Puppets, Compatriots, and Souls in Heaven: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Chiang Kai-shek’s Early Wartime Rhetoric

LAMS, Lutgard and Wei-lun LU. Puppets, Compatriots, and Souls in Heaven: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Chiang Kai-shek’s Early Wartime Rhetoric. Journal of Current Chinese Affairs. Hamburg, Germany: GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, 2018, vol. 47, No 2, p. 87-112. ISSN 1868-1026. Available from: https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/186810261804700204.

Basic information

Original name

Puppets, Compatriots, and Souls in Heaven: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Chiang Kai-shek’s Early Wartime Rhetoric

Authors

LAMS, Lutgard (56 Belgium) and Wei-lun LU (158 Taiwan, guarantor, belonging to the institution)

Edition

Journal of Current Chinese Affairs, Hamburg, Germany, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, 2018, 1868-1026

---

Other information

Language

English

Type of outcome

Článek v odborném periodiku

Field of Study

60203 Linguistics

Country of publisher

Germany

Confidentiality degree

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

References:

URL

RIV identification code

RIV/00216224:14640/18:00110058

Organization unit

Language Centre

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/186810261804700204

Keywords in English

Taiwan; Chiang Kai-shek; authoritarian discourse; discursive strategies; leadership discourse

Tags

International impact, Reviewed

---

Abstract

V originále

The study adopts a critical discourse analysis approach to Chiang Kai-shek’s (CKS) internal nationalist propaganda and authoritarian discourse practices, investigating his New Year and National Day speeches in the 1950s. Authoritarian characteristics are evident in strategies such as legitimation, reification, or myth-making, in the antagonist categorisation of Self versus Other, in Self-glorification and the idolisation of the dead, in the hegemonic creation of commonality and unity, and in the metaphorical conceptualisation of reality. Patterns of idolising the dead serve to impose and legitimise CKS’s worldview among his citizens. Another pattern is CKS’s invention of imaginary compatriots within the “enslaved China” waiting for the best time to overthrow the “bandits’” rule. Reference to these imaginary agents indirectly presents to his audience a false but better impression of the Self, and a dimmer view of the communist bandits. A third pattern is CKS’s metaphorical use of language, such as references to communist China as a puppet regime of Russia.