Identity matters in politics: a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis on the blogs of the Hong Kong chief executive

Abstract

Starting by an illustration of the connection between language, identity and politics, this thesis examines what and how identities are constructed in the blogs of CY Leung, the Hong Kong Chief Executive and accounts for how the identities influence his popularity. With a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis approach, this study investigates the identity roles and identity virtue projected in the biogs, gauging whether there is a clash between the projected identity roles and the social identity of the Chief Executive. Results found that there are three salient identity roles projected, namely, cultivator, problem solver and patriotic coordinator. The role of patriotic coordinator leads to negative impacts on CY Leung's popularity due to recent Hong Kong-mainland contradictions. Rationality is the most manifest identity virtue observed, pervading the blogs and the performance of the identity roles. It is argued that identity clash could be an explanation for the unpopularity of an individual and political blog is one of the possible genres for linguistic identity study 在語吉、身份和政治三者關條的基礎上，運用批判性話語分析的方法，並配合語料庫的輔助，本論文探討香港特別行政區行政長官梁振英如何在網上日誌建立及建立了什麼個人身份，解釋這些身份如何影響其聲望，並分析他所表現的「角色」是否與他的「社會身份」抵觸。研究結果顯示’梁在其網上日誌建構三大主要角色，包括培育者、問題解決者和愛國的協調者。由於近年的中港矛盾，協調者的角色對梁的聲望帶來負面影響。而且，在表現這些角色時，梁的行文理性務實。最後，本文提出「身份衝突」是一可作為解釋梁不得民心的原因，另外，政客的網上日誌是一可作為語言學上身份研究的文體。