A Comparative Study Of The Construction Of Chinese And American University’ Institutional Identities In University Website Introduction From The Perspective Of Discourse-Historical Approach

As an effective promotion medium,the university’s official introduction webpage is an official and direct means for people to gain an impression of the institution.Much as many features in common,each university has its own unique institutional identity reflected in the university introduction,especially in universities with different cultural backgrounds.Therefore,this study intends to make a comparative study of Chinese and American university introduction webpages so as to reveal the identities constructed in these introductions,contributing to the construction of positive institutional identities for the universities in our country.The present study adopts the research methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis and takes the English official university introduction webpages of the top 20 Chinese and the top 20 American Universities with reference to the QS World University Rankings 2022 as research data.Based on the theoretical framework of the Discourse-Historical Approach,a detailed analysis of the English introduction webpages of the 40 institutions is conducted from three levels,that is thematic content at the macro level,discursive strategies at the medium level,and linguistic representation at the micro level.It attempts to compare the institutional identities constructed in the introduction webpages between Chinese and American universities,and then explores how the discursive strategies from DHA and specific linguistic representations are applied to the construction of the university’s institutional identities from the discourse level.Lastly,the major causes for the similarities and differences in constructing various identities between Chinese and American universities will also be illustrated from the social and cultural aspects behind the introduction texts.The study aims to examine the following three research questions:(1)What are the similarities and differences between institutional identities constructed in Chinese and American university introduction webpages?(2)How these institutional identities are constructed in Chinese and American university introduction webpages through the use of discursive strategies of DHA?(3)What are the major causes for the similarities and differences in the construction of these identities between Chinese and American universities?The following results are reached.(1)Chinese and American universities have constructed institutional identities in their introduction webpages from five dimensions including unique status,research capability,individual development,social responsibility and global influence,thus constructing the identities as the unique status bearer,academic capability researcher,individual development cultivator,social responsibility assumer and global exchange facilitator.However,Chinese and American universities present different emphases and features when constructing these identities.While both of them lay similar emphasis on the dimension of research capability,the Chinese university introduction webpage prefers to construct its identities from the dimensions of unique status and social responsibility and the American university presents more tendency to the dimensions of individual development and global influence in their introduction webpages.(2)Based on the discursive strategies of DHA,five discursive strategies as well as the different linguistic representations are employed to construct various institutional identities.However,different strategies play different roles in constructing various identities.Also,the differences could be found in the employment of specific linguistic realizations under these strategies.The analysis indicates the strategy of nomination often employs self-referential words to construct five dimensions of identity by referring to or naming the university itself.Combined with the strategy of nomination,the strategy of predication highlights the quality and nature of a university through the linguistic forms of positive predicates and comparisons to construct five institutional identities.The strategy of argumentation often realized by the use of topoi is applied to reflect the institutional identities from unique status,social responsibility and the strength in research capability and individual development.Through linguistic devices such as direct and indirect quotation,the perspectivation strategy is commonly applied to reflect the identity of social responsibility and academic research of the institution.The intensification strategy is often used to consolidate the five institutional identities constructed through the linguistic representations of parallelism and the present progressive.(3)By exploring the major causes for the similarities and differences in the construction of various identities between Chinese and American university introductions,it is the similar attributes and functions of the university that lead to constructing similar identities between them.From the perspectives of social and cultural factors,their different emphases in constructing various identities are mainly attributed to three aspects:distinct collectivistic-oriented and individual-oriented thinking patterns,different ideas of Chinese patriotism and American multiculturalism and differentiated perceptions of distance power quoted from Hofstede’s Value Dimensions.The present study expands the research scope related to institutional identities from the perspective of the Discourse-Historical Approach on the one hand.On the other hand,by comparing the institutional identities and exploring the construction of institutional identity discourse,it provides references for Chinese universities to construct positive institutional identities,contributing to further promoting their publicity at home and abroad and enhancing international influence.