Discursive democratization in Mainland China: A diachronic study of the New Year’s editorials in the People’s Daily

From the perspective of critical discourse analysis, the present study reveals, both qualitatively and quantitatively, that there has emerged a trend of discursive democratization in the New Year’s editorials in the People’s Daily. This emerging trend is signaled by the reduction of explicit power markers such as the modalities, the negative linguistic items of Judgment and by the increase of implicit power markers of positive linguistic items of Appreciation in Appraisal system. We suggest that discursive democratization in these editorials is the result of the restructuring of both institutional and societal orders of discourse in mainland China; however, the trend of discursive democratization is only conditional and rather limited under the current political system.