Xinjiang in harmony and prosperity : a discourse analysis of multimodal metaphor reframing in a promotional video of China's Xinjiang

Abstract

This chapter analyses metaphors in a Chinese-English bilingual promotional video of Xinjiang co-produced by the Permanent Mission of China to the United Nations and the government of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China. The video, which has been circulated on influential new media platforms such as TikTok and YouTube, aims to introduce Xinjiang to the world from an economic, social, religious, and cultural perspective, countering the negative rumours in Western media, such as “Xinjiang as a detention centre” and “Xinjiang's forced labour”. Using the analytical framework established in a previous work on the promotional image of China's Hubei province in the post-pandemic era, this chapter employs corpus-based resources to identify metaphors, framing analysis to determine framing strategies, and Critical Discourse Analysis to interpret the data. The chapter concludes that Xinjiang is framed as a place of harmony, prosperity, hope, and humanity through various modes of metaphors. The chapter also analyses the socio-cultural factors behind the selection of metaphors and the combined reframing effect of verbal, visual, and multimodal metaphors. It may provide implications for Audiovisual Translation Studies (AVT) by highlighting the interaction between verbal metaphors and multimodal metaphors and emphasizing the role of multimodal metaphors in cross-cultural communication.