Construction And Deconstruction Of Chinese Hero’s Image By Western Media

As a symbol of soft power,hero’s image reflects a nation’s basic value goal and moral ideals.“Chinese hero” embodies the noble character of Chinese citizens and symbolizes a positive national image.The study of Chinese hero’s image can not only publicize positive images of Chinese heroes,enhance China’s discourse power and international communication strategies;it can also have an in-depth exploration of why the Western media deconstruct the image of Chinese heroes,thus reducing misunderstandings within the international community,and promote the exchanges and communication of values and cultures between China and the West.This research focuses on Western media’s reports on Chinese heroes during the48 years from 1972 to 2020,trying to explore the media image of Chinese heroes in Western media.This research is based on media image theory and employs Fairclough’s three-dimensional discourse analysis model as the research path,which analyzes the news text of Chinese hero from three levels: textual analysis,discursive practice analysis,and social practice analysis.At the level of textual analysis,the research employs content analysis,combined with corpus-based discourse analysis and semiotic rhetoric analysis.The integration of qualitative and quantitative analysis helps obtain more objective and comprehensive research results.Through content analysis,we can have an overview of the types of heroes involved in the news text,as well as their gender,nationality,the reports’ source country,and the release time.We can find that the image of Chinese heroes presented in the Western media has gone through the diachronic changes.With the help of corpus-based discourse analysis and semiotic rhetoric analysis,we can view the discourse strategy of Western media in constructing and deconstructing the image of Chinese heroes at each stage from the discourse characteristics of word frequency,subject words,and semiotic rhetoric.According to research findings,the construction of Chinese heroes’ image by Western media can be divided into four stages.The first stage,from 1972 to 1985,focused on the construction of modern revolutionary heroes and medical and charity heroes featured with “communist” characteristic.There was a distinct ideological opposition in discourse production during this period.At the second stage,from 1986 to 1996,the Western media began to construct international heroes as the cultural symbol out of identity with their own race,such as Canadian doctor Bethune,Chinese-American Bruce Lee,etc.From 1997 to 2009,the multiple images represented by Chinese local business elites,scientific and technological heroes,cultural and sports heroes and folk heroes entered the vision of Western media.In the last stage,from 2010 to 2020,Western media focused on the image of people’s heroes representing consensus justice and universal values.Western media also began to focus on the diverse construction of individual heroes and the in-depth exploration of heroic merits.As for the discursive practice analysis,the research mainly combines intertextuality with agenda-setting to explain the production mechanism of Chinese hero discourse.The media’s positioning and its evaluation of news value determine the final discourse text presented to the audience.The intertextuality embodies the reporting strategies of the Western media and further enriches the Western media’s production methods for Chinese hero’s media discourse.The deepest level of social practice analysis focuses on the factors that influence the construction and deconstruction of Chinese heroes by Western media,as well as the power relations and ideological factors implied in the media discourse of Chinese heroes.The ideology of Western media is closely related to Western values.Chinese hero’s media discourse reflects individualism,elitism,masculine hegemony,capital hegemony,commodity fetishism,and colonialism dominated by Western values.