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<p>Family metaphors have long shaped the imagination of political communities, yet empirical research remains limited on how they are strategically reorganized in modern Chinese international communication. Drawing on China Daily’s English-language news reports from 2004 to 2024, this study uses computational text analysis to examine how family metaphors are deployed across two distinct narrative frameworks, namely the National Community Narrative focused on China’s internal cohesion and the Global Community Narrative focused on international relations. Based on an analytical corpus of 2927 reports, the findings reveal a marked increase in family metaphor usage after 2017 along with clear strategic divergence between the two narratives. The National Community Narrative emphasizes belonging, care, cultural continuity, and shared future while reinforcing a vertical sense of rootedness tied to family-state isomorphism. In contrast, the Global Family Narrative prioritizes cooperation, solidarity, mutual help, and shared future to construct a horizontal partnership model. Notably, markers of authority, hierarchy, and bloodline are present but significantly constrained in the global narrative to avoid perceptions of dominance. This study demonstrates how Chinese discourse adaptively reshapes family metaphors to align cultural identity construction with distinct communicative goals for domestic unity and global engagement.</p>

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Shaping family-state isomorphism and “shared future” in Chinese discourse: divergent family metaphors in national and global community narratives

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年7月3日

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  • Zhangxin Li,
  • Ke-ke Shang

摘要

Family metaphors have long shaped the imagination of political communities, yet empirical research remains limited on how they are strategically reorganized in modern Chinese international communication. Drawing on China Daily’s English-language news reports from 2004 to 2024, this study uses computational text analysis to examine how family metaphors are deployed across two distinct narrative frameworks, namely the National Community Narrative focused on China’s internal cohesion and the Global Community Narrative focused on international relations. Based on an analytical corpus of 2927 reports, the findings reveal a marked increase in family metaphor usage after 2017 along with clear strategic divergence between the two narratives. The National Community Narrative emphasizes belonging, care, cultural continuity, and shared future while reinforcing a vertical sense of rootedness tied to family-state isomorphism. In contrast, the Global Family Narrative prioritizes cooperation, solidarity, mutual help, and shared future to construct a horizontal partnership model. Notably, markers of authority, hierarchy, and bloodline are present but significantly constrained in the global narrative to avoid perceptions of dominance. This study demonstrates how Chinese discourse adaptively reshapes family metaphors to align cultural identity construction with distinct communicative goals for domestic unity and global engagement.