Recontextualization and Legitimacy of Dialect Post-Pandemic News Releases: A Case Study of Two Pandemic News Texts in Qujing City, Yunnan Province ()
1. Introduction
In the all-media area, information is pervasive in various fields. Although the popularity of the Internet provides people with a tool to see the world with, the Internet is not a water purifier that would help people filter impurities. At present, the COVID-19 situation is sweeping the world. It is undeniable that anti-pandemic efficiency is compatible with the effectiveness of news information release. In other words, citizens can take preventive measures to fight against the pandemic by learning from news guidance, thereby improving the anti-pandemic efficiency.
When it comes to the pandemic discourse research, scholars mainly focus on emergency discourse. Li et al. (2020) , for example, sum up ‘the Campaign Language Service Corps’ and its products developed for fighting against the pandemic, including “Hubei Dialect for Fighting the Pandemic”, “Foreign Languages for Pandemic Prevention and Control” and “Concise Chinese for the Pandemic Prevention and Control”, and then they put forward guiding suggestions concerning emergency discourse construction. Wang (2020) discusses the definition, types and functions of emergency discourse ability from the perspective of national governance and then proposes the strategy of improving the ability. In the meantime, Zhang (2020) reinforces the emergency discourse research framework by analyzing and concluding relevant literature review abroad and states that the framework can enlighten our emergency discourse theory research and enhance its practical support. Besides, the emergency discourse research is inclined to be emergency service (Bao, 2020; Yin, 2020; Wang et al., 2020) . Specifically, it is obvious that the emergency discourse service plays a leading role against the background of the COVID-19. Thus, it can be said that how to effectively issue the anti-epidemic discourse and how to mobilize the media resource platform to give full play to the service function of the discourse is of great importance.
Rich in language resources, China has numerous Chinese local dialects spoken in different areas for different purposes. When news institutes release anti-pandemic news, news publishers involved should take the needs of different groups into account, especially their acceptance of these dialects (Wang, 2020) . In the post-pandemic era, when releasing news, local media news release institutions should combine language standards with local facts to achieve good audience acceptance and high recognition of the news release, so that the general public can accord timely attention to the pandemic news and take appropriate precautions. Besides, Chinese dialects present various trends after evolving from the historical and cultural changes. These trends include not only our pervasive Mandarin situation, but also part of daily communication and activities in Mandarin. Conducted on our current pandemic and dialect basis, this study takes dialects as a breakthrough to explore the effectiveness of the pandemic situation, a practice which is still rare till now.
Thus, the study is mainly carried out to achieve the following two objectives. To begin with, the research analyzes the internal causes from the discourse strategies adopted by the media to maintain its legitimacy by combining the two anti-pandemic news texts published by Qujing M, the local media in Qujing city, Yunnan province, China. Qujing dialect is one of local dialects in the second biggest city in Yunnan province. Furthermore, the study discusses the relationship between them as external causes from the perspective of recontextualization to illustrate the legitimacy and effectiveness of releasing anti-pandemic news discourse in dialects. In sum, we seek to answer the following two questions:
1) How do the two pandemic news texts achieve their legitimacy?
2) Linguistically, how do the two legitimized news texts work effectively to release the situation of the pandemic?
2. Legitimacy of Media News Discourse and Recontextualization
2.1. Legitimacy of Media Discourse
Legitimacy is essentially a power relation between the ruling government and the public. The more reasonable the ruling government is, the more efficient the governance becomes (Ferdinand & Lynn, 2005) . When discussing discourse and power, Van Dijk (1988) mentions that politics and the media undoubtedly influence and restrict each other. The information released by the media is bound to be influenced by politics, and influences politics as well. Facing the audience, politics is reflected in the government. In other words, the legitimacy of the two news texts released from Qujing M is determined by the support or lack of support of target audience for specific policy-oriented news. In terms of the news texts mentioned above, these two are concerned with anti-pandemic news release and are policy-oriented news texts published by the local media. Accordingly, the legitimacy here is limited to policy legitimacy regarding support or lack of support for specific government (Ferdinand & Lynn, 2005) . In order to judge the legitimacy of the two news texts, the current study adopts the notion of affirming that the news is released from the perspective of the target audience and will bring great benefits to them. This is quite similar to Fairclough (1995b) who demonstrates that scale of the audience projects potential media influence and power. Jiang (2003) also holds that the media considers the audience as the main body and the center. For the media, there is a convergent sense of value for them to win the target audience market and take this as their basic purpose. To further understand their legitimacy, we will prove it from the strategies media adopted during the process of keeping its legitimacy. The media mainly use two ways to keep their legitimacy when they release news reports. Firstly, journalism gains legitimacy through constructing discourse of professional norms and making it recognized by practitioners and the public (Schudson, 1978, 2001) . Qin (1997) goes even further to discuss the genre and admit that the motivation of genre restricts the content and form of discourse texts. People in the same social community or in the same field recognize the restrictions above and do their best to abide by these restrictions.
Secondly, legitimacy can be obtained by successfully presenting journalism as a reliable story-teller, also a journalistic authority (Clayman, 2002) . Next, it will be further explained from the narrative way of the text release. Prince (2008) holds that narrative is the representation or verbal reproduction event, or is the media and symbolic recontextualization of the story. The news text belongs to the story narrative which recontextualizes the discourse in the form of a story. Zhao and Chen (2009) believe that the narrative way in storytelling makes the unique livelihood perspective and people-oriented news more fully reflected, while this news text is narrated from the perspective of people’s livelihood. It is reliable for residents.
2.2. Recontextualization as a Concept of Media Discourse Studies
The concept “recontextualization” is originally brought into teaching and learning by Bernstein (2003) who defines it as the embedding or redistribution of knowledge or a new technology in special circumstances. Van Leeuwen (1993) introduces the concept of recontextualization into critical discourse analysis. Later Fairclough (1995b) applies this concept to media discourse analysis. Linell (1998) further defines recontextualization as the dynamic transfer and transformation of a discourse or text in context, and holds that recontextualization occurs in all discourses and can be divided into intratextual, intertextual and interdiscursive recontextualization. Fairclough (2006) describes it as systematic procedures for feeding public dialogue and deliberation into policy-making processes which can be seen as partly a matter of the existence of established relations of recontextualization between the genre of public sphere dialogue and the genres of policy making. Fairclough later explores recontextualization from the perspective of dialectical relations and Wodak and Fairclough (2010) from the perspective of discourse historical analysis. The research on recontextualization revolves around education and discourse analysis, and the research path mostly follows discourse analysis, dialectical relation method and discourse historical analysis so far. The follow-up studies are mainly based on the research above. In the field of media and news, recontextualization is mostly combined with actual cases and its research path and framework is developed across the three aspects above. For example, Kang (2007) makes a contrastive analysis of the original and translated texts in Newsweek and Newsweek Korean edition in order to explore how the translation of discourse texts expresses different ideologies through recontextualization.
The later scholars take recontextualization as a procedural means of discourse meaning change in a particular group. Liu and Ouyang (2016) combine Fairclough’s discourse analysis with Gramsci’s hegemony theory and regard grassroots discourse elements as the recontextualization of Chinese revolutionary discourse by taking the open letters and responses in the Yao Jiaxin murder case online as corpus. Then they make a detailed analysis of the emotional appeal and inclusion/exclusion strategies based on class division in the corpus and how this rhetoric with power and class division is challenged and marginalized in the new society. Yan and Li (2017) interpret the recontextualization process of news discourse for all social actor images in the incident so as to expose the political intentions of the United States. In recent years, the whole research shows the trend of combining theory with practice. Moreover, it has shifted from the discussion of instructive definition, analytical mode and path to the combination of specific cases, and the combination mostly takes recontextualization as a cohesive way of changing or stabilizing meaning in the mixture of discourse and specific context. In this way, more topics are explored such as local news in this paper.
2.3. Recontextualization for the Legitimacy of Media Discourse
Admittedly, Bernstein (1990) regards recontextualization as a process of encoding and decoding, and he believes that this process is composed of power and control, which restrict what text is selected in a particular context and how this text is reorganized and packaged. In other words, the recontextualization of the news release can be judged from the process of encoding and decoding, and the re-organization and package of the texts within the power and control. As mentioned above, legitimacy is essentially a power relationship between the ruling government and the public (Ferdinand & Lynn, 2005) . Comparing these two concepts, we could see that there are common elements in the study of the legitimization and recontextualization of discourse, that is, they both involve the power relations. Initially speaking, power is the possible testing medium for text legitimization and recontextualization. When Fairclough (2013) interprets the relationship between discourse and power, he points out that mass-media discourse is interesting because the nature of the power relations enacted in it is often not clear, and there are reasons for seeing it as involving hidden relations of power. Moreover, there are some hidden power relations in the news discourse and thus the recontextualization and legitimacy of the news texts can be judged for their hidden power relations. Chung (2014) argues when discussing recontextualization that discourse can be simply interpreted as a recontextualization of social practice. Accordingly, the release of news texts, as social practice, goes through the process of recontextualization with the hidden power relations. Specifically, for the legitimacy of the two news text releases, we can start with their analysis of recontextualization process, that is, the process of encoding and decoding, and the power and control, which restrict what text is selected in a particular context and how this text is reorganized and packaged, plays a role in the power relations between the ruling government and the public. In the following, the recontextualization of the two news texts is presented for further judgement of the legitimacy of their releases.
2.4. The Recontextualization Model for the Legitimated Media Discourse
Taking the analytical recontextualization model as a framework (Tian, 2016) , this paper interprets the process of recontextualization for the legitimated media discourse between the two texts from the following elements: metadiscourse recontextualization, recontextualization of the original contexts of situation, recontextualization of the initiator, recontextualization of the new situation and recontextualization of new meanings of the new discourse in the new situation.
Hyder and Polly (2004) maintain that meta-discourse is a tool for authors to purposefully organize texts, attract readers and show their attitudes towards materials and audiences by projecting themselves into discourse forms. Meta-discourse embodies the interaction between the author and the reader, and it organizes the discourse text on the premise of attracting the readers to achieve the purpose of effective communication. In other words, meta-discourse performs the function of regulating the discourse texts, and the fundamental motivation of this structural regulation lies in the interaction need between the author and the reader (Shao, 2020) . Another concept “context of situation” mainly refers to the current context of the text. In other words, the current situation or what you see and hear about the discourse, and the concept “context of situation” are only applicable to the study of the original language research (Malinowski & Crookshak, 1923) . Concerning meaning or meaning change in the process of recontextualization, Kristeva (1980) proposes that all texts are constructed from preceding and anticipated texts, and every new text negotiates the textual voices of others before it. Fairclough (1995a: p. 95) also maintains that the heterogeneity of texts is constituted by combinations of diverse genres and discourses transforming the past or prior texts into the present. Therefore, all texts are in a relation network among the roles of prior texts, the present texts and the anticipated texts. When analyzing the present texts or the anticipated texts, one finds that the prior texts are necessary analyzing factors and need to be analyzed as well. Combining these two with Tian’s (2016) study of the new meanings of a new discourse produced in the process of recontextualization, we maintain that the identification of the new meanings should be analyzed from the following aspects:
1) The new meaning for the initiator of recontextualization;
2) The new meaning for the meta-discourse;
3) The new meaning for the receiver of the new discourse.
Besides, the original contexts of situation and the initiator need to further affirm external environment and internal content of the two news texts.
As one can see, however, the present exploration is limited to well-known newspapers and news materials, and it is rare to discuss the recontextualization of local hot news, especially rare in the discussion of the pandemic prevention and control measures among discourse texts. Therefore, this study follows the philosophy that things develop as a result of the combination of their internal and external causes to analyze the two texts in terms of the legitimizing strategies for media discourse and to interpret the inner connection between them from a recontextualization perspective.
3. Recontextualization and the Construction of Legitimized Media Discourse
3.1. Legitimacy of Media Discourse
In the context of the anti-pandemic, “Letter of Yunnan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department to Friends Working Outside” released by Qujing M is an official news release, and its audience is mainly Yunnan migrant workers in vast numbers outside the province when the news releases, while the dialect version of “Old Village Head’s Publicity for the Pandemic” released a week later is mainly broadcast for the locals in Qujing City, especially the villagers of the Hongwafang Village, Qinghe Community, Longhua Street, Zhanyi District. For the practical language uses of mass audience, the two released news texts involved, i.e. an official letter for the outside migrant workers about the anti-pandemic prevention information during the Spring Festival, and a dialect version of the same topic for the local villagers, both have legitimacy of their own. In terms of the definition of the media discourse legitimacy mentioned above, the release of the two media texts is legitimate.
The first strategy corresponds with the first text “Letter of Yunnan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department to Friends Working Outside” in the study. The specific analysis is as follows. From the perspective of genre, the text starts with a letter form originated from Yunnan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department. When people express something, every context hints that communication participants choose their appropriate discourse genre (Xing & Li, 2019) . Yunnan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department is the official representative. In face of the greater possibility of potential pandemic spread of the migrant workers returning home before the Spring Festival, they send a message to the workers who are about to return home: there is not a moment to be lost in the pandemic prevention, and they’d better minimize mobility and celebrate the Spring Festival where they are. Participants involved in the context are mainly the provincial department and all migrant workers outside the province of Yunnan, and this means that the two parties should choose appropriate discourse genres and fully consider their practical situations respectively.
In the case of the study, the first news chooses the official letter form based on the legitimacy of practical situations between the provincial department and the migrant workers outside the province. The readers (the vast number of migrant workers) and the author (Yunnan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department) stand in the same social communication community or in the same field in this way and the two parties thus admit and abide by the conformity: there is not a moment to be lost in the pandemic prevention, and they’d better minimize mobility and celebrate the Spring Festival where they are. As a result, Yunnan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department completes its legitimacy expression by adopting the normative letter discourse which is easily accepted by the vast number of migrant workers outside the province.
The second legitimizing strategy for the media discourse is shown in the second text “Old Village Head’s Publicity for the Pandemic”. “Old Village Head’s Publicity for the Pandemic” is one of the anti-pandemic texts in the local Qujing dialect. The text publicizes general knowledge of the anti-pandemic that must be communicated to local citizens with a loudspeaker in the Zhanyi Chinese dialect, a local Qujing Chinese dialect, from the perspective of the first person of the “Old Village Head”. Using an approachable Chinese dialect has different meanings to the local Qujing citizens compared with Mandarin Chinese and the Qujing Chinese dialect in the anti-pandemic knowledge propaganda. Fairclough (1989) reports that meanings vary between social dialects. Obviously, the “Old Village Head’s Publicity for the Pandemic” in the dialect expression is a practical news release which mitigates false local anti-pandemic information and rumors caused by lack of scientific guidance and prevention measures at the beginning of the anti-pandemic. After the “Old Village Head’s Publicity for the Pandemic” broadcast with a loudspeaker, more and more villagers learn how to prevent the pandemic in their daily life, a fact which can be seen from the number of people diagnosed by COVID-19. As is reported by Chinannews.com (Hu, 2020) , the last confirmed patient was discharged from hospital on March 14, 2020 in Qujing City, Yunnan Province. Until now, zero clearance has been achieved and the record has been maintained for about two years. Thus the news text is meaningful.
In terms of the paragraph, politics is mainly reflected in the local government; in other words, Qujing M releases news on behalf of the local government in the fight against the pandemic. At the same time, people are influenced by the news they read or see, if only to gain and update knowledge about the world (van Dijk, 2008) . Therefore, “Old Village Head’s Publicity for the Pandemic” stands for the local government. During the gradual acceptance of the local citizens for the news, its authority is gained. Therefore, the local citizens are influenced by the narrative way in storytelling and then the news can be legitimate.
As analyzed above, the two news texts are legitimate to some extent. The discussion of the relationship between the news release legitimacy and recontextualization is on the premise that the two news texts are legitimate in the current context. To conclude, in the current anti-pandemic COVID-19 context, whether the published legitimate discourse helps to release the situation of the pandemic depends on the interpretation of the legitimacy of the news discourse releases, which can be finished through the process of encoding and decoding, and the power and control, which restrict what text is selected in a particular context and how this text is reorganized and packaged. In so doing, the power relations between the ruling government and the public thus form the basis of the legitimacy of the two news releases.
3.2. Meta-Discourse Recontextualization and the Legitimization of the Media News Texts
In this paper, we mainly adopt this definition of meta-discourse, that is, meta-discourse can organize the text and express its ideas in it to achieve the purpose of attracting readers. Of the two news texts mentioned above, example (1) is an excerpt of the second paragraph from “Letter of Yunnan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department to Friends Working Outside” and example (2) is an excerpt from “Old Village Head’s Publicity for the Pandemic”. Their corresponding translated versions are in the following of Chinese examples by manual translation and proofreading.
Text 1
1) 当前，新冠肺炎疫情流行加速，我国本土疫情呈零星散发和局部聚集性疫情交织叠加态势，防控形势严峻复杂。春节将至，将迎来人员流动高峰，为了你们和家人的身体健康和生命安全，我们倡议：非必要不返乡，尽量减少流动，留在企业、留在务工地过年；尽量不前往人员聚集场所尤其是密闭场所，出门坚持佩戴口罩、保持社交距离，居家多通风，平时勤洗手，有病早治疗。
At present, the pandemic COVID-19 is accelerating and the local pandemic situation at home is intertwined and superimposed by a sporadic and local gathering situation, and thus the anti-pandemic situation and control are still severe and complicated. At this time, the approaching Spring Festival will see a great population flow. For the health and safety of your families and you, we advocate: if it is not urgently necessary to return home, try to reduce population flow and stay where you are now, i.e. in your local enterprises and work sites, for your Spring Festival; try not to approach gathering places, especially the airtight places, and when going out, please wear face masks, keep social distance, and when staying at home, keep the house ventilated, wash your hands frequently and treat your illness in time.
2) 大家好好的想一想哈，一到这个年底，那么在外头，奋斗了一年的人，格是都想回家，过个年？这个人流量，就会相当大。所以呢，今天还是要在这里，尚服(嘱托)大家，少出门，戴口罩，外来人员要报告，各项检验要自觉。
Please think about this carefully, every villager. By the end of the year when the Spring Festival is coming, all people who have been outside for a year will want to come back home for the festival. This will lead to a large population flow. So, today, I still have to be here to tell (“shangfu,” meaning “entrust” in the local Chinese dialect) everyone: go out less and wear face masks. People from other places will report to the local community. Everyone needs to do all tests as required.
In the second paragraph of example 1, the writing background is summarized as “the approaching Spring Festival will see a great population flow”, while example 2 “By the end of the year when the Spring Festival is coming, all people who have been outside for a year will want to come back home for the festival. This will lead to a great population flow”. These two excerpts express the same meaning in Mandarin and the dialect: As the Spring Festival approaches, the flow of people will become larger. Chen (2015) believes that reference can occur in other texts than the same discourse and text. From this point of view, we can say that the latter text “By the end of the year when the Spring Festival is coming, all people who have been outside for a year will want to come back home for the festival. This will lead to a great population flow” is the referent of the previous text “the approaching Spring Festival will see a great population flow”. In addition, considering the time factor of the two news texts, the former text is the meta-discourse of the latter expressing “As the Spring Festival approaches, the flow of people will become larger”.
3.3. Recontextualization of the Original Contexts of Situation and the Legitimization of the Media News Texts
In order to affirm the original context of the meta-discourse “Letter of Yunnan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department to Friends Working Outside”, it is necessary to focus on what we have seen or heard currently. In terms of time, the text is released on January 14, 2021, the first day of the New Year’s Eve ticket on sale, when a large-scale population flow is coming, bringing more uncontrollable factors to the pandemic prevention and control. On December 25, 2020, Kunming, the capital city of Yunnan Province, found a confirmed COVID-19 case imported abroad. Coupled with a long border line, too many ports and large flow of people entering and leaving the country, Yunnan Province faces a great risk of cross-border pandemic import. The “Letter of Yunnan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department to Friends Working Outside” released at that time is so current that it can persuade migrant workers outside to reduce population flow and slow down the disease spread. Halliday & Hasan (1976) propose that the context of situation can be composed of field, mode and tenor. The detailed composition of the three meta-functions is as follows:
a) Field
Yunnan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department releases a letter to the migrant workers outside for the message: the fight against the pandemic has a long way to go. We cannot relax our vigilance, especially during the Spring Festival. We call on the migrant workers to celebrate the Spring Festival where they are as much as possible. Those who really want to come back home have to strictly follow the relevant procedures for the fight against the pandemic, and we all make concerted efforts to fight it in order to win the final victory.
b) Mode
The letter is released through the news media and the written text is a letter.
c) Tenor
The publisher is Yunnan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department, representing the local government’s stance and the audience of the discourse is the recipient of this discourse, including definitely everyone who receives the news. The relationship between the two is government and citizens. Their relationship is originally unequal, however, in that the letter begins with “Dear all friends or migrant workers outside the province”, which means to reduce the power and inequality. The official author does so in an attempt to turn this unequal power relationship into equality. Therefore, this letter is released by the news media in a letter, taking into account the actual situation in the province and the large flow of people coming back home for the Spring Festival, and persuades everyone who gets the news in a friendly tone to pay more attention to what the migrant workers do for fighting against the disease after returning home during the festival.
3.4. Recontextualization of the Initiator and the Legitimization of the Media News Texts
In this stage, to affirm the people, institutions or others who initiate the recontextualization, it is necessary to see who issues the second news text “Old Village Head’s Publicity for the Pandemic”. This should start with the identity of the “old village head” who is a young Hongwafang Villager from Qinghe community, Longhua Street, Zhanyi district, Qujing, and a university graduate who has started his own business. Finding that the pandemic situation is grim and the propaganda is not efficient enough, he offers to join the propaganda team willingly to endorse the “old village head”, and help the village committee publicize the common sense of the pandemic prevention and control over the radio, and appeals to the local villagers to do a good job in their own prevention and control. Due to his endorsement for the old village head, the village committee contributes to the occurrence of the behavior.
3.5. Recontextualization of the New Situation and the Legitimization of the Media News Texts
According to the above analysis, the meta-discourse is released when the Spring Festival is approaching, and the date symbolizes reunion in China. This reunion possibly leads to more gatherings and increases the potential infection risks. Under the background against the pandemic COVID-19, the news Text 1 is released for all migrant workers outside the province. To attract all the migrant workers to break their traditional habits of reunion for the Spring Festival, the discourse interaction between the provincial authority organization and the migrant workers outside the province is formed. As analyzed above, the latter news Text 2 is analyzed from its external environment and internal content. The latter news is released a week later than the former. The time nodes of the two news releases are very close, both before the Spring Festival; the background of the pandemic COVID-19 is very close: they both do their best to avoid the potential risks of the Spring Festival reunion. However, compared with the former, the publishers (the authors) and the audience (including the migrant workers) change from the provincial authority organization “Yunnan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department” to the local village committee, while the audience is altered from all migrant workers outside the province to all local citizens in the village committee. Obviously, the changing process of the external environment shows changes of the new context of situation—the localization of the anti-pandemic COVID-19 news broadcast. In other words, Text 1 becomes a new text a week later when it experiences a new context of situation, which is combined with the localized “strict controls of the pandemic during the Spring Festival” in the local village community or the local city. The internal content can be seen in Table 1. Text 1 is an excerpt from “Letter of Yunnan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department to Friends Working Outside” and Text 2 is part of the “Old Village Head’s Publicity for the Pandemic”.
By comparison, we can find that some corresponding expressions and meanings are very similar. For example, “The Spring Festival is coming” and “at the end of the year…” present us the same meaning: the two news texts are all released before the Spring Festival and they are different expressions in Chinese culture for the Spring Festival predicts the end of the year. Similarly, the purpose
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Table 1. A comparison between synonymous expressions from the two texts.
of “Try to reduce population flow” and “Go out less” is to persuade all their audience to stay at home to avoid being infected by the pandemic COVID-19. Other different expressions of the same meaning are listed in Table 1. Except for their different Chinese varieties, Text 1 is the official Mandarin Chinese version, and Text 2 is the local Chinese dialect version and their expressions are all about the detailed measures against the pandemic COVID-19. Therefore, we can infer from the internal content that the new context of situation from Text 1 to Text 2 is more inclined to be transformed into the dialect-oriented anti-pandemic measures with the local reality from officially Mandarin-oriented news releases.
In conclusion, the new context of situation is like this: when the official provincial institution releases the news texts for the anti-pandemic COVID-19, the local institution goes through the localization of the news broadcast in the news release of the dialect version, and thus the formation of the new context of situation.
3.6. Recontextualization of New Meanings of the New Discourse in the New Situation and the Legitimization of the Media News Texts
van Leeuwen & Wodak (1999) suggest that there are four main ways for meaning adaptation and transformation in the texts after recontextualization: factor deletion, factor addition, factor substitution and factor reorganization. This mainly involves the factor reorganization. Fairclough (2003) believes that factor addition is an explanatory or legalized factor addition to the original discourse. Before that, we affirm that the recontextualization of the initiator is the committee of the Hongwafang Village, Qinghe Community, Longhua Street, Zhanyi District, Qujing. And the significance of the new discourse for the initiator, the Text 1 official measure “the strict control of the pandemic during the Spring Festival” which is localized after recontextualization, is as follows: the pandemic prevention and control in the Mandarin version has become the dialect version in the Zhanyi area, Qujing, while the local village committee also changes the inefficient publicity shouting everywhere with loudspeakers. The prevention and control measures are expressed in everyday language so that these can be easily understood by local villagers. In so doing, the efficiency of the village committee publicity has been improved, indicating that the anti-pandemic prevention and control in rural areas are also guaranteed. Therefore, it is expected to win the battle against the pandemic.
The beginning of the meta-discourse Text 1 is called “Dear all friends of migrant workers outside” in order to convey that the vast number of migrant workers should follow strict prevention and control measures during the Spring Festival. After being recontextualized, “Everyone” in “shangfu everyone”, Text 2 in Table 1, does not have a clear referent. In the context, all the locals and outsiders who have heard the news broadcast can be called everyone. This can be analyzed in more details. After being recontextualized, the meta-discourse meaning becomes “the vast number of migrant workers outside and local residents should strictly obey the anti-pandemic measures during the Spring Festival”. All workers outside, whether they are migrant workers or not, should strictly abide by the relevant anti-pandemic requirements like the local residents. Thus, it can be seen that the new factors of meaning in meta-discourse are added after recontextualizaion and the scope of meaning is expanded. You (2006) considers dialects as important nutrients of ancient and modern common languages for the Han nationality (yayan, an official discourse and mandarin). The meta-discourse absorbs the dialect nutrients through recontextualization, expands the anti-pandemic measures during the Spring Festival to all, thus producing the new meanings above.
The final part is the new meaning to the recipients of the new discourse. The receivers of Text 2 are mostly local villagers, the local citizens who receive the news and other outsiders entering the city. Qujing M is the first official news media for the local people. It is an App that integrates traditional media and new media. It mainly spreads authoritative news in local daily information. When exploring the theory of language communication, Wang (2019) finds that information technology has a profound impact on language communication and that language based on modern information technology is becoming more and more important. The government utilizes information technology to optimize the allocation of language resources and language policies. The process during which Text 1 is recontextualized as Text 2 can be seen as the government’s use of new media to optimize the allocation of language resources to make anti-pandemic measures more approachable and more acceptable to the audience, especially the migrant workers. At the same time, this recontextualization can help to arouse the curiosity and attention of the local villagers, local citizens and even other outsiders entering the city. If so, they may memorize and implement the anti-pandemic measures more effectively. For the recipients of the discourse, their habits of expressing the anti-pandemic measures are theoretically convenient to remember and implement, and interesting expressions can also improve the effectiveness of fighting against the pandemic and contribute to the pandemic. However, whether the recipients can achieve their anti-pandemic purpose in this way or not needs further test.
4. Conclusion
The corpus for this study was collected using two news discourse texts “Letter of Yunnan Provincial Human Resources and Social Security Department to Friends Working Outside” and “Old Village Head’s Publicity for the Pandemic”. This paper starts with the internal causes, that is, the perspective of the legitimate strategies released by the media, showing that these two texts are legitimate. And then from the external causes, the process of recontextualization between the two texts is interpreted with the help of the analytical framework of “recontextualization model” put forward by Tian (2016) . It is found that the dialect version of anti-pandemic discourse is legitimate and audience-centered. In addition, when the anti-pandemic discourse in the Mandarin Chinese version is transformed into the dialect version discourse, the new discourse is generated and endowed with a new meaning. This paper explains the legitimacy of the local news release in the dialect version from the internal and external causes, hoping to promote this release form.
However, the paper has only based its conclusions on two texts, and therefore to verify its conclusions, more and further study will be of necessity in the future.