This study centers on, with the aid of Kenneth Burke’s Rhetoric “Identification”, a rhetorical analysis of the English works by Chinese leaders throughout three different periods (1960-2017), namely Selected Works of Mao Tse Dung (Volumes 1-5), Selected Wo rks of Deng Xiaoping (Volumes 1-3) and The Governance of China (Volumes 1-2) published by Foreign Languages Press via Docuscope3.40. The English translation of Chinese political discourse in these three periods (1961-1965; 1984-1994; 2012-2017) displays a high degree of commonalities, of which Institutional Register, Academic Register , and Reporting rank the most elevated, yet Personal Relations, Interactivity, Narrative, Emotion , and Directives the lowest. Therefore, it is suggested that the translator adopts rhetorical appeals of “Identification by sympathy” and “Identification by antithesis” to relate with the rhetorical audience. The rhetorical characteristic of The Governance of China I and II in the new era distinctively exhibit a higher percentage of Institutional Register and Academic Register . Still, the lower ratio in Reasoning, Emotion , and Subjective Register demands “Argumentation” and the rhetorical appeal of “Identification by inaccuracy” to achieve the communicative effects of the English translation of Chinese texts with a political agenda.
KeywordsChinese Political Discourse TranslationIdentificationRhetorical FeaturesArgumentationRhetorical Appeals
Baumtrog, M. D. (2018). Reasoning and Arguing, Dialectically and Dialogically, among Individual and Multiple Participants. Argumentation, 32, 77-98. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-017-9420-3
Bayram, F. (2010). Ideology and Political Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Erdogan’s Political Speech. ARECLS, 7, 23-40.
Beasley, J. P., & Selzer, J. (2019). Present at the Creation: Kenneth Burke at the First Cccc. Rhetoric Review, 38, 39-49. https://doi.org/10.1080/07350198.2019.1549406
Bielsa, E. (2009). Globalization, Political Violence and Translation: An Introduction. In E. Bielsa, & C. Hughes (Eds.), Globalization, Political Violence and Translation (pp. 1-21). Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230235410_1
Burke, K. (1950). A Rhetoric of Motives. Prentice-Hall.
Burke, K. (1969). A Grammar of Motives. University of California Press.
Burke, K. (1973). Rhetorical Situation. In L. Thayer (Ed.), Communication: Ethical and Moral Issues (pp. 263-275). Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.
Capone, A. (2010). Barack Obama’s South Carolina Speech. Journal of Pragmatics, 42, 2964-2977. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.06.011
Carlos, C. (2009). Translation as Rhetoric: Edward Jerningham’s “Impenitence” (1800). Rhetoric Review, 28, 335-351. https://doi.org/10.1080/07350190903183390
Chen, M. (2014). Formulating New Concepts, Categories and Expressions That Are Acceptable to Both Chinese and Foreign Cultures in the Translations of the Party’s and Government’s Documents. Chinese Translators Journal, 3, 9-10.
Chilton, P., & Schäffner, C. (2002). Politics as Text and Talk: Analytic Approaches to Political Discourse. John Benjamins Publishing.
Connor, U. M. (1996). C ontrastive Rhetoric: Cross-Cultural Aspects of Second Language Writing. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524599
Crowley, S., & Hawhee, D. (2008). Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. Person Education.
Danni, Y. (2020). A Genre Approach to the Translation of Political Speeches Based on a Chinese-Italian-English Trilingual Parallel Corpus. Sage Open, vol. 10 . https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244020933607
Fairclough, N. (2006). Genres in Political Discourse. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics (pp. 32-38). Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/b0-08-044854-2/00719-7
Fulkerson, R. (2007). Review of Appeals in Modern Rhetoric: An Ordinary-Language Approach, by M. J. Killingsworth. Rhetoric Review, 26, 218-221. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20176784
Gill, A. M., & Whedbee, K. (1997). Rhetoric. In T. A. van Dijk, A. M. Gill, & K. Whedbee (Eds.), Discourse as Structure and Process: Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction (pp. 157-184). SAGE Publications Ltd. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446221884.n6
Helberg, A., Poznahovska, M., Ishizaki, S., Kaufer, D., Werner, N., & Wetzel, D. (2018). Teaching Textual Awareness with Docuscope: Using Corpus-Driven Tools and Reflection to Support Students’ Written Decision-making. Assessing Writing, 38, 40-45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2018.06.003
Kaufer, D. S., & Parry-Giles, S. J. (2017). Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign Memoirs: A Study in Contrasting Identities. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 103, 7-32. https://doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2016.1221529
Killingsworth, M. J. (2005). Rhetorical Appeals: A Revision. Rhetoric Review, 24, 249-263. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327981rr2403_1
Kjeldsen, E. (2018). Rhetorical Audience Studies and Reception of Rhetoric: Exploring Audience Empirically. Palgrave Macmillan.
Klimes, O., & Marinelli, M. (2018). Introduction: Ideology, Propaganda, and Political Discourse in the Xi Jinping Era. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 23, 313-322. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11366-018-9566-3
Lempert, M., & Silverstein, M. (2012). Creatures of Politics: Media, Message, and the American Presidency. Indiana University Press.
Li, J., & Li, S. (2015). New Trends of Chinese Political Translation in the Age of Globalisation. Perspectives, 23, 424-439. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676x.2014.983530
Li, T., & Pan, F. (2020). Reshaping China’s Image: A Corpus-Based Analysis of the English Translation of Chinese Political Discourse. Perspectives, 29, 354-370. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676x.2020.1727540
Ochs, E. (1979). Planned and Unplanned Discourse. In G. Talmy, (Ed.), Discourse and Syntax (pp. 51-80). BRILL. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004368897_004
Okulska, U., & Cap, P. (2010). Chapter 1. Analysis of Political Discourse: Landmarks, Challenges and Prospects. In U. Okulska, & P. Cap (Eds.), Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture (pp. 3-20). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.36.03oku
Overall, J. (2017). Kenneth Burke and the Problem of Sonic Identification. Rhetoric Review, 36, 232-243. https://doi.org/10.1080/07350198.2017.1318348
Pan, F., & Wang, B. (2021). Is Interpreting of China’s Political Discourse Becoming More Target-Oriented? A Corpus-Based Diachronic Comparison between the 1990s and the 2010s. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction /International Journal of Translation, 67, 222-244. https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00215.pan
Pérez-González, L. (2012). Translation, Interpreting and the Genealogy of Conflict. Journal of Language and Politics, 11, 169-184. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.11.2.01int
Qian, D., & Kaufer, D. (2017). A Rhetorical Approach to Translation: The Chinese ‘Report on the Work of the Government’ as a Case Study. Translation Spaces, 6, 270-290. https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.6.2.05qia
Randour, F., Perrez, J., & Reuchamps, M. (2020). Twenty Years of Research on Political Discourse: A Systematic Review and Directions for Future Research. Discourse & Society, 31, 428-443. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926520903526
Reyes, A. (2015). Building Intimacy through Linguistic Choices, Text Structure and Voices in Political Discourse. Language & Communication, 43, 58-71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2015.05.002
Schäffner, C. (2004). Political Discourse Analysis from the Point of View of Translation Studies. Journal of Language and Politics, 3, 117-150. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.3.1.09sch
Tang, Y. (2018). Research on Collocation Conflicts and Countermeasures in C-English Translation of Official Documents. The Commercial Press.
Tindale, C. W. (2015). The Philosophy of Argument and Audience Reception. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781316181645
Trupej, J. (2017). Strategies for Translating Racist Discourse about African-Americans into Slovenian. Babel. Revue internationale de la traduction /International Journal of Trans lation, 63, 322-342. https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.63.3.02tru
van Dijk, T. A. (1997). What Is Political Discourse Analysis? Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 11, 11-52. https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.11.03dij
Wang, J. (2019). Moving between Dialectical Reasonableness and Rhetorical Effectiveness—An Interview with Professor Fran H. van Eemeren. Contemporary Rhetoric, No. 1, 21-25.
Wylie (2020). How Long Should a Sentence Be?
Yu, H., & Wu, C. (2018). Images of the Chinese Government Projected in Its Work Reports: Transformation through Translation. Lingua, 214, 74-87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2018.09.002
Zhou, Z. (2020). C-E Translation of Official Documents Must Take into Account Both Accuracy and Acceptance—An Interview with Chen Mingming, a Foreign Language Expert of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Chinese Translators Journal, No. 4 , 92-100.