Linguistic creativity in the implementation of the patriotic rhetoric in Chinese media discourse

Bai Syue Postgraduate Student, Department of Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, Far Eastern Federal University 690922, Russia, Primorsky Krai, Vladivostok City, Ajax village, No. 10 baix8768@163.com

In the management

Linguocreativity in a broad sense is considered as a speech activity reflecting deep mental processes behind the external manifestations of creativity at the verbal level. According to N. Chomsky, linguocreativity is an innate ability of a person to process linguistic experience, the ability to generate infinitely many new speech utterances based on models of a given language ^{[10, p.55]}. In a more specific sense, linguistic creativity is a speech strategy in various types of discourse. Linguocreativity, characteristic not only of artistic discourse, but also of scientific discourse, is realized through metaphor, metonymy, language play, allusion and other linguistic expressive means. As a result of linguistic creative activity, new unexpected combinations are created, heuristic associations and meanings arise, the semantics of language units are supplemented with new shades of meaning.

The relevance of the research topic is due to the significance of studying linguistic reflection on the topic of patriotism in Chinese mass media discourse, especially in today's turbulent era. The media act as a formation of public consciousness and values. The living language of the media, whose main functions are informative and emotional, has a noticeable effect on stimulating patriotism in the life of society. The language of mass media is a subsystem in which there are certain sets of linguistic-stylistic properties and features ^{[4, p.94]}. In order to realize the emotional function of the language of the media and to induce a response from the readership, journalists resort to the use of creative language tools. The language of the media is not homogeneous. It contains two levels: verbal and audiovisual. This study analyzes the ways of manifestation of linguocreativity in the implementation of the rhetoric of patriotism in Chinese electronic print media at the verbal level.

To achieve the research goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:

1) identify key tools in linguocreative activity in order to implement the rhetoric of patriotism in the Chinese media;

2) as part of the implementation of the rhetoric of patriotism in the discourse of the Chinese media, to reveal the meaning of parallelism and homogeneous members; to substantiate the situation of the use of military metaphor as a linguocreative mechanism; to identify the regularity of the use of four-syllable words in reflecting the ideas of solidarity and the image of the great overcoming;

3) explain the combined use of the found tools. 

The Chinese media in Chinese are used as the material for the study: "The People's Daily", "The Xinhua News Agency", "The Qiushi", "The Guangming Daily" and others. The focus of these leading Chinese media is different, each of them has its own advantage. Among them, the main influence inside China is "The People's Daily." The most important main directions of the country's policy, economic issues and directions of social development are covered in the "People's Daily", which testifies to the authority and importance of this publication. 104 fragments of discourse have been selected from this material, realizing the discursive reflection of patriotic themes.

The specifics of Chinese patriotism

The public life of any state is characterized by active discussions about patriotism. Patriotism as a socio-political and philosophical category includes a fairly wide range of both natural manifestations of love for the motherland and constructed "patriotic projects", from extreme forms bordering on nationalism to spiritual and moral social behavioral guidelines ^{[9, p.24]}. Patriotism is one of the key and basic values in the system of Chinese socialism. The word "patriotism" is translated into Chinese as "" and consists of three morphemes: "?" (love; love; cherish; get used to), "?" (country, Homeland, patronymic) and "" (as -ism, denoting certain views and ideas). Thus, the Chinese word "" denotes the ideology of devotion and love for one's homeland and patronymic. 

The concept of PATRIOTISM is represented by a multifaceted education, its content consists of a conceptual core, including information about the form and essence of patriotism, as well as an emotional and evaluative component reflecting the emotions and feelings of citizens. It is important that this concept is historically changeable, and its content depends on socio-historical conditions and events. 

In the Chinese language picture of the world, the concept of PATRIOTISM evokes many associations. In the linguistic consciousness of the Chinese people's patriotism is often associated with the expression: "" (the unity of the Motherland), "" (Chinese nation), "" (to take care of his country and the people), "" (to resist foreign aggression), "" (socialism), "" (CPC)?"" (love's hometown), "" (respect the land), "" (love of the ancestors), "" (to contribute), "" (dedication), "" (liability), "" (Chinese culture), "" (openness and inclusiveness) ^{[11; 28; 29]}.

Creative language tools in the implementation of the rhetoric of patriotism in the Chinese media

1. Parallel constructions. According to the above-mentioned associative features of the Chinese concept of PATRIOTISM, the study showed that parallel constructions are widely and intentionally used in news, reports or comments on various topics to strengthen the semantic and emotional message to the patriotic feelings of the people. The main functions of parallelism are: gain function, gain function, sequence function and duration function. Sometimes this expressive means seems to be a form of repeated repetition, which makes the text cumbersome. However, with the help of parallel constructions, it is possible to effectively stimulate the psychology of the audience, capture its attention and make a deep impression on it about the values of patriotism. Examples of parallel constructions are given in Table 1.

Table 1. Representation of parallelism in various media discourses.

2. Military metaphor. The rhetoric of patriotism in the Chinese media, on the one hand, stands out in the materials about negative events and external threats, and on the other hand, it is implicitly present, as a background, in the coverage of non-conflict events. Patriotic rhetoric sounds more clearly against the background of external challenges ^{[9, p.25]}. An example is the following statement:

^{[29, p.16]}./The spirit of patriotism is a great banner for the Chinese nation's opposition to foreign aggression.

In the course of the study, it was revealed that external threats and challenges are not only military conflicts and actions in the world, but also important political statements, international conflicts in various forms, problems with poverty, the pandemic situation, economic crises, natural disasters and other factors that may pose a problem for the development of the state. This is due to the fact that the military metaphor as one of the most expressive means of representing the patriotic spirit, it always affects the linguocreative consciousness of a person. Examples of the military metaphor are presented in Table 2.

Table 2. Representation of the military metaphor in various media discourses.

During the implementation of the rhetoric of patriotism in the discourse of the Chinese media, other categories of metaphors are observed: construction, sports, anthropomorphic and others, the frequency of which is relatively less than military.

3. Expressions of solidarity and the image of the great overcoming.  China has entered a class society since 2000 BC, and a history of social suffering caused by political unrest has existed in almost all dynasties of China. The history of the people laid the foundation of Chinese social meanings: solidarity and overcoming any difficulties. Within the framework of patriotic rhetoric, creative expressions are used about the unity, cohesion of the whole nation and the image of the great overcoming. Examples of such expressions are given in Table 3.

Table 3. Representation of expressions about solidarity and the image of the great overcoming in various media discourses.

In expressions about solidarity and the image of the great overcoming in the discourse of the Chinese media, chengyu is also used. In the modern Chinese language, chengyu as phraseological related, stable lexical and syntactic units, which in a short, refined form of four-syllable (mostly) rhythmic phrases and sentences saturated with archaisms, vividly, vividly and expressively reflect various concepts of the real reality of the Chinese ethnic group ^{[1, p.25]}. For example: "" (all as one), "" (unity is a great power), "" (letters. to sail in the same boat in bad weather / to help each other in misfortune), "" (to join forces and achieve unanimity), "" (letters. cut through thorny bushes / sweep away all obstacles), "" (letters. with a fair wind, cutting through the waves / go with all sails; boldly move forward, sweeping away everything in its path).

In modern Chinese, the order of Chinese characters in the original two-syllable words is sometimes violated, resulting in the creation of new four-syllable words like chengyu. For example, they try to separate the words "" (attack and overcome) and "" (hard objects and difficulties), and combine them into "" (attack hard and overcome difficult). If you separate the words "" (both hieroglyphs mean "fight") and "" (wind and rain), then you will get "" (letters. fight the wind and rain / overcome all sorts of difficulties). At the same time, these reorganized verb+noun words often form lexical parallelism within a four-syllable word, and thus semantic reinforcement is brought. Even after recombination, a new four-syllable word will acquire a new meaning, which is not taken from the air, but comes from each hieroglyph. For example, separating the words "" (to change and become) and "" (crisis, ?-danger, ?-chance), their new connection will give "" (to turn a dangerous situation into a chance) ^[17].(See Fig.1)

Figure 1Formation of four - syllable words

4. Folk wisdom and historical allusions. The means of implementing patriotic rhetoric in the Chinese media include copious quoting of folk wisdom and historical allusions (Table 4). This is due to the fact that the veneration of history and ancestors plays the role of a link that unites descendants for thousands of years. The word "Homeland" is translated in Chinese as "", and "" means the land created by the ancestors. The tradition of honoring ancestors, passed down from generation to generation, testifies to the respect of the Chinese nation for its history. It is necessary to know the history of the ancestors well in order to awaken the patriotic spirit of the people.

Table 4. Representation of folk wisdom in various media discourses.

Among the examples presented in Table 4, a direct quote is Example 1. The motto "" comes from the first Chinese world champion, table tennis player Rong Gotuan in 1961. The citation is also intended to encourage Olympic athletes to participate in the 2022 Winter Olympics. In the second example, the two lines "" are taken from the poem "After reading thinking about books", written by the Chinese writer Zhu Xi^[5]. This poem is dedicated to reflection on the book, which, according to the author, like a source of water, gives a person to quench his thirst for knowledge. In fragment 2, Chinese culture is also compared to a water source. Just as books enrich a person's life, Chinese culture nourishes the mind and soul of the Chinese people. The proverb "" in Example 3 is used in a metaphorical meaning – "the more people, the more forces". In addition, forming parallelism, a sentence with a similar syntactic structure is also used in the discourse after "". In Example 4, being a philosophical thought of the Taoist school of ancient China, "" coincides with the quote of Leo Tolstoy "The greatest truths are the simplest". Since it is possible to correctly put the hieroglyph "a" in "", some pun arises. "a" has two meanings - "road" and "truth". Thus, "" has something in common with "". On the one hand, this proposal means that it is easy to walk along a wide road if you do not stop halfway. On the other hand, it can be interpreted as an instruction that it is necessary to constantly strive for the truth. All of the first four examples to relate to the original expression, as in the fifth example,"?" added negative particle "?" (not) to the original structure of the idiom "" (to harm others in order to extract their profits).

It should be noted that many proverbs originate from Chinese traditional historical events. And Chinese poetry, which has a historical background, surprises with simple phrases that, at the same time, are filled with deep philosophical meaning. But some historical events did not give rise to proverbs, sayings and aphorisms, so when implementing the rhetoric of patriotism in Chinese mass media discourse, direct historical allusions are sometimes used. For example: "......^[16]" (Xuanzang's Journey to the west, Jianzhen's Sea Voyage to the east, the Chinese discovery of the “western edge” - Zhang Qian's journey and Zheng He's seven voyages across the Western Ocean... Once upon a time, the Chinese people composed a mighty, long song of the Silk Road, and also created a prosperous Tang Dynasty that was friendly with other countries). It should be repeated that in this example, lexical and syntactic parallelism are also used to form an aesthetic sense and a sense of patriotism among readers.

Conclusion

Thus, the conducted research allows us to draw the following conclusions.

1) Linguocreativity in the implementation of the rhetoric of patriotism in the discourse of the Chinese mass media is a multifaceted strategy designed to generally increase the informativeness and effectively raise the patriotic spirit of the Chinese people. Linguocreativity on the studied material is realized by the following linguistic means: parallelism, metaphor of war, creative expressions about solidarity and the image of the great overcoming, folk wisdom and historical allusions. 

2) Parallel constructions as typical tools reinforce the semantic and emotional message when implementing the rhetoric of patriotism in the discourse of the Chinese media. The military metaphor is often used in the presence of external threats. Reflecting the ideas of solidarity and the image of the great overcoming, existing two-syllable words are creatively restructured and new four-syllable words are formed, expressing the finest shades of feelings and meanings of the word.

3) As part of the implementation of the rhetoric of patriotism, a combined use of parallelism, military metaphor, chenyu, folk wisdom, proverbs and sayings, sayings of thinkers of ancient China and historical allusions is carried out, thereby enriching information and emotional functions. Among them, parallel structures are most widely used. 

The prospects for further research involve the analysis of categories of metaphors, such as construction, sports, anthropomorphic, medical and others within the framework of the implementation of the rhetoric of patriotism in the discourse of Chinese mass media and the study of key linguistic means in the implementation of patriotic rhetoric in Chinese media specializing in the coverage of international events.