Corpus-Based Diachronic Analysis on the Representations of China’s Poverty Alleviation in People’s Daily

Abstract

Abstract Poverty, as a global issue, challenges the sustainable development of the world. In the past 40 years, China has made great achievements in poverty alleviation which arouses the media interest across the world. This article examines how People’s Daily reported China’s poverty alleviation from the beginning of China’s reform and opening up in 1978–2020, particularly with regard to the interaction between discourse and social practice. Through corpus-based discourse analysis, it has found that, first, the number of the reports changed with the process of poverty alleviation and the national policies. Second, it has shown differences in lexical choices in different periods, with an overall shift from the agricultural reform and economic investment to education, culture and ecology poverty alleviation; third, China’s involvement in the world’s poverty alleviation causes changed from initially seeking help to gradually becoming a leading voice calling for cooperation and offering aid for other countries. The findings reveal that there is a strong correlation between the discourse and social change: the social context is echoed in the discourse features in different periods; meanwhile, news discourse also plays a positive role in publicizing the Chinese government’s achievements and promoting the process of poverty alleviation.