情感共同体之想象:中国留学生报道中情感建构与民族认同研究

An Imagination of Emotional Community:A study on the construction of national identity through emotion in the official news reports concerning Chinese overseas students

全球化时代和流动的社会大背景下,民族认同和情感构建问题相较过去更为突出,本研究在以往的有关民族认同和共同体研究基础上,提炼了容易被忽视的情感视角,尝试分析情感共同体的媒介建构问题。文章以2015年至2020年中国大陆官方媒体网站上涉及中国留学生的12188篇报道为基础,以文本分析法为主,话语分析方法为辅,研究了报道中对民族认同情感的具象化传递,分析了"情感共同体"媒介想象之路。研究发现了官方媒体报道中建构国家为强有力的行动主体,媒体塑造的以"祖国"为中心且有序的行动网络结构,隐喻了以爱国之情为主导,以厌恶、恐惧、愤怒等情绪为辅助的复杂情感蕴涵网络。这些情感和网络产生了凝聚民族的重要作用,在媒体对中国留学生犯罪事件以及遇难事件等叙述中,否定性话语让厌恶情绪展露无遗,强化了家国自我和他者的边界;媒体的策略性和诗性话语帮助减轻恐惧情绪,拉近国家与海外游子的心灵距离,而爱的情感乃至民族自豪感进一步推动集体凝聚;书写哀伤记忆的文本凝缩时空,建构"我们"认同;义愤的话语传递着鼓舞民族成员团结一致及采取行动的力量;在新闻报道对中国留学生群体维权行动的主张中,情感成为道德和价值判断标准,在情感和行动褒贬之中,媒体想象了一种兼具理性的情感公民,其生存于这样一种想象的情感共同体之中,且有助于推动此种共同体的成形。

In the era of globalization and"liquid society",the issue of constructing national identity with emotion is becoming increasingly prominent.Based on existing studies on both national identity and community,an emotional perspective is refined to analyze the question concerning media construction of an"emotional community".On the basis of 12,188 reports from the websites of Chinese Mainland official media involving Chinese overseas students from 2015 to 2020,this paper uses text analysis along with discourse analysis to study concrete emotional expressions of national identity in those reports and analyzes how official media build an imagined"emotional community".This study shows how"motherland"is molded by media to occupy the central place in an orderly action network that houses a complicated emotional network wherein there mainly exists love,especially in the form of patriotism,and this love is supplemented with other emotions such as disgust,fear,and anger while the state is being rendered as a powerful agent.These emotions and networks have played vital roles for the cohesion of China.In the narrations by media about crimes involving Chinese overseas students,regardless whether they are criminals or victims:disgust is invariably revealed in negative discourse which strengthens the boundary between self and the other;fear is relieved by strategic and poetic discourse which greatly shortens the mental distance between the country and its overseas students;love and national pride can be used to promote group cohesion;the text containing traumatic memory compresses time and space to construct the"We"identity;discourse of righteous indignation inspires Chinese nationals to unite together and take action.In the media reports inspiring Chinese overseas students to stand up and fight for their legitimate rights,emotions function as the criteria for moral judgment and values.Then in the process of appreciating and depreciating different emotions,the media are imagining a kind of"sentimental citizen"with the ability to reason,living in an imagined emotional community and making contributions to the formation of the community as well.