Cultural hierarchies in the discursive representations of China in the Chronicle of Higher Education

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a discourse analysis of the Chronicle of Higher Education publications about China in 2011 and 2012. Drawing on postcolonial appropriations of governmentality to frame the discussion of globalization as the context of the study, the author analyzes the stylistic, rhetorical, and semantic strategies used in the newspaper to portray China in relation to the United States and the West. The author demonstrates how the US higher education media acknowledge the accomplishments of China in education, yet construct it as the culturally inferior Other, reinforcing the dominance of Western norms and practices in higher education. The author argues that the Chronicle’s placing of China in a dichotomous position to the West is symptomatic of a larger process of neoliberal globalization, which, in the case of the United States, is also preoccupied with preserving the centrality of the white, Western heritage in diverse society.