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Thank you. The corresponding author, Tao Li, is the CI of the Major Project of The National Social Science Fund of China (20&ZD140), and the PI for the other two projects, i.e., Humanities and Social Sciences of the Ministry of Education (23YJA740017), Shanghai Pujiang Talent Program (24PJC045).

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Additional Editor Comments:

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Thank you very much. We’ve revised our manuscript in accordance with your and the reviewers’ suggestions and comments.

Review Comments to the Author

Reviewer #1: Peer Review Report

The study “Representing national images of Self and Others through China’s Diplomatic Discourse: A Corpus-based Study” is timely and relevant, as it addresses the interplay between discourse, ideology, and national image in Chinese diplomacy. It has a Solid methodological framework that combines corpus linguistics with critical discourse analysis using van Dijk’s Ideological Square as a theoretical foundation. However, many areas need to be addressed.

Comments:

1. Abstract is dense, lacks methods, and key contributions.

Thank you. I’ve added methods and contributions.

2. Theoretical framework relies heavily on van Dijk without integrating newer discourse theories.

Thank you. We’ve added reviews of the new frameworks of discourse analysis as you can see on pages 6-8. We’ve also included these new citations in the reference part.

3. Discussion occasionally leans toward political commentary rather than data-based interpretation.

Thank you. We’ve revised some parts of it to make the discussion more related to the data. Details can be seen in the whole discussion section.

4. The role of Confucian philosophy needs a stronger textual linkage to corpus evidence.

Thank you. We’ve revised it to improve the connections between the two.

5. Language requires minor proofreading to correct article use and reduce redundancy.

Suggestions:

1. Simplify and clarify the Abstract; include corpus details and specify the study’s unique contribution.

Thank you. We’ve revised it as you suggested above.

2. Clarify the research gap in the Introduction and define 'Self' and 'Other' earlier.

Thank you. We’ve revised it accordingly.

3. Integrate more recent works in critical discourse studies (e.g., multimodal CDA, framing theory).

Thank you. We’ve added some reviews of the new frameworks of discourse analysis as you can see on pages 6-8. We’ve also included these new citations in the reference part.

4. Add coder reliability metrics such as Cohen’s Kappa to enhance methodological transparency.

Thank you. It is true that it might increase reliability of the results. We didn’t use interrater reliability test because we chose only those two coders shared. Anyway, we’ve included this limitation in the conclusion section.

5. Include a brief justification for choosing the five UNSC countries and discuss implications for generalizability.

Thank you. We’ve added a brief justification for choosing the five countries as you can see on page 11. We acknowledge that focusing on the five countries limits the scope of generalizability, which is also included in the conclusion section.

6. Ensure Discussion links empirical results directly to ideological interpretation rather than general political commentary.

Thank you. We’ve revised some parts of it to make the discussion more related to the data. Details can be seen in the whole discussion section.

7. The manuscript would benefit from clearer structural organization. Currently, several sections blend conceptually, making it difficult to distinguish between major components. The Introduction (pp. 4–6) merges literature review material, which should be moved to a separate section titled 'Literature Review' following the Introduction. Similarly, 'Research Design', 'Method', and 'Data Collection' (pp. 7–10) overlap and should be consolidated under a unified 'Methodology' section with subsections such as 'Research Design and Rationale', 'Data Collection and Corpus Construction', and 'Analytical Procedures'. The Results and Discussion (pp. 10–21) intermingle; interpretive commentary should be reserved for the Discussion to maintain analytical clarity. The Conclusion (pp. 22–23) could be reframed as 'Conclusion and Future Research' to emphasize a forward-looking approach.

Thank you. We agree that clearer structure is important for reader accessibility and we’ve revised the manuscript accordingly.

8. Conclude with theoretical contributions to corpus-based discourse analysis and future comparative research directions.

Thank you. We’ve added it as you can see in the conclusion.

9. Add a dedicated Limitations subsection addressing corpus scope and exclusion of journalists’ questions.

Thank you. We’ve added limitations in the conclusion.

10. Finally, the manuscript requires careful proofreading to address several minor but recurring issues of grammar, punctuation, and citation style. For example, on pages 6–7, in-text citations such as “van Dijk [19, 267; 20]; [21, 128]” are inconsistently punctuated and formatted. Similarly, within the same section, numbered items in the Ideological Square model— (1) Express/emphasize information that is positive about Us; … (4) Suppress/de-emphasize information that is negative about Us”—contain inconsistent capitalization and spacing around conjunctions (“Us”, “Them”). On page 8, the citation of external web resources— “These transcripts are available at https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/xw/fyrbt/”—should follow standard referencing conventions, ideally formatted as a reference entry or footnote rather than embedded in the running text.

Thank you. We’ve read through the whole manuscript and revised the formats accordingly. In “van Dijk [19, 267; 20]”, “19” and “20” refer to different citations with “;” to separate them and “267” is page number. 19 is a monograph while 20 is a journal paper which doesn’t require a page number. However, there is one exception about the external web resource without an author. It seems there is no such rule for this kind of reference in PlosOne’s requirement and we don’t know how to deal with it.

Overall, we are very grateful for your detailed and constructive suggestions, which have largely improved the clarity and quality of our manuscript.

Reviewer #2: This is an interesting paper on representing national images of self and others through China’s Diplomatic discourse. The study is based on discursive analysis of spokemen for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs during regular press conferences and shows how these discursive strategies shape the national images of China and the other four permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. The results are good and highlight China’s stance and international cooperation initiatives while also using offensive discourse strategy to counter criticisms from US-led Western nations and media regarding the pandemic period as well as some positive self-presentation and negative other-presentation to further justify the rationality of China’s stance and promote China’s image.

Thank you for your positive comments.

Besides its merits, some revisions are needed throughout the paper.

First, the introduction and the conceptual background of the paper should be more grounded in international diplomatic studies and this is also reflected in the scarce reference sources of this paper (32 references are few for a good academic paper!).

Thank you. Following your suggestion, we’ve added a background to strengthen its engagement with relevant scholarship in international diplomatic studies and crisis communication. We also included in the discussion part more engagement with international diplomatic studies. As a result, the reference list has been enriched as well.

Second, the method is anchored in discourse analysis and authors present the advantages of this method but readers need to know more about the limits of the method and data and what were the challenges in collecting those data. More details on how data was interpreted need to be addressed.

Thank you for this important methodological comment. We’ve revised the Methodology section accordingly. We’ve included a paragraph in Methodology and another one in Conclusion section as well, discussing the issues related to institutional genre constraints, the scope of generalizability, and how corpus findings were interpreted by combining quantitative patterns with close qualitative reading.

Third, the discussions related to the results of the paper should be more related to international diplomatic studies.

Thank you. We’ve rewritten the Discussion section and included more discussions in the scope of international diplomatic studies with revisions made particularly on pages from 18 to 24.

Finally, the conclusions are too short. They should also include not only the theoretical perspectives but also the practical dimensions of the results, so some policy recommendations should be mentioned. Also, the broader limitation of the study has to be mentioned in the conclusions.

Thank you for this valuable suggestion. We’ve revised and extended the Conclusion section, now retitled Conclusion and Future Research as suggested. First, we’ve articulated the theoretical contributions of the study to corpus-based discourse analysis and diplomatic discourse research. Second, we’ve also added a discussion on the practical implications of the findings, including policy-relevant insights for diplomatic communication and national image management. Third, we’ve included a clearer discussion of the broader limitations of the study, particularly regarding data scope, methodological constraints, and generalizability.

Reviewer #3: This paper has potential and does well in positioning alternative approaches to understanding ideology. However, there are some key issues the paper must deal with before it is ready for publication:

(1) clear contribution to the literature. This paper focuses too narrowly on responding to "western media" instead of outlining its clear contributions to the literature, and I think that it has clear contributions to academia that should be laid out. The discussion should explicitly connect the empirical findings to both the contributions and the ideological framework. Could the paper draw on appraisal theory? Soft power theories? or narrative diplomacy/diplomatic rhetoric theories?

Thank you. We’ve revised the Discussion section and the Conclusion section (Conclusion and future research in the revised version as suggested by a reviewer) to highlight this paper’s contributions to the field. Rather than framing the analysis primarily as a response to Western media narratives, we now emphasize how the corpus-based findings contribute to understanding the discursive operationalization of ideology and national image construction in Chinese diplomatic discourse. We’ve also tried to connect the empirical patterns to van Dijk’s Ideological Square, demonstrating how the framework functions dynamically in a Chinese diplomatic context.

Appraisal system and other theories are also relevant to the present study in their emphasis on evaluation and stance-taking. Rather than incorporating multiple theoretical frameworks, we chose to adopt a more closely relative van Dijk’s model. However, following your suggestion, we’ve included a point in the Conclusion section for future studies from other perspectives ‘Future research could also adopt alternative analytical frameworks, such as appraisal theory or narrative approaches, to complement the corpus-based and ideological analysis in this study’.

(2) The methods section does not lay out the methods for reproducibility and rather jumps from data collection to results. What were the preprocessing steps? What were the concerns for segmentation given that this scenario is highly possible with the Chinese corpus? What was the frequency threshold for rare collocates? Where were dispersion or range measures used? What is the reason for choosing MI3 over other association measures? Is it sensitive to results for different window sizes? Why the +5-5 window? What about the operationalisation of attitude, judgement, and affect?

Thank you. In the revised manuscript (p. 11), we’ve added the details of Chinese word segmentation and collocation analysis, including the frequency threshold for collocates, the rationale for the collocational measurement, and the choice of a ±5-word window. It is basically the default setting of WordSmith (8.0).

As for the Appraisal System, we agree that the categorization of attitude, judgement, and affect are highly relevant to the analysis of evaluative meaning in diplomatic discourse. However, adopting appraisal theory as a full analytical framework at this stage would require a fundamentally different coding s

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Response

We thank all the editor and the reviewers for their critical and constructive comments on the previously revised version of the paper. We’ve revised the paper according to these comments and we believe the paper has now been greatly improved.

Additional Editor Comments:

We noticed some potentially unsupported or unclear statements that have not been addressed by the review process. These statements may need clarification, modification, or citations for support. Particularly, the entirety of the second paragraph on page 19, "Western countries continuously demonized China" and "These actions reflect ongoing efforts by Western countries to maintain their leading positions by exerting pressure on China and hindering its pursuit of rejuvenation." Similarly on page 21 "Faced with the containment and suppression of the US government, China has not shrunk back but responded with a spirit of struggle." (p 21) and "She also expressed that in the face of relentless defamation campaigns by anti-China hostile forces, the spokespersons refused to be silent lambs or gentlemen." (p 21). Additionally, statements on page 26 "condemning their unwanted interference and unwarranted interference" (p 26) In each of these cases are unclear or un supported. These statements need clarfication of being presented as facts, as the authors' opinion, or as the way that these things are depicted by Chinese diplomatic discourses.

Thank you for your constructive suggestions. To follow your feedback, we’ve rewritten the second paragraph on page 19, removed broad and evaluative claims elsewhere, and grounded the discussions in previous research with the support of additional references.

For “the entirety of the second paragraph on page 19, "Western countries continuously demonized China" and "These actions reflect ongoing efforts by Western countries to maintain their leading positions by exerting pressure on China and hindering its pursuit of rejuvenation. ”, it has been revised as the following:

Throughout this period, China was subjected to heightened international scrutiny. A body of scholarship on Western media discourse suggests that some news outlets and political media ecosystems frequently framed China through lenses of blame attribution, including the circulation of racially marked labels such as “Chinese virus” and “Wuhan virus” and related stigmatizing narratives [38-39]. … In this light, such media framings may be understood as aligning with broader Western political efforts to exert pressure on China and to constrain its national rejuvenation agenda [42-43].

For “Similarly on page 21 "Faced with the containment and suppression of the US government, China has not shrunk back but responded with a spirit of struggle." (p 21) and "She also expressed that in the face of relentless defamation campaigns by anti-China hostile forces, the spokespersons refused to be silent lambs or gentlemen." (p 21). ”, it has been revised as the following:

In the context of increasingly tense China-US relations, Chinese official discourse has repeatedly emphasized the need to be prepared for “struggle”. For example, in a speech delivered on September 1, 2021 at the opening ceremony of a training session for young officials at the Central Party School, President Xi Jinping stated that, … This viewpoint was echoed by the remarks of Mao Ning, an MFAC spokesperson, during the Third China Spokesperson Forum (May 27, 2023), where Mao highlighted that in the face of relentless defamation campaigns by anti-China hostile forces, the spokespersons refused to be silent lambs or gentlemen but worked as warriors to proactively defend China’s interests, image, and dignity in the fiercely contested international discursive arena.

For “Additionally, statements on page 26 "condemning their unwanted interference and unwarranted interference" (p 26) ”, it has been revised as the following:

These offensive strategies involved openly criticizing the ineffective pandemic governance of the US-led western countries and condemning what the MFAC spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, described as hegemonic conducts and unwarranted interference in the internal matters of sovereign nations during the Regular Press Conference on July 12, 2021.

In addition, the 1st paragraph, page 24, describes how Confucianism informs Chinese diplomatic approaches also required a supporting reference.

Thank you for this helpful suggestion. We’ve revised the part and added two pieces of references that examine how Confucian concepts (e.g., yi, li) are connected to China’s strategic culture and contemporary diplomatic discourse.

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Reviewers' comments:

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Comments to the Author

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Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

________________________________________

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

________________________________________

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

________________________________________

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

________________________________________

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Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Now this paper can be accepted for publication because authors did a good revision to the manuscript and the paper is much improved.

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Reviewer #2: Yes: Remus Cretan

________________________________________

Many thanks again for your constructive comments and suggestions, which helped improve the overall quality of our manuscript.

In addition to revising the paper based on the constructive comments and suggestions, we’ve also carefully reviewed the manuscript and made a few other minor revisions where we found necessary.

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Journal Office requests: During internal review of this submission, PLOS ONE staff editors identified several sentences in the manuscript that may affect its ability to meet the journal’s publication criteria (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/criteria-for-publication). To ensure the manuscript maintains a neutral and objective tone, that all statements are appropriately supported by peer-reviewed literature or the presented results, and that claims are not overstated, we recommend revising the text accordingly.

We thank the editor(s) for drawing our attention to this important issue. We’ve carefully reviewed the manuscript throughout, with particular attention to the Discussion, and Conclusion sections, and revised the relevant passages accordingly.

Specifically, it is not clear from the presented results how the following statements are supported by the work. We ask authors to revise the text or provide an appropriate supporting citation.

1. "In contrast, Western countries, particularly the US, seek unilateralism in the name of democracy, freedom, and human rights. They engage in interventions in the internal affairs of other countries and scramble to maintain the hegemonic position and vested interests of developed Western countries in global governance."

Thanks. We’ve removed “They engage in interventions in the internal affairs of other countries and scramble to maintain the hegemonic position and vested interests of developed Western countries in global governance.” We’ve also reworded them as you can see in the manuscript.

“In contrast, some Western countries, particularly the US, have often articulated critiques of other countries, including China, through discourses of democracy, human rights, and security concerns. For example, the 2017 National Security Strategy described China and Russia as “revisionist powers”. These contextual factors provide a background for interpreting why the US was frequently represented as a salient Other in the MFAC spokespersons’ discourse.”

2. "Politicians, including president of the US, initiated trade wars and suppressed Chinese enterprises and depicted China as a threat and competitor in their public speeches. In official documents including The National Security Strategy Report, The National Defense Strategy Report, and The Nuclear Posture Review, the Trump administration explicitly labeled China as a “strategic competitor”, declaring that the competition between the US and China is strategic, comprehensive, and long-term"

2a. We also request that links are provided to the above named reports

Thanks. We’ve revised this passage to avoid unsupported or politically evaluative wording. We now refer more narrowly to official US strategic documents and provide links to the relevant reports, as requested.

“US official strategic documents during the Trump administration increasingly framed China as a major strategic challenge. For example, the 2018 National Defense Strategy explicitly stated that “China is a strategic competitor”, declaring that the competition between the US and China is strategic, comprehensive, and long-term.

3. "As part of diplomatic practices, they adopted offensive strategy to criticize the US government and politicians who have wantonly smeared China’s pandemic prevention efforts and projected a negative image of the US."

Thanks. We’ve revised the sentence to distinguish between the authors’ analysis and the spokespersons’ own discursive representation. The revised wording now states that the spokespersons represented certain US criticisms as attempts to stigmatize or discredit China, rather than presenting this as the authors’ own judgment.

“As part of these diplomatic practices, the spokespersons used offensive discursive strategies to respond to criticisms from the US government and certain Western media outlets, which were represented in the spokespersons’ discourse as attempts to stigmatize or discredit China’s pandemic response.”

4. "Through descriptions and evaluations of its unilateralist and imperious behaviors, the spokespersons cast the US in a negative light who is irresponsible domestically for the ineffective pandemic prevention and hegemonic internationally with extended jurisdiction to interfere in other countries’ internal affairs. By contrast, the spokespersons brought to the fore China’s diplomatic principles of multilateralism and win-win cooperation, thereby constructing a favorable image of China as a responsible and cooperative country and highlighting China’s divergence with the West in ideology."

4a. It is unclear that sufficient evidence has been provided in the results themselves to support these statements. As a suggestion, quotes from the spokespersons may provide support.

Thanks. We’ve revised the passage so that terms such as “unilateral”, “irresponsible”, and “interference” are clearly presented as evaluative categories found in or inferred from the spokespersons’ discourse, rather than as the authors’ direct characterization of the US. We have also added representative concordance examples to show how negative evaluations of the US were linguistically realized.

“Through recurrent collocates and concordance lines involving terms such as “violate”, “interfere”, and “irresponsible” as can be seen in Figure 1, the spokespersons’ discourse represented the US in negative evaluative terms, particularly in relation to pandemic governance, international responsibility, and intervention in other countries’ affairs. By contrast, China was frequently associated with positively evaluated terms related to cooperation, responsibility, mutual assistance, and multilateralism. These contrastive patterns are consistent with the quantitative distribution reported in Table 4, where China received 3,310 positive representations, whereas the US received 1,400 negative representations.”

Figure 1 Concordance lines of “violate”, “interfere” and “irresponsible” with “US”

5. "Their partnership is characterized by frequent high-level exchanges, shared positions on global issues, and a commitment to strengthening cooperation. Notably, both countries face similar external pressures and challenges, leading to a shared commitment to safeguarding their sovereignty and interests"

Thanks. We’ve revised this statement to avoid overgeneralization but to present China-Russia cooperation as a contextual factor that may help explain the relatively positive representation of Russia in the corpus, rather than as a direct causal claim.

“The relatively positive representation of Russia may be interpreted in relation to the broader context of China-Russia strategic cooperation. In fact, China-Russia relations have in many years involved sustained strategic coordination and that Russia occupies a high-ranking position in China’s partnership diplomacy.”

6. "For instance, the Confucian principle of harmony underscores China’s advocacy for peaceful diplomacy, dialogue, and cooperation rather than confrontation. Simultaneously, righteousness and propriety serve as moral justifications for China’s diplomatic stance and its criticism of perceived injustice or hegemonic behavior in global politics. Such cultural elements enable the MFAC spokespersons to balance assertiveness with courtesy, employing both communicative and offensive discursive strategies strategically. This culturally informed diplomatic rhetoric thus not only helps manage China’s international image but also effectively counters external challenges."

Thanks. We’ve revised this passage to make clear that Confucian concepts are used only as a possible interpretive lens, not as a direct causal explanation for the spokespersons’ discursive strategies. We have also removed wording suggesting that these cultural elements “effectively counter” external challenges.

“Selected elements of traditional Chinese cultural thoughts, such as harmony, righteousness, and propriety, may provide a broader interpretive lens for understanding the coexistence of cooperative and confrontational elements in MFAC spokespersons’ discourse. For example, the Confucian principle of harmony may help contextualize China’s emphasis on peaceful diplomacy, dialogue, and cooperation. At the same time, notions of righteousness and propriety may help explain how criticism of perceived injustice, unilateralism, or hegemonic behavior is morally framed within diplomatic discourse.”

7. "The systematic recurrence of negative evaluative framing in these cases suggests that offensive strategies are not indiscriminately applied but are activated in response to perceived challenges or accusations directed at China"

Thanks. We’ve revised this sentence to avoid making a strong causal claim about strategic intention.

“The concentration of negative evaluative suggests that offensive discursive strategies were not evenly distributed across all external actors. Rather, they were associated primarily with actors as involved in criticism, blame attribution, or perceived challenges to China.”

Conclusions:

8. "On the one hand, they sought to uphold and enhance China’s positive international image by stressing the scientific rigor underlying virus origin investigations and promoting global cooperation in combating COVID-19 as a shared global challenge."

8a. It is not currently clear that this statement is supported by the results presented in the manuscript. We therefore ask the authors to ensure that it is adequately substantiated, either by the study’s findings (e.g., through the inclusion of relevant quotations) or by appropriate references.

Thank you. We’ve revised the conclusion to align it more directly with the corpus findings reported in this study, particularly the positive collocational patterns associated with China. While the spokespersons’ discourse includes cases emphasizing the scientific rigor of virus origin investigations, we’ve reformulated the conclusion to avoid giving undue prominence to claims not directly foregrounded in the Results section.

“On the one hand, the spokespersons’ discourse constructed a positive image of China through communicative strategies, recurrently associating China with cooperation in the global pandemic response.”

9. "On the other hand, they skillfully adopted"

9a. This phrase appears to include subjective language. Please clarify whether the use of the term “skillfully” is justified within the scope of the study. If not directly supported by the results or appropriate references, we recommend revising this phrasing to ensure a more neutral and objective tone.

Thanks. We’ve removed the word “skillfully” to make it more neutral.

“On the other hand, the spokespersons’ discourse also included offensive strategies in response to negative narratives, accusations, and criticisms directed at China primarily by the US and some other western media such as BBC.”

10. "and defamation attempts spearheaded primarily by the US and some other western media such as BBC."

Thanks. We’ve reworded the sentence. “defamation attempts spearheaded” has been removed as you can see from our response to comment 9.

11. "The analysis shows that national image construction in spokesperson discourse relies on a strategic calibration of cooperative and confrontational strategies, which are selectively deployed in response to geopolitical dynamics and perceived external challenges."

11a. Please provide supportive evidence that the spokesperson discourse was selectively deployed for the stated reasons. If this interpretation is not directly supported by the results or appropriate references, we recommend revising the statement to ensure it accurately reflects the evidence presented.

Thanks. We’ve revised the sentence to avoid making a strong claim that is not very directly foregrounded in the Results section. Since the Conclusion section is intended to synthesize the main findings rather than introduce new evidence, we’ve reformulated the statement in more cautious terms.

“The analysis shows that cooperative and offensive discursive strategies used to represent national images in spokesperson discourse were unevenly distributed across the national actors and these observed distributional differences may be interpreted in relation to broader geopolitical dynamics.”

Overall, we have revised the manuscript to ensure that the discussion remains grounded in the corpus results. Where contextual explanations are retained, we’ve reformulated the relevant arguments in more cautious terms and supported them with official documents where appropriate. We’ve also clarified that the analysis concerns representations in the spokespersons’ discourse rather than the authors’ own judgments.

We are very grateful to the editor(s) for these helpful suggestions, which have greatly improved the overall quality of our manuscript.

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