieved when the writers demonstrate an appreciation of the city’s past actions(C14)and more often by stressing citizen-city shared interests and goals(C15).Among the affective appeals,the emotional appeal to the citizen’s views and attitudes,which in news reports takes the form of a direct description of the advantages of a smart city stands out(A18)as the most frequently used individual appeal.(3)Finally,in order to get readers’ identification and then induce their actions to achieve the rhetors’ motives,different identification strategies are adopted in these 77 news samples.They are identification by sympathy,identification by antithesis,and identification by inaccuracy.By introducing Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals and Kenneth Burke’s Identification theory,the present study opens up new possibilities for the study of news discourse and helps people to understand how news persuades their audience by resorting to rhetorical appeals and identification.On the other hand,this study can enrich not only study objects of rhetorical strategies,but also study methods of news like the smart city.In terms of practical significance,this essay can help relevant practitioners better use rhetorical strategies to realize the goal of constructing the image of a smart city and persuading the audience to accept what they report.