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Exploring Discourse Strategies in the English Translation of the Shanghai Declaration on Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence from the Perspective of Discourse-Historical Approach

Author(s)

Zhou Yuying, Zhao Linjing*

Affiliation(s)

School of Humanities and Law, Fuzhou Technology and Business University, Fuzhou, Fujian, China *Corresponding Author

Abstract

In the context of global governance, discourse strategies influence the communicative power of texts, which can effectively consolidate or change the audience's viewpoints and opinions, and play a pivotal role in enhancing the persuasive power and legitimacy of texts. The Shanghai Declaration on the Global Governance of Artificial Intelligence at the opening ceremony of the World Conference on Artificial Intelligence (WCAI) is released in 2024, which contains a wealth of discourse strategies. This paper analyzes the discourse strategies in the English translation of the declaration from the perspective of discourse-historical analysis, and finds that the declaration employs five strategies (naming, predicating, arguing, perspectivizing, and strengthening and weakening). The naming strategy indicates China's advocacy of rapid, healthy, and high-quality development of AI, concurrent global and regional cooperation, and respect for equality of states and the legal system of each country, and focuses on AI safety; the predicating strategy exxpresses China's affirmative attitude towards AI; the argumentative strategy employs strong prose sentences, and the perspective-taking strategy adopts the linguistic form of first-person plural, which reflect China's willingness and determination to participate in the global governance of AI; the reinforcing strategy employs the linguistic form of analogy to strengthen the close relationship between data and AI.

Keywords

Discourse-Historical Approach; Global Governance; Discourse Strategies

References

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