La Comunicazione Politica del Sogno Cinese: Un'analisi Basata sul Corpus

The Chinese Dream has been among top buzzwords in recent years. First proposed by President Xi Jinping on 29 November, 2012, it is a guiding theory and ideology rather than a definite policy. It can be briefly summarized as “realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” (Xi, 2012) through the “Two 100s”: becoming a “moderately prosperous society” (xiaokang, 小康) by the CPC's 100th anniversary (2021), and realizing the modernization goal of becoming a fully developed nation by PRC's 100th anniversary (2049). Later Xi and the central government have “updated” the Chinese dream endowing it with global and universal significance, claiming that the pursuit of the Chinese dream will also benefit the rest of the world. However, for most people the Chinese Dream is never an explicit conception. The thesis will use the corpus analysis approach, combined with a critical discourse analysis, to interpret the rich connotations of the Chinese Dream according to Xi’s discourse in English from 2012 to 2016, a period in which the concept was mentioned most frequently. In comparison, it will also observe and discuss what it was like on Western media in the same period based on the corpus from the Financial Times as example. The results show that Xi’s dream did bring much discussion but has not received a very positive response as China expected. The thesis will then list the main reasons of such perception gap of the Chinese Dream from the perspective of the special historical and ideological contexts of the Chinese Dream.