MILITARY DISCOURSE STUDIES IN CHINA

Abstract

The article presents an overview of military discourse studies and related notions in China over the last three decades. The author singles out and characterizes the stages of emergence and development of this research area and notes the tendency to activate these studies and to expand the scope of their objects and methods. Interest in this research area is associated with the modification of conflicts in the modern world: their participants use super modern technical means that allow waging information and commercial warfare on the global scale. The concept of the “military discourse” and the notions related to it were introduced in the scientific paradigm in China in the late 1980s. The first Chinese study considering military discourse in a systemic way was the monograph “Military Linguistics” (by Lui Ling). The 1990 works analyze the Old Chinese military discourse. General problems of military terminology and some means of their formation (abbreviation) were also studied at this time. Research made in the framework of discourse analysis refers to the early 21 st century. Exploration of the military discourse by Chinese linguists begins with the description and interpretation of the military text. Two stages can be clearly distinguished in this process: the stage of emergence (2010-2015) and the stage of development (from 2015 till now). At stage 2, scholars pass on to comprehensive polyaspect studies, when the research material covers mass media and government discourse, and the methods include methods of cognitive and corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, and interdisciplinary methods. In terms of translation studies and comparative analysis, the studies look mainly at English and Chinese military discourses. Materials of other languages are rarely involved in the study.