A Critical Discourse Analysis of Tsai Ing-Wen’s Political Speeches on Cross-Strait Relations

Abstract

The growth of cross-strait relations has garnered lots of concern for a very long time. However, it is noticeable that since Tsai Ing-wen was elected “president” of Taiwan in 2016, cross-strait relations have progressively reached an impasse. Tsai’s political speeches since then have had a great impact on both the public and the development of cross-Strait ties. This paper chooses Tsai’s political speeches to conduct a critical discourse analysis based on the Martin’s Attitude System (2005). Nine political speeches that Tsai addressed publicly during her first term, from 2016 to 2021, are selected as study data. The goals of the study are to explore the features and functions of the attitudinal resources in these speeches as well as how these resources are realized to construe meanings, as well as what ideology Tsai implied behind the discourse. Throughout Tsai’s appraisal resources, it is found that her evaluation of mainland China mainly involved implicit strategies, and most of them were negative, while her evaluation of Taiwan authorities mainly used explicit strategies, and most of them were positive. As a result, Tsai constructed different images of both sides of the Taiwan Strait.