Metaphors, Religion and Ethnicity: Critical Discourse Analysis of China´s Official Discourse on Xinjiang

Xinjiang has received increasing attention from the international community since September 11, when the Communist Party of China advanced its publications regarding Xinjiang and the alleged threat represented by the East Turkistan forces. A deep understanding of the Party's underlying priorities and motivations is a first required step to constructively engage with Beijing in potential human security cooperation, in order to guarantee sustainable security and prevent further grievances among ethnic and religious groups inside and outside China. Derived from a more extensive thesis, this contribution aims at providing comprehensive insight into the Party's official discourse on Xinjiang. Through a synergic quantitative (corpus based) and qualitative (Critical Discourse Analysis) methodology, this paper draws on Critical Metaphor Analysis (Charteris-Black, 2004) to explore the importance of metaphors as vehicles of belief systems and, most importantly, persuasive tools to gain political legitimacy. Through CMA, this presentation combines cognitive and pragmatic approaches to metaphor analysis to broaden the understanding of China's Xinjiang White Papers, unveiling this way underpinned Party priorities regarding territorial integrity, ethnicity and religion.