A Corpus-Based Analysis of Discourses on the Belt and Road Initiative: Corpora and the Belt and Road Initiative

ISBN-13: 9789811996184 / Angielski / Miękka / 2023 / 130 str.

Muhammad Afzaal

Opis

This book adopts a corpus-based critical discourse analysis approach and examines a corpus of newspaper articles from Pakistani and Indian publications to gain comparative insights into the ideological construction of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) within news discourses. This book contributes to the works on perceptions of BRI in English newspapers of India and Pakistan.  A multi-billion-dollar project of BRI or the "One Belt One Road” (OBOR), CPEC symbolizes a vision for regional revival under China's economic leadership and clout. Propelled by the Chinese Premier’s dream to revive the Chinese economy as well as to restructure and catalyze infrastructural development in Asia, BRI is aimed at connecting Asia via land and sea routes with Europe, Africa, and the Middle Eastern states. 

Spis treści

Chapter 1 Introduction 

1.1 Research Background 

1.2 Research Rationale 

1.3 Belt and Road Initiative

1.3.1 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) 

1.3.2 BRI and China’s Neighboring Countries

1.4 Significance of the Study

1.5 Objectives of the Research  

1.6 Research Questions 

1.8 Summary 

Chapter 2 Review of Literature 

2.1 Studies on Critical Discourse Analysis 

2.1.1 Language, Ideology and Media Power 

2.2 Studies on Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics 

2.2.1 Critical Discourse Analysis 

2.2.2 Faircloughian CDA and conceptualization of power 

2.2.3 Corpus Linguistics 

2.3 Studies on CPEC and BRI  

2.3.1 Pak-China Friendship: Iron Brothers 

2.4 Topography of China Pakistan Economic Corridor 

2.5 One Belt One Road (OBOR)  

2.6 Gwadar Port

2.7 Summary  

Chapter 3 Theoretical Framework and Methodology 

3.1 Overview of CDA and CL 

3.2 Theoretical Framework of the Present Study

3.2.1 Fairclough Three-dimension Model  

3.2.2 Corpus-based CDA 

3.2.3 Merger of CDA and CL 

3.3 Procedures of Data Collection 

3.3.1 Corpus for the Study 

3.3.1.1. Pakistan English Newspaper Corpus (PENC) 

3.3.1.2 Indian English Newspaper Corpus (IENC) 

3.4 Software used in the Study 

3.5 Keywords and Corpus Techniques 

3.6 Summary of Chapter 

Chapter 4 Perceptions of China Pakistan Economic Corridor and Belt and Road Initiative 

4.1 Representation of CPEC in PENC by Frequency items 

4.2 Representation of CPEC in PENC by Keywords  

4.3 Collocation of ‘Iron brothers’ and China- Pakistan Alliance 

4.4 N-Grams of Targeted words 

4.5 Bigrams of Top Twenty Keywords

4.6 Collocates and Concordance lines

4.7 Top Twenty Collocates in PNEC 

4.7.1 Collocates of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CEPC) 

4.7.2   Collocates of CPEC with T-score 

4.8 Representation of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) 

4.9 Concordance Lines  

4.9.1 Concordance Lines of “CPEC” 

4.9.2 Concordance Lines of “BRI” 

4.9.3 Concordance lines of ‘China’ 

4.9.4 Analysis of Selected Keywords pertinent to CPEC 

4.9.5 Concordance lines of “we” 

4.10 Summary of the Chapter 

Chapter 5 Perception of BRI and CPEC in Indian Newspapers 

5.1 Introduction 

5.3 Key terms against BNC in IENC 

5.4 Biagram of Top Twenty Keywords against BNC 

5.5 Concordances of CPEC in Indian sub corpus 

5.6 Modifiers of “China” in Indian Corpus 

5.7 Concordances of “Threat” in Indian Sub-corpus 

5.7.1 Application of “Threat” as a noun co-occurring with modifiers

5.8 Concordances of ‘We” 

5.8.1 Verbs Collocating with “we”  

5.9 Concordance of ‘China’ 

5.10 Keywords Against BNC in Indian Sub-corpus 

5.11 Representation of BRI by Co-occurring Adverbs 

5.12 Summary 

Chapter 6 Discussions: Similarities and Differences of BRI and CPEC in Media Discourses of 

India and Pakistan 

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Comparison of Keyness of PENC and IENC against BNC 

6.3 Belt and Road Reshaping the Future 

6.4 Geo-Strategic Perspective 

6.5 Pak-India Relations 

6.6 Indian Influence on CPEC

6.7 The US Factor in Discourses of PENC and INEC 

6.8 The China Pakistan Economic Corridor of the BRI Concept, Context and Assessment 

6.9 Debunking Condemnation on CPEC

Chapter 7 Conclusion 

7.1 Key Findings 

7.2 Limitations 

7.3 Future Directions 

8. References 

O autorze

Dr. Muhammad Afzaal joined the Institute of Corpus Studies and Applications, Shanghai International Studies University, China as an associate professor after gaining his Ph.D. at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and completing an extended research fellowship at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. His work experience also includes seven years of teaching at Foundation University Islamabad, Pakistan. His Ph.D. research comprised a corpus-based analysis of discourses on the Belt and Road Initiative. Afzaal’s research interests include topics in the areas of corpus linguistics, discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, translation studies, and the integration of language sciences with NLP and big data. He is the guest editor of his two special issues of SSCI-indexed journals such as Frontiers in Psychology, Frontiers in Bid Data, and Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. He has published extensively in SSCI, Scopus and ESCI Indexed International journals such as Critical Discourse Studies, Corpora, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Discourse Studies, Asia Pacific Business Review, Critical Arts, Chinese Journal of Communication, Asian Journal of Communications, Frontiers in Psychology, Australian Review of Applied Linguistics and Asian Journal of Comparative Politics.