Analysis on the Referential Content of “We” in The Report on the Work of the Government 2021 from the Perspective of Pragmatics

The Report on the Work of the Government is a summary of China’s development achievements in the past year and plans for future work. The English version of the report provides the international community with a crucial means to learn about this rising nation. From the perspective of pragmatics, this paper uses text analysis to explore and classify the content of “we” in The Report on the Work of the Government 2021 according to relevance theory and adaptation theory. The results show that in the same discourse, the referential content of “we” is ambiguous and dynamic to some extent. In terms of the effect of use, “we”, which is often used in conjunction with modal verbs, plays a role in appealing and warning. Specifically, the self-referential “we” that is limited to a specific group emphasizes responsibility and mission; the “we” that refers to others in general can be used as a social indicator to narrow the distance between the speaker and receivers.