A Study of American News Reports on the Belt and Road Initiative from the Perspective of “Language Game†Constructivism

Abstract

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a global development plan proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, has attracted widespread attention in China and abroad since it was first proposed. To explore attitudes of the U.S. press towards the initiative and views of China illustrated in these media, the present work adopts Karin Fierke’s “Language Game†Constructivism to study news reports on the BRI collected from The New York Times. Qualitative and quantitative approaches are combined to illustrate language strategies used by the media with the help of corpus software. The study shows that derogatory terms and five language game strategies have been used to report on the initiative to discredit China’s image and the initiative from different angles. Overall negative and suspicious attitudes illustrated by the press can be identified. The analysis shows that strategies adopted by the American side for slander are based on differences in collective memories and knowledge shared by China and the United States. The cultural gap between these two nations has created different national ideological models, which has led to varied identities and interests in the international system. The present research is intended to enrich the application of “language game†constructivism to news discourse by combining “language games†with image construction. More importantly, the author expects the results of this study to help the Chinese side respond to future policy misunderstandings.