The Chinese Government Exploring Genres for Web-mediated Communication

The chapter deals with the use of the Internet by the Government of the People's Republic of China. Its website is identified as one of the crucial media to perform two public administration functions: spreading information to the general public and collecting feedback from society. The analysis reveals the choice of linguistic resources recently adopted by the Chinese public administration in order to perform this two-way communication flow with the citizen. Findings indicate the simultaneous presence of traditional bureaucratic genres and of textual forms derived from other professional communities, identifying the functions they serve. In particular, the paper looks at the genre of the online interview, devoting specific attention to three interviews with former Prime Minister Wen Jiabao conducted since 2009 which are examined with the underlying hypothesis that their linguistic features are heavily influenced by the distribution channel.