Media Image Construction Of Confucius Institute And Alliance Francaise

Since the first Confucius Institute(CI)was established in Seoul,South Korea in2004,550 CIs have blossomed around the world nowadays,becoming an important platform for Chinese language teaching and cultural communication.However,in recent years,CIs have been questioned in certain Western countries and considered a tool to spread Chinese political influence,facing the predicament of being shut down abroad.Confronted with severe challenges,CIs press ahead with reforms,transforming the operational model via non-governmental foundation and optimizing the cultural dissemination mechanism,in order to better serve Chinese diplomacy and help shape China’s positive national image worldwide.As the first language and culture promotion institution,the Alliance Fran?aise(AF)is widely recognized for its high-quality French language courses and diversified cultural activities,providing a model for countries to carry out language and cultural exchanges.Although there exist a large number of studies concerning CI at home and abroad,studies on media coverage of CI and AF remain few.The first CI in Africa and North America were both established around2005,with nearly the same long time of development,and AF have founded branches very early in the two continents,hence,the exploration of the two institutes’media image construction in Africa and North America may provide useful enlightenment for CI’s sustainable development and the improvement of its image overseas,making CI a vital platform to tell China’s stories well to the world.Based on the theory of Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA)and Fairclough’s three-dimensional model,and with the assistance of corpus analysis software Ant Conc,the thesis analyzes news coverage of CI and AF in African and North American media from three stages:description,interpretation and explanation,exploring differences and similarities in the two institutions’media image as well as reasons behind.All the news reports are selected from the database Lexis Advance~?,with a time range from January2018 to January 2022,reaching a total number of 638.The thesis finds that in the description stage,African media pay close attention to CI’s role in providing language and cultural resources,promoting economic and educational cooperation and enhancing intergovernmental exchanges;while when reporting AF,the media focus more on its role in stimulating cultural diversity and deepening education and artistic cooperation.In North America,although certain reports support CI’s development abroad,most reporters regard it as instrument of Chinese government to infiltrate political influence and undermine academic freedom,whereas AF keeps its positive image as bridge to strengthen language and cultural interactions.In the interpretation stage,it turns out that negative reports on CIs are more likely to employ semi-specific or unidentified sources,which partly deteriorates their credibility and reflects the ideological slander of CIs by Western countries with stronger international discourse power.Meanwhile,the proportion of indirect discourse is higher in news coverage of CI than that of AF,which reveals more clearly reporters’supportive or questioning attitude to the Chinese institute.In the explanation stage,positive image of CI and AF in African media are inseparable from the increasing political and economic collaboration between their host countries and Africa.In addition,different cultural contexts between China and France lead to the two institutes’varying relations with their government in African news.In North America,the negative reports on CI on the one hand stem from different political systems in China and Western countries,the growing competition on comprehensive national strength as well as trade frictions between China and the U.S.On the other hand,they are closely related to the differences in cultural values between China and North American countries.To sum up,this thesis enriches the existing research scope of CDA by critically analyzing the two institutions’media image constructed in Africa and North America,and helps provide a reference for CI’s long-term sustainable development abroad,so that the institute can better play its role in enhancing language and cultural exchanges and promoting Chinese national image as well.