The Discursive Construction of National Image —A Case Study of People’s Daily Online’s Reports on Beijing Winter Olympics

Abstract

As the most influential sports event in the world, Olympic Games have provided an important opportunity to promote international communication. China has been recognized by the international community for hosting Beijing Winter Olympics successfully, which also has promoted the construction of China's image. Based on discourse-historic approach and combined with corpus techniques, this article attempts to analyze the discursive strategies adopted by Chinese media People's Daily Online on the construction of China's image from the perspective of keyword, collocation and concordance lines. The strategies of perspectivization, nomination and prediction of discourse-historical approach (DHA) have manifested China as a peace-loving, responsible, environment protection, open, fair and cooperative country to the world. The results of this paper have enriched the study of national image from the perspective of linguistics, and have provided reference for the construction of China's image and the study of discourse construction.