Chinese civil servants and the creation of a discourse community to promote social change

The paper, based on the analysis of a corpus of primary sources in Chinese, focuses on the role of language in the process of definition of Chinese civil servants’ professional identity, in a context where the role of public administration is being radically modernized and re-organized, and a new body of civil servants is being forged. In the 21st century, by imposing a repertoire of codified textual genres and training employees to become proficient in their discursive production, the People''s Republic of China reinforces civil servants’ perception of their institutional identity and their sense of belonging to a professional discourse community, at the same time simplifying procedures and increasing the efficiency of public administrative work.