The Cognitive Framings of Xi Jinping's Discourses on Poverty Alleviation

The paper aims to analyze the cognitive framings of Xi Jinping’s discourses on poverty alleviation. In those discourses, the cognitive metaphorcial framings “Poverty is war”, “Poverty is therapy”, and “Poverty is journey” as well as the non-metaphorical framing of “solidarity” are widely adopted and they are in great accord with the deep-rooted values of collectivism, perseverance and common prosperity among the Chinese population. Positive cognitive framings can help motivate sound feelings and pro-active reactions from the hearers. Thus the ideas behind the framings can be better recognized and accepted by the hearers. And accordingly, the poverty-striken population are more likely to be encouraged to cooperate with the government and play their part in their own poverty alleviation. The cognitive framings used in China’s poverty alleviation discourses perform well in political publicity.