CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
1.1 Study Background
The United States is a nation which early started the spokesperson system andwell developed the government information publicity system, so study of the languageof the U.S. White House spokespersons in press briefings will improve and beconducive to the understanding about the language of China’s official spokespersons.The press spokesperson system is a product of the U.S. political reform and mediapopularization: the political reform requires the government to publicize informationand set up a spokesperson system to control public opinion, solve government crisis,and establish government image; the media massification urges American press toactively strive for the right to know and forces the United States government tointroduce a series of regulations protecting the spokesperson system. In thecombination of two forces, the press spokesperson system gradually matures andshows a positive impact on the modern national political life worldwide. Thespokesperson system in the U.S. is an important means of government public relations;it has a series of legal guarantee and purports to respect citizens’ right to know. After along-term development, a specialized and professional spokesperson team has formedin the U.S.government.The government spokesperson is on behalf of national institutions, releases newsto the public through the press and responses to concerns of the public and media athome and abroad. The main responsibilities of government spokespersons are issuinginformation about government affairs, publishing and explaining policies of nationalagents, connecting state organs and social public through new media, and creating ahealthy public environment. Government spokesperson is not an enterprise, a socialorganization or an individual, but is associated with the system and officialinstitutions. Specifically, in China, spokespersons of national agencies includesspokespersons of organs of state power (NPC), of the state administrative organs (thegovernment), of the state judicial organs (the court), and of Chinese people’s politicalconsultative conference (CPPCC), etc. In the United States, there are White Housepress secretary, spokesman of the State Council, the Pentagon spokesperson, and soon. Broadly speaking, the legislative, administrative and judicial organs of a nationcan be collectively referred to as “government”, so the national agency spokespersonwould be referred to as “the government spokesperson” in this thesis. The mostessential and fundamental principle of the official spokesperson system is to ensurethat the most appropriate information can be delivered to the media and the public onthe premise that face of the speaking side, the audiences and the third party can beconcerned and given.The White House spokesperson or the White House press secretary is a positionof senior administrative official in the White House, whose main responsibility is tospeak on behalf of the executive branch of federal government. White Housespokespersons assume the responsibility to collect and release news and informationabout the U.S. president and the administrative department of the federal governmentand more importantly respond to many domestic and foreign issues with highattention or emergency—the spokesperson’s respond is usually considered as theattitude of U.S. president or the government. The White House spokespersons mustkeep close interactions with the news media in daily work, and nearly every day haveto deal with the permanent representatives in the White House press office from agreat deal of big media and hold press briefings. The purpose of White House pressbriefings is to convey information, understand the public opinion, and makegovernment work more open and transparent, thus the first rule the conferences mustskillfully observe is the cooperation principle, that is, to provide the requiredinformation for journalists at home and abroad in an appropriate way. But it is notcon
