“A Journey for Peace”: Spatial Metaphors in Nixon's 1972 “Opening to China”

Abstract

Richard Nixon's “opening to China” is regarded as one of the most significant moments of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. Through his rhetoric before, during, and after his visit to the People's Republic of China, the president moved from established metaphors of communist nations and peoples as “savage enemies” and descriptions of “Red China” as a nation “lost” to communism to a narrative that suggested openness and friendship. In this essay, we argue that Nixon's use of spatial, territorial, and orientational metaphors such as “journey for peace,” “open the door,” “bridge,” “wall,” “common ground,” and “close the gulf,” compounded with his physical presence in China, are key for understanding the force of his rhetoric during this shift in U.S. Cold War foreign policy. In discursively and politically opening transnational U.S.–China relations, Nixon weakened the polarized East–West ideological and geographic divide and provided a new vision of Cold War geopolitics.

Can space be conceptualized in a different way in political discourse? An extended application of Discourse Space Theory

“…Apart from the spatial constructions and metaphors that are often antagonistic and hegemonic (Leeman, 1995; Livio, 2015), there are spatial metaphors in political discourse through which collective identity is constructed and positive relationship fostered. Carney and Prasch (2017) investigate spatial metaphors in Nixon’s 1972 “Opening to China” rhetoric such as “journey for peace” “open the door” “bridge” “wall” “common ground,” and “close the gulf” and conclude that the alternative spatial conceptualization shifts presidential discourse from isolationism and containment toward inclusion and friendship. Ide (2017) finds through a study on environmental peace-building discourse that interest groups of cross-border environmental issues can make use of mutual ecological dependence across territorial borders to facilitate cooperation.…”

“…Similar terms include "warlike discourse" (López-López et al, 2014), "discourse of conflict and crisis" (Cap, 2021), "confrontational discourse" (Chiang, 2010), etc. Other scholars turn to the constructive side and study how language serves to inspire inclusion rather than exclusion, conciliation rather than conflict, and peace rather than war (Carney and Prasch, 2017;De Fina, 1995;Kampf, 2016;Schäffner and Wenden, 1995), as "pacifist discourse" (López-López et al, 2014), "peace discourse" (Behr, 2014;Gavriely-Nuri, 2015), "discourse of solidarity" (Kampf, 2016), etc, in the latter "strand" of political discourse studies. In view of Chilton and Schäffner (2002)'s demarcation of the two strands and the ample research in both of them, this paper studies cooperative discourse from the perspective of spatial conceptualization as possibly another genre of political communication in correspondence to conflictual discourse, which features the practice of negotiating common ground between two or more parties to seek for compromise and cooperation on specific issues or events.…”

The business of building a wall: Donald Trump’s rhetorical signature

“…Of relevance to our argument, Nixon also encountered a wall that was both literal and symbolic. While walking along the Great Wall of China, Nixon’s comment that it ‘had to be built by a great people’ used the Great Wall’s symbolic value to Chinese national identity to praise the country, understanding that while the Great Wall was ostensibly built to keep foreign invaders out, its construction and durability took on symbolic importance (Carney and Prasch, 2017: 654–655). These overarching metaphors used by presidents carry real consequences.…”

Avoiding “A Chain Reaction of Disaster”: A Reappraisal of the Eisenhower White House’s Handling of the 1954–1955 Quemoy Crisis

“…For example, William Newman () studied debates within the Kennedy and Johnson administrations regarding the contested China seat at the United Nations, hence touching upon Taiwan’s fate as a member of the international community. Likewise, Zoë Hess Carney and Allison M. Prasch () allude to Taiwan’s political fortunes in their analysis of President Richard M. Nixon’s historic 1972 opening to China, much as Jeffrey Kimball () mentions Taiwan in passing within his reading of the Nixon Doctrine. The Quemoy crisis addressed herein hovers in the background to Michael Gordon Jackson’s () postrevisionist critique of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s nuclear rhetoric during and after the Korean War, much as Steven Casey () nods at Taiwan’s backstage roles in the Truman White House’s Korean War–era publicity efforts.…”