Cultural hierarchies in the discursive representations of China in the Chronicle of Higher Education

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a discourse analysis of the Chronicle of Higher Education publications about China in 2011 and 2012. Drawing on postcolonial appropriations of governmentality to frame the discussion of globalization as the context of the study, the author analyzes the stylistic, rhetorical, and semantic strategies used in the newspaper to portray China in relation to the United States and the West. The author demonstrates how the US higher education media acknowledge the accomplishments of China in education, yet construct it as the culturally inferior Other, reinforcing the dominance of Western norms and practices in higher education. The author argues that the Chronicle’s placing of China in a dichotomous position to the West is symptomatic of a larger process of neoliberal globalization, which, in the case of the United States, is also preoccupied with preserving the centrality of the white, Western heritage in diverse society.

Keywords:

• globalization
• governmentality
• higher education
• postcolonial studies
• China

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Amy Metcalfe and Kalervo Gulson for inspiring and guiding poststructuralist investigations of educational policy and practice, which made this project possible.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tatiana Suspitsyna

Tatiana Suspitsyna is Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the Ohio State University, Columbus. Her research interests include globalization of higher education, poststructuralist discourse analysis, and postcolonial approaches to the study of higher education.