2017 年 91 巻 p. 83-102
This study analyzes reports on the National Party Congress（ from the 13th
to the 18th） of China in the Yomiuri Shimbun and the Asahi Shimbun. Two categories
of reports,“ articles on the opening of the Party Congress” and“ a serial
article on the National Party Congress” are examined using Fairclough’s method
of genre analysis.
This study examined how “genre chains” and “genre mixing,” leading to
discourse over China’s one-party system, have changed over time. The Yomiuri
Shimbun and the Asahi Shimbun, which are said to have different political positions,
show the same tendency.
First,“ genre chains” from“ official documents” to“ expository arguments”
was confirmed in the articles on the “keynote political report” of the Party
Congress. It showed that the newspaper emphasized how to explain the report
instead of the report itself. In an “explanatory discussion” of a “keynote political
report,” there is a tendency to combine various genres such as“ official document,”“
interview,”“ news story,” etc. into new“ formats.” Due to this“ genre
mixing,” the functions of the original genres and the texts using them change.
Second, in the series of articles on the National Party Congress, the main
genre gradually changes from“ argument” to“ narrative.” More stories and episodes
were used to express the conflict between the one-party system and the
market economy, and the detailed description of facts increased in the “narra tive” genre. Along with these changes, the facts picked up in articles changed
from “reference material” to “grounds of an argument.” The author argued
that the above tendency amplified the risk that specific logic could become
fixed and the exclusion of the possibility of constructing other logic. Such a tendency
is presumed to be related to the lack of diversity of discussions about
Chinese society in recent years.