Discourse as Social Representations: A Historical Perspective of Illicit Drugs in People’s Daily (1949–2016)

• Date: 01 January 2021
• Author: Liang He,Qingye Tang
• DOI: 10.1177/0022042620954185
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0022042620954185

Journal of Drug Issues

2021, Vol. 51(1) 23 –37

© The Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0022042620954185

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Article

Discourse as Social

Representations: A Historical

Perspective of Illicit Drugs in

People’s Daily (1949–2016)

Qingye Tang1 and Liang He1

Abstract

This article draws on critical discourse analysis to examine how China’s mainstream newspaper

People’s Daily represents illicit drugs from 1949 to 2016. The quantity of drug reports varies but

has steadily increased with the severity of drug situations. Lexical variations show the prevalence

of synthetic drugs and the newspaper’s major concern about drugs at different times. The

diverse representations of drug types reveal the historical change in illicit drug use, production,

and trafficking, and the rhetorical use of drug argots and metaphors disguises the outcomes of

addiction and drug trade. The discursive variations in the reporting on illicit drugs are markedly

conditioned by the social change and the domestic and global drug context and also reflect the

evolution in China’s drug policies and attitudes toward drugs in society. The findings reveal

the gradual shifts from the government’s strong ideological vigilance, concerns over Western

imperialism, and the advocacy for strict law enforcement and draconian punishment to the

people-oriented and public health approach.

Keywords

illicit drugs in China, critical discourse analysis, social change, People’s Daily, corpus-based

Introduction

Language is a social construct. According to Halliday (1978), language use mirrors and construes

the process of social change; additionally, language relates to changes in social, political, and

cultural contexts and motivates change in language use. “Social change is often instantiated in

language use, either written or spoken, by means of lexico-grammatical choice” (Huang, 2011, p.

1). Van Dijk (1998a) argues that understanding the discursive strategies adopted without under-

standing the social background against which they are formulated is impossible. Language and

society each “act as a resource for the other” (Hasan, 2004, p. 43). Thus, this study examined the

linguistic variations in the newspaper People’s Daily (人民日报 Renmin Ribao) and the interac-

tion between the topic of illicit drugs and the massive social and economic changes in China.

In this article, drug use refers to the illicit use of narcotic drugs prohibited by China’s Anti-

drug Law. Narcotic drugs include opium, heroin, methamphetamine (ice), morphine, marijuana,

cocaine, and other narcotic and psychotropic substances that are addictive and controlled

1School of Foreign Languages of Shanghai University, China

Corresponding Author:

Qingye Tang, School of Foreign Languages of Shanghai University, 99 Shangda Road, Shanghai 200444, China.

Email: qingyet@shu.edu.cn

954185JODXXX10.1177/0022042620954185Journal of Drug IssuesTang and He

research-article2020