Abstract
Using the social semiotic theory developed out of the intersections of functional linguistics and studies of discourse and discursive practices, this paper analyzes how the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games constructs understandings of Chinese nationalism and globalization in its chronological and unifying narrative of the Chinese history and modernity. Focusing on interdiscursivity of semiosis and discourses circulating in the ceremony, the analysis demonstrates that the ceremony was engaged in a process of constant negotiations and reconciliations between history and modernity, between the local and the global, and between Chinese cultural values and universal Olympic ideals. These negotiations and recontextualizations presented a vision of Chinese history and nationhood that was intertwined with globalization, constructing globalization as both a historical condition in China as well as a global concern that was both rooted in and extended the immediate Chinese national context. This view of the nation and globalization can be explained with the social semiotic theory, whose emphasis on dialogism supports a generative understanding of the nation and globalization in the context of the Olympics. Teaming the study of the nation with the social semiotic theory allows us to establish invaluable contexts for knowledge of the nation that the social semiotic theory can help us extract from semiosis.