Introduction

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only been an immense health crisis but also has fundamentally reshaped the political landscape, necessitating decisive actions and policy implementations by governments and other stakeholders. The pandemic has thrust political leaders into the spotlight, requiring them to communicate amidst disinformation and the proliferation of fake news. Their role involves protecting the population, shaping public opinion, managing public expectations, guiding action, and even defending the nation’s security through the power of public speaking. These leaders’ speeches demonstrate their crisis management by providing “guidance, direction, and negotiation through transparent, trustworthy, timely, and accurate communication” (WHO, 2017). Crisis communication during the COVID-19 pandemic has garnered global attention from scholars across various fields. The pandemic crisis has acted as a catalyst, prompt, or facilitator for the selection and utilization of certain conceptual metaphors and their linguistic and non-linguistic manifestations in communication (Abdel-Raheem, 2021). Consequently, understanding crisis discourse construction is crucial for comprehending the impact of pandemic crisis communication.

China and the United States share one of the world’s most significant and intricate bilateral ties. The already complex relationship has been further strained by the COVID-19 crisis, with each side blaming the other for the disease’s spread and attempting to influence public opinion (Gill, 2020; Jaworsky and Qiaoan, 2021). However, there is limited literature specifically comparing the pandemic speeches of leaders in China and the United States, despite their pivotal roles in responding to and managing the crisis. Wang (2022), drawing on Van Leeuwen and Wodak’s legitimation strategies, examined how leaders construct their pandemic discourse by comparing the pandemic speeches of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, shedding light on the speakers’ ideologies and the impact of their discourse on the audience. China’s additional baggage of ‘virus origin’ and the Trump administration’s poor handling of the pandemic in the initial phases (Benjamin, 2021) have severely ruined their already-set public image. Consequently, the investigation of image restoration strategies becomes imperative. To further investigate typical linguistic manifestations in pandemic political speeches, it is essential to acquire additional corpus data and undertake longitudinal studies. These efforts are necessary to assess the influence of their pandemic rhetoric on the global pandemic narrative. In this context, the current study conducts a corpus-assisted discourse analysis to compare image restoration strategies adopted by top political figures in China and the United States, such as Chinese President Xi Jinping, former Premier of State Council Li Keqiang, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi; former US President Donald Trump, US President Joe Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris. The findings contribute to the growing research on efficient image restoration for pandemic management, thereby advocating for power enactment with valid and accurate crisis messages in the event of new pandemics in the near or distant future.

The subsequent section reviews the crisis communication and pandemic communication literature in general, along with related research on China and the United States. It also explains the underpinning theoretical framework of the research, which is the Image Repair Theory (Benoit, 1995a). Next, the study’s dataset and methodology are delineated, followed by a quantitative analysis to uncover linguistic features in the pandemic crisis communication of Chinese and American leaders. Subsequently, Image Repair Theory is used to conduct a qualitative analysis of image restoration strategies in the corpora. Finally, the findings and implications of the study are presented, concluding that political leaders at all administrative levels should choose appropriate strategies to convey their messages.

Literature review and theoretical framework

Crisis communication and pandemic crisis communication

Crisis communication, defined as the “collecting, processing, and dissemination of information required to address a crisis situation,” aims at alerting stakeholders to a particular threat while urging them to take appropriate actions (Coombs and Holladay, 2010, p. 20). In the context of health crises, there is an increasing focus on “invisible, unpredictable, and uncontrollable risks in a global society” (Pan and Meng, 2016, p. 95). During the COVID-19 pandemic’s pre-crisis communication stage, political leaders were generally concerned with preventing the crisis and mitigating its effects (Reynolds et al., 2004). Subsequently, in the crisis communication stage, they focused on their response, albeit with notable exceptions among leaders from the United States, Brazil, and the United Kingdom in the early stages (Neofytos Aspriadis, 2021). Finally, post-crisis communication is recognized as the third and final phase, aiming to deliver lessons “learned from the crisis that can reduce the likelihood of recurrence” (Heath and O’Hair, 2020, p. 7). Notably, government leaders have embraced diverse modes of crisis communication to persuade the general public to break the chain of the virus, thereby alleviating fears and uncertainties (Wodak, 2021).

Traditionally, crisis communication has focused on corporate crisis management, audience trust, message attributes, and audiences. However, there has been a shift towards interdisciplinary studies involving critical discourse studies and public relations. For instance, diachronic studies have been undertaken on pandemic-time political speeches delivered by leaders from Nigeria (Anyanwu, 2020), Israel (Lahav, 2020), the United Kingdom (L. Yu, 2020), Australia (Alyeksyeyeva et al., 2021), and the United States. Moreover, synchronic analyses have been conducted on a select group of world leaders (Berrocal et al., 2021; Dada et al., 2021; Montiel et al., 2021; Rajandran, 2020; Van Bavel et al., 2022; Wang, 2022; Wodak, 2021).

Scholars are also increasingly focusing on the discursive practices of political leadership in pandemic crisis communication (Aspriadis, 2021; Sylvia Jaworska, 2021; Krishnatray and Shrivastava, 2021; Tornero et al., 2021). For example, Krishnatray and Shrivastava (2021) selected political speeches from the United States, China, Japan, Germany, and India to explore framing strategies when addressing citizens. In a similar vein, Tornero et al. (2021) analyzed the narrative form of political discourse in France, Italy, and Spain.

Pandemic crisis communication studies in the United States and China

Previous studies have scrutinized the COVID-19 pandemic discourse of American political leaders, including Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and governors. Investigations into Trump’s speeches predominantly emphasized the communication strategy, pragmalinguistic strategies, and discursive strategies he employs to construct crisis discourse, communicate with the public, and shape public opinion (Awawdeh, 2021; Chepurnaya, 2023). In these works, Donald Trump has been widely criticized for poor crisis communication, specifically his construction of white supremacy through the communication strategies of “divide, divert, and conquer” (Louie and Viladrich, 2021, p. 1). While in the latest study, Chepurnaya (2023) highlighted key tactics used by Trump in his COVID-19 discourse to influence public perception. Watkins and colleagues, in two separate studies, contrast the ineffective COVID-19 responses of Trump and four governors with the success of other governors’ proactive strategies while analyzing diverse communication styles that highlight Trump’s detachment versus governors’ active crisis management (Watkins and Clevenger, 2021; Watkins and Walker, 2021).

The literature on Joe Biden’s COVID-19 speeches has mainly adopted conceptual metaphor theory, systemic functional grammar, and critical discourse analysis to discover modalities (Ayuningtyas, 2021), speech acts (Sofian, 2021), discourse structures and ideological elements (Siregar, 2021), speech functions (Herman et al., 2022) in his language. Other researchers have identified metaphor usage, particularly “unity, object, person, spatial and war metaphors” (Abdel-Qader and Al-Khanji, 2022, p. 810) and 14 positive self-representation strategies in Biden’s pandemic discourse (Rhaif and Obaid, 2023).

Focusing on Governor Cuomo of New York State, Sylvia Jaworska and Vásquez (2022) explored the strategic use of interconnected personal narratives to publicize his COVID-related public health policies. Similarly, Mandl and Reis (2022) uncovered the factors influencing leaders’ communication styles by analyzing the pandemic speeches of fifty US state governors. Most recently, Waymer and Hill (2023) applied the Image repair Theory to examine Kamala Harris’ vice-presidential campaign speeches and interviews in the context of her racial and gender identity.

While the United States faltered in handling the pandemic, Chinese leaders expanded their global influence by sending medical equipment and expertise to other countries (Zhao, 2021). Analyses of Chinese pandemic communication indicate that COVID-19 has represented an epochal period for China’s international border building (Smith and Fallon, 2020), with a broader impact on the US-led world order (Hagström and Gustafsson, 2021; Zhao, 2021). Scholars primarily conduct critical discourse and metaphor analysis to decode Chinese pandemic communication in official online platforms, public briefings, and newspapers. Yang and Chen (2021) examined China’s official discourse during the pandemic, arguing that globalist and nationalist arguments are intricately linked to reinforce China’s international reputation. Another critical metaphor analysis of the reportage of COVID-19 in China Daily indicated that Chinese media legitimizes ‘a global fight for a shared future’ (Yu, 2022). Studies, including the examination of the online platform China Keywords (Bertulessi, 2022) and analysis of China’s Foreign Ministry statements (Yu and Tay, 2022), revealed a discourse of solidarity amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two studies conducted comparative analyses on pandemic communications between China and the US, focusing on a limited selection of texts: Wang (2022) examined the pandemic speeches of Xi Jinping and Donald Trump to negotiate legitimation strategies in political rhetoric, while Al-Saaidi (2022) analyzed statements from March 2020 by authorities of both countries to explore ideological stances in the Sino-US COVID-19 diplomatic conflict.

The existing studies reveal significant academic attention to the leadership styles and strategies of China and the United States in managing the COVID-19 pandemic. However, these studies are constrained by limitations in scope and timeframes, particularly lacking comparative studies among leaders. For example, Ayuningtyas (2021) focused exclusively on Biden’s anniversary speech on the COVID-19 shutdown, while Sofian (2021) examined speech acts in Biden’s victory speech. Besides, studies of American pandemic political rhetoric mainly focus on Donald Trump’s ineffective crisis communication and communication strategies of Trump and other governors. Despite Waymer and Hill’s contribution in addressing the scholarly gap concerning image repair strategies and image threat responses by Black female public figures, longitudinal studies with more speeches as a corpus can generate more detailed applicable strategies. The gaps also lie in the limited exploration of specific communication strategies (Zhao, 2021) and the actual impact of China’s actions on its international image and the global political landscape (Hagström and Gustafsson, 2021; Zhao, 2021). Moreover, research such as re-branding efforts in Nigeria (Endong, 2022) and image repair strategies of China during the first wave of the pandemic (Pinardi, 2022) lack comparative studies to explore strategy differences across regions or against other global players. All the gaps mentioned above highlight the need for expanded research with a broader array of speeches and leaders and adopt a comparative lens to enrich the understanding of global pandemic communication.

The study intends to fill these gaps by conducting a longitudinal and comparative corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis of image repair strategies used in pandemic crisis communication in the two countries by prioritizing image repair theory (IRT). Previous research on the 2016 American presidential debates (Benoit, 2018), Mike Pence’s image repair strategies (Cole, 2022), and China’s image repair during crises (Pinardi, 2022), positions IRT as an effective framework for studying how political leaders manage the dual challenges of addressing a health crisis and upholding a positive international national image. This research goes beyond academic study by integrating multidisciplinary approaches to explore national image management and communication strategies during global crises, enriching the existing scholarship on pandemic communication and highlighting its significance in crisis management. Such an inquiry could provide insights for scholars, policymakers, and stakeholders, contributing to global pandemic narratives and world order.

Image repair theory

Image restoration or repair, as defined by Benoit (1995a), encompasses the way individuals or groups respond to perceived wrongdoings, involving the categorization and planning of crisis response messages. IRT is grounded in two essential presumptions: (a) communication is an objective-driven activity and (b) the fundamental goal of communication is to uphold a positive reputation (Benoit, 2018). Image restoration strategies refer to specific discursive techniques that communicators employ to repair or renew their image or reputation in the aftermath of a crisis event. These strategies can significantly influence public perception of the organization or individual and shape the long-term consequences of the crisis (refer to Benoit, 2018; see Table 1 for clarification).

Table 1 Typology of Benoit’s image restoration strategies.
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Scholars in rhetoric, public relations, and crisis communication commonly study crisis response messages that directly or indirectly impact reputation at the governmental level (Zhang and Benoit, 2009, 2004), organizational level (Benoit, 2018; Brinson and Benoit, 1999), and individual level (Dewberry and Fox, 2012; Pratiwi and Harahap, 2022; Spradley, 2020). IRT has predominantly been applied to investigate corporate image repair efforts, with notable studies focusing on Sears (Benoit, 1995b), United Airlines (W.L. Benoit, 2018), and Texaco (Brinson and Benoit, 1999). It has also been employed to examine political discourse, including that of Ronald Reagan (Benoit et al., 1991), George Bush (Benoit and Henson, 2009), Donald Trump (Benoit and Glantz, 2017), and Kyriakos (Aspriadis, 2021a, 2021b). For example, Neofytos Aspriadis (2021a, 2021b) examined the image restoration strategies of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis after being accused of “wrongdoings” by the public and the political opposition. In another paper, Neofytos Aspriadis (2021a, 2021b) analyzed the crisis management practices and public communication efforts employed by the Greek government.

Considering the aforementioned research gaps and the practicality of image restoration in managing a severe national image crisis, this study adopts IRT as a theoretical framework to conduct a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of image restoration strategies in Chinese and American pandemic speeches. The study aims to address the following research questions:

RQ1: What image restoration strategies are employed by Chinese and American political leaders in pandemic crisis communication?

RQ2: How do these strategies contribute to the US/China-led narratives on the pandemic?

Methodology

Corpus-assisted discourse research

Corpus-assisted discourse research primarily involves the automated retrieval and statistical comparison of keywords across corpora, along with lexical content extraction and frequency analysis in corpora (Power and Crosthwaite, 2022). Wordlists, keywords, collocations, and concordances are all critical elements in corpus linguistics that allow researchers to explore language phenomena within vast amounts of data. This approach has been applied in various political discourse studies, including Paul Baker et al. (2019) study of patient feedback language in NHS online health communication, Y. Yu et al. (2023) study on China’s media representation in the Xinhua News Agency.

The methodology of this study incorporated both quantitative corpus-assisted analysis and qualitative content analysis, drawing on elements from discourse analyses. Combining qualitative analyses with corpus-assisted statistical analyses significantly enhances the representativeness and reliability of an analysis (Partington et al., 2013). Corpus-assisted approaches are commonly employed in research on the communication strategies of politicians in public speeches and press briefings. Using automated corpus linguistics tools, linguistic features that might go undetected by manual discourse analysis can be unveiled. This is achieved by first retrieving a wordlist of top frequency for corpora analysis and then creating sets of electronically searchable texts typical of the corpora being studied for textual analysis. Then, the qualitative analysis was to identify image restoration strategies for pandemic management in China and the United States.

Data collection and selection

Using LancsBox as the corpus analysis tool, this study compiled two corpora to explore image restoration strategies in Chinese and American COVID-19 political speeches. The data were continuously collected from two primary sources: (1) daily press briefings and public speeches of key political leaders and (2) regular official addresses during the pandemic, obtained from official government websites. The research time frame spanned from March 2020 (when the WHO declared COVID-19 a global pandemic) to December 2022 (when China declared the end of the Dynamic Zero-COVID policy). This time frame was chosen to encompass features of public speeches during all stages of pandemic crisis communication in the two countries.

To ensure comparable final corpora, speeches made by top leaders, including several key political figures at the forefront of pandemic communication in China, such as former Premier of State Council Li Keqiang, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi, were included. This approach aimed to establish a balanced pool of data. After deciding the search terms, sources, periods, and political leaders, transcripts of press briefings and public addresses about COVID-19 were retrieved, with the speeches by other ministers, the Q&A section of the press conference, irrelevant articles (briefings about factsheets of COVID-19) excluded. These transcripts were annotated with a ‘time & speaker & type’ tag and organized by country and speaker in a designated folder for easy reference and analysis. Subsequently, the transcripts were converted to TXT formats for corpus building. In total, 144 transcripts of press briefings and public addresses were collected. Specifically, the Chinese corpus comprised 60 scripts, while the American corpus included 84 scripts (see Table 2 for detailed information).

Table 2 Statistical information of the self-built corpora.
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The pandemic speeches of heads of government in China and the United States were selected as the research corpus due to the profound impact of the Sino–US relationship and their speeches on international development. The pandemic has accelerated preexisting tensions between China and the United States, encompassing disparities in public opinion, economic and trade priorities, and strategic trust. The added controversy surrounding the origin of the virus (Pinardi, 2022), coupled with the Trump administration’s scapegoating of China (Saltzman, 2024) in the initial phase, significantly damaged their public reputation. This relationship is further complicated by geopolitical conflicts, and this highlights the critical need for fostering unity in diversity to repair image and maintain post-COVID world peace. Given the global significance of both nations and the considerable risks to global stability by the deteriorating Sino–US relationship, the study of reputation damage and repair throughout the pandemic has become both crucial and intriguing. This study uses IRT to track and compare the damaging and repairing rhetoric of leadership in each country within a political and comparative crisis response context. Specifically, it seeks to uncover unity and diversity in pandemic political speeches by examining how Chinese and US political leaders managed the pandemic through shared image restoration strategies with different narratives, different strategies with different narratives, thereby contributing to global pandemic management and other individual or corporate crisis management.

Data analysis procedure

Initially, the study illustrated how image repair is conducted through corpus-assisted quantitative analysis of keywords and collocations using Lancsbox 6.0 software. According to Baker and McEnery (2015), keywords can serve as indicators of underlying ideologies in corpus texts, and also be the focus for in-depth quantitative and qualitative analyses of their collocates and concordances. Thus, the study generated the top 20 high-frequency content words from both corpora with Words tool. Furthermore, a pandemic wordlist, adapted from the Oxford COVID Wordlist and Webster (a guide to coronavirus-related words), was run in the two corpora. Then wordlists were categorized into different themes to offer an overview of broad lexical differences and frequently occurring topics related to the pandemic in Chinese and American sources. Secondly, collocates of ‘Chinese’, and ‘American’, which were predetermined by the author as search terms to indicate national image building in the corpora, were retrieved to yield more thorough results. According to Paul Baker (2006a, p. 36), collocates are words significantly more likely to “occur in combination with other words in a certain context”, displaying a strong co-occurrence pattern within a corpus. Collocations are discursive practices and sites for contested representations of participants, topics or events (Salama, 2011). This study adapted the methodological approach of Baker (2010) in his study on UK newspaper representations, setting the parameters for our collocation analysis to include at most 3 words on the right side of the search terms, and all collocates were considered.

After this corpus analysis, the self-built corpora underwent qualitative analysis using image repair theory (Benoit, 1995b) from crisis communication. This research follows the principle that sample texts should represent typical attributes or features that exemplify the best instances of a given category (Lakoff, 2007). Accordingly, this study adopted ‘selective downsizing’ by choosing speeches by various leaders across different stages of crisis, and identifying those with high search term frequencies and significant speeches with ProtAnt Software. The selection process yielded 20 texts from each corpus for a detailed examination of image repair efforts, acknowledging that some unpatterned attributes might not be captured within the immediate context of search terms (Baker and Levon, 2015). Then, each line in the sample was coded to identify prominent image restoration strategies in Chinese and American pandemic political speeches, exemplified through discourse analysis of excerpts from the corpora, followed by further evaluation and implication. By applying these analytical techniques, the research contributes to the broader field of discourse analysis and crisis communication by providing a more nuanced understanding of the communicative tactics used by political leaders during the pandemic crisis.

Results and discussion

This section reports the main results of the analyses, namely keyword and collocate analysis to identify the most salient linguistic features in the corpora and textual analysis to determine typical image restoration strategies in the corpora.

Corpus analysis

This section presents the corpus analysis of CCL and CAL in two stages: keyword analysis and collocate analysis. Firstly, Paul Baker (2006b) suggested that analysts compare word lists from different corpora to identify statistically significant keywords with higher frequencies within a specific corpus. Table 3 displays the top 20 most frequently used nouns, with results of Chinese leaders presented on the left and those of American leaders on the right. The top 14 words among the pandemic word list in both corpora are shown in Table 4.

Table 3 Top 20 frequency nouns in CCL (Left) and CAL (right).
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Table 4 The pandemic wordlist and the top 14 pandemic words in CCL and CAL.
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The analysis of keywords in Table 3 reveals four distinct themes of CCL: geopolitical entities, development and cooperation, public health and safety, society and community. The most salient group of terms about geopolitical entities includes ‘China’, ‘countries’, ‘world’, ‘country’, and ‘ASEAN’, notably with ‘China’ appearing 1112 times. By focusing on these words, Chinese leaders project a responsible national image and call for unity among the global and Chinese citizens, garnering increased support for the pandemic policies and actions. Keywords related to development and cooperation, such as ‘development’, ‘cooperation’, ‘economy’, ‘growth’, ‘trade’, and ‘efforts’, show China’s economic priorities, indicating its intent to repair and enhance its positive global image by promoting cooperation with robust economic power. The third theme of health and epidemics can be shown in words such as ‘covid-19’, ‘health’, ‘epidemic’, and ‘control’. The last theme, society and community, ‘people’, ‘community’, ‘future’, ‘security’, and ‘peace’, indicate the corrective action of the Chinese government of mobilizing people to join the fight and divert the attention more to future and transcendence strategy by emphasizing the high-value mission of peace. Based on the above theme analysis and the high dispersion of words such as ‘epidemic’, ‘ASEAN’, ‘control’, ‘trade’, ‘peace’, ‘health’, and ‘country’ in the CCL, it is noticeable that China seeks to achieve image repair by invoking former reliable national image, reassuring audiences of its economic stability, and advocating for global cooperation and prosperity in the post-pandemic era—themes that align with the image restoration analysis in the second part of this section.

Similarly, four themes of CAL can be generated according to Table 3, namely leadership and governance, public health and safety, community and societal impact, global context and timeline. The most prominent words like ‘president (1147)’, ‘states (468)’, ‘country (374)’, and ‘America (257)’, show the first theme. Although four contexts mention other countries, their purpose is to enhance the national image, as demonstrated by phrases like ‘this country’ (67 occurrences) and ‘our country’ (68 occurrences). These keywords focus on the role of leadership, national identity, and patriotism to reinforce the image of decisive and responsible president-led governance, which is different from the first theme observed in the CCL. Recognizing the heightened stakes of political leadership during crises and the need to maintain support through effective crisis response communication (D. Watkins and S. Walker, 2021), American political leaders stress the significance of presidential leadership in mobilizing citizens during the pandemic, and the importance of fostering collaboration between the central government and states, as well as across different countries. Notably, ‘the United States’ occurs 196 times, while ‘the States’ has an occurrence of 59. The theme of public health and safety shows that American leaders focus more on corrective action of vaccination to repair the ruined image, which can be seen from the high frequency of vaccine(s) (646), vaccination (299), shot(s) (476), while Chinese counterparts focus on global cooperation. Besides, they also pinpointed the pandemic itself by repeatedly mentioning COVID-19, virus, cases, and COVID, which partly aligns with the third theme in the CCL. Keywords in the third theme, such as ‘people (964)’ and ‘Americans (386)’, relate to the impact of the pandemic on the general public and specific groups within society, invoking empathy and solidarity with the audience and encouraging collective action. Addressing the needs and concerns of people and children can enhance the image of empathy and care.

Different from themes in CCL, a typical theme in CAL is global context and timeline, as indicated by the usage of ‘world (321)’, ‘time (410)’, and ‘week (199)’. By placing the pandemic within a broader global context and addressing the timeline of events, American leaders emphasize the global effort and the ongoing nature of their response to bolster their image. The high dispersion of words such as COVID-19 (2.140047), children (1.974810), and health (1.670522) suggests they are pivotal in public perception and critical areas for leaders to address in their image repair actions. Overall, the language employed in the CAL, as indicated in Table 3, indicates that leadership, unity, and collaboration are crucial in addressing the pandemic crisis and shaping public discourse in times of crisis.

Table 4 showcases the 14 frequently used pandemic words in CCL and CAL, obtained by applying pandemic wordlists in the wizard tool of Lancsbox in each corpus. Common top pandemic words include ‘COVID-19’, ‘virus’, ‘pandemic’, ‘COVID’, and ‘vaccine’. In CCL, the top four words are ‘COVID-19’, ‘epidemic’, ‘pandemic’, and ‘virus’, while in CAL, they are ‘vaccinated’, ‘vaccine’, ‘vaccination’, and ‘COVID-19’. The observed phenomena can be attributed to the considerable effort of Chinese leaders to reinforce the overwhelming impact of the pandemic and their unwavering determination to eliminate the stigmatization of the virus. In contrast, American leaders have focused on image restoration through vaccine promotion, particularly addressing the tarnished image in the pre-and initial phases of pandemic communication. Notably, there is a discernible disparity between the two corpora for the 14 most common pandemic words, with ‘mask’ and ‘distancing’ resonating more in the American corpus. This disparity suggests that American leaders have aimed to increase public awareness about the importance of wearing masks and adopting preventative measures. On the other hand, China faced criticism for its ‘botched response’ in the early stages of the pandemic (Yang and Chen, 2021), such as delaying information release (Al-Saaidi, 2022). Both China and the United States required careful and effective image repair efforts.

According to Rayson (2008), combining the keywords and key semantic domain methods enables both macroscopic and microscopic levels of analysis to shed light on detailed linguistic features. To further investigate how leaders in two countries discursively repair national image in that pandemic rhetoric, the KIWC tool was used to examine the collocates of ‘Chinese’ and ‘American’ in their respective corpus to get semantic domains. After carefully identifying words that ‘Chinese’ and ‘American’ used to modify, we grouped them into five themes (semantic domains) shown in Tables 5 and 6 to identify specific social, financial, cultural, and political efforts political leaders take to repair their image.

Table 5 Collocates of ‘Chinese’ in CCL.
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Table 6 Collocates of ‘American’ in CAL.
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The data in Tables 5 and 6 reveal 49 collocates of ‘Chinese and 48 of ‘American’. Table 5 shows that Chinese authorities have embarked on a comprehensive strategy to repair the national image, focusing on governance, cultural values, global cooperation, health policies, and economic development. Such strategy highlights the central role of the Communist Party and government agencies while also drawing on historical and traditional references to foster national pride. Internationally, China seeks to restore its global image through medical aid, vaccine diplomacy, and fostering global cooperation. Meanwhile, China’s narrative on dynamic economic growth during the pandemic draws attention to its position on the world economy stage. All the efforts listed in the five themes are consistent with the findings of Pinardi (2022), which suggested that China’s prompt and efficient handling of the crisis, together with global health diplomacy, has bolstered it as an effective crisis manager eager to cooperate and take responsible leadership.

Table 6 presents an overview of American leaders’ strategic efforts to repair the national image by focusing on economic growth, strong leadership, community resilience, public engagement, and innovation and ideals. Seven collocates were used to show American economic growth such as companies (18), businesses (4), and job creation (1). Leadership has been manifested through 10 collocates, such as promoting the American Rescue Plan and Recovery Act, coupled with support from communities and professional groups. Also of note is that efforts to showcase resilience and achievements emphasize saving lives and notable accomplishments. Public engagement is stressed through repeated mentions of diverse groups such as ‘people’, ‘adults’, ‘seniors’, ‘families’, and ‘workers’, reinforcing a commitment to the well-being of all citizens. Additionally, they promote scientific advancement and the core American ideals with 10 collocates. Collectively, these tables offer a broad corpus view of how China and the US employ communication strategies to weather the pandemic and reposition themselves on the global stage.

Image restoration strategies in the corpora

According to Wooten (2006), the examination of apology and image restoration predominantly focuses on content, source, and timing. Based on the differences in linguistic features, this section further scrutinizes the content of CCL and CAL to explore how political leaders in China and the United States employ image restoration to manage crisis communication effectively. Notably, leaders from both nations were found to have applied all five of Benoit’s image restoration techniques based on prevalence in the analyzed corpora. Three prominent shared strategies with similar and different narratives are elaborated upon below.

Reducing offensiveness

Reducing offensiveness is the most typical strategy Chinese and American leaders employ, including six sub-categories as depicted in Table 1: bolstering, minimization, differentiation, transcendence, attack accuser, and compensation. Bolstering is mainly achieved by emphasizing positive traits and highlighting past beneficial acts that may counteract the negative impact of the current wrongful act (Benoit, 1995a). Leaders in both countries underscore past achievements to bolster national images.

In the case of China, a nation with a rich and complex history, the COVID-19 crisis communication by Chinese leaders drew on national historical experience. This is evident in the frequent use of the term ‘history,’ occurring 106 times in their communication. By leveraging the country’s extensive history, Chinese leaders aim to deflect undue blame and encourage people to refrain from politicizing and stigmatizing COVID-19 (Arsentyeva, 2021), even “China threat”.

Excerpt 1: It has never happened in Chinese history to have the highest-level meeting of the standing committee of the Political Bureau on the first day of the Spring Festival. It shows President Xi’s penetrating grasp of the situation, his outstanding leadership, and China’s strong mobilization capacity. (20200215 Wang Yi)

Excerpt 2: The assertion that China’s rejuvenation is to remake or conquer the world only reveals a lack of knowledge about Chinese history and the Chinese civilization. (20200830 Wang Yi)

As evident in the above excerpts, Wang Yi employed bolstering strategy to repair the national image by emphasizing Xi’s leadership, China’s robust mobilization capacity, and Chinese civilization, mitigating the image damage caused by the early-phase stigmatization of the virus. Holding a high-level meeting on the initial day of the Spring Festival further reinforced the government’s image as one with high efficiency and mobilization capacity, while countering the narrative of the “China threat” serves to enhance and fortify China’s public image.

Similarly, the American counterparts also employed the bolstering strategy by emphasizing history, as shown in Excerpts 3 and 4 below. Bolstering can be used to lessen the negative impacts of a performance on the actor by enhancing the audience’s favorable perception of the performer (Benoit, 1995a). In excerpt 3, the political leader highlighted the resilience of Americans to overcome challenges in adversity, aiming to bolster the image of the American people. Additionally, American leaders acknowledge the country’s challenging history to reinforce the image of Americans’ resilience in handling the pandemic, as shown in excerpt 4.

Excerpt 3: As history has proven time and time again, Americans always rise to the challenge and overcome adversity. (20200311 Trump)

Excerpt 4: Throughout our history, we’ve been tested as a people and as a nation. Through war and turmoil, we had to ask whether we’d be safe, whether we’d be okay, whether we’d get back to who we were. (20211221 Biden)

Besides, Chinese leaders also tried to reduce offensiveness with differentiation, which contrasts the current problem with some more serious issues (Benoit, 1995a). In Excerpts 5 and 6, Chinese leaders pointed out that the contentious issue of civilization clash has far more severe outcomes in history than the pandemic situation and directed the attention from Zero-covid policy to global governance to distance China from the controversy. By employing these tactics, Chinese authorities prioritize the welfare and well-being of their population while taking a thorough and proactive approach to crisis management.

Excerpt 5: We cannot tackle common challenges in a divided world, and confrontation will lead us to a dead end. Humanity has learned lessons the hard way, and that history is not long gone. We must not return to the path of the past. (20210125 Wang Yi)

Excerpt 6: The COVID-19 pandemic still drags on, with cases surging here and there. The world economy is getting more fragile. The geopolitical remains tense. Global governance is seriously inadequate. (20221115 Xi Jinping)

In comparison, American leaders adopted a minimization strategy to reduce offensiveness. The following excerpts demonstrate that leaders drew attention to the pandemic’s impact on individuals and the necessity for a coordinated global response by emphasizing worldwide COVID-19 mortality. In Excerpt 7, Trump downplayed the gravity of the pandemic by stressing the strength of the American economy and no confirmed case to justify his acts of not shutting the economy as part of their proactive approach to handling the pandemic. While Biden used minimization to shift the focus from American casualties to global casualties in excerpt 8, group identification and a national pandemic collective response were forged.

Excerpt 7: People want me to act. I’m supposed to close down the economy—the greatest economy in the history of the world—and we don’t have one case confirmed in the United States. (20200413 Trump)

Excerpt 8: Let me remind everybody: We lost 600,000 dead in America in about a year… We have an obligation in the United States of America to live up to who we are. America is the only, is a unique nation. We’re the only nation formed based on an idea…Well, here’s the deal. Here’s the deal. There are over 100 countries in the world that have no capacity to help themselves right now. None. (20210624 Biden)

Mortification

In addition to reducing offensiveness, mortification is another strategy employed by Chinese and American leaders. Benoit (1995a) defines mortification as apologizing by showing remorse and sadness for an act or problem or taking responsibility. It is observed in our study that national leaders refrain from apologizing, a practice that has the potential to ruin the government’s image. Instead, they express concern and empathy towards the general public and take responsibility to enhance national image. Pandemic crisis communication in both countries favored “person deixis” (personal pronouns) to convey empathy. Levinson (2006) defined it as a symbolic reference to the participant encoded in a speech event, with grammatical persons appropriately identifying the speaker and addressee, reflecting the relationship between semantic reference and participant roles. Thus, deixis choice is crucial in message transmission as it demonstrates the close link between language and context. Both Chinese and American COVID-19 pandemic crisis communication deviates from conventional political discourse, such as employing first-person plural pronouns as an inclusive strategy to engage and encourage the audience. For instance, the Chinese corpus exhibits significant usage of first-person pronouns, such as ‘we’ (1749 occurrences in 60 texts), ‘us’ (240 occurrences in 54 texts), and ‘our’ (586 occurrences in 57 texts). Notably, leaders in both China and the US employed ‘we can’ (36 occurrences in CLC; 264 occurrences in ALC) to foster national and international confidence. Additionally, they utilized ‘we’ to showcase their roles as top leaders, representing the government and the population.

Chinese leaders employed mortification by highlighting the nation’s efforts to take national and international responsibilities. Chinese leaders sought to strengthen China’s image as a responsible global leader collaborating with other countries to address shared challenges. Specifically, they acknowledged global issues and challenges faced by other nations while emphasizing China’s contributions to international cooperation and development at international conferences. Excerpt 9 demonstrates Chinese leaders’ willingness to play a constructive role in addressing pandemic and economic challenges, economic fragility, and geopolitical tensions, thereby enhancing its image as a responsible global actor. Chinese leaders also highlighted positive developments in China’s relationship with Central Asia, stressing growth in trade and investment and the successful completion of strategic projects (Excerpt 10). These excerpts clearly illustrate how Chinese leaders foster a sense of confidence and enthusiasm with deixis choice, inspiring and encouraging people to stay positive and hopeful during challenging times. China has been framed as ‘a fighter, a cooperative and supportive country,’ aligning with official ‘media representations of China’ (Yu et al., 2023).

Excerpt 9: As we meet, COVID-19 is still spreading in the world, global trade and investment are slowing, inflation pressure is rising and risks to food and energy security continue to develop. The world economy is confronted with challenges to sustainable and balanced recovery. (20211027 Li Keqiang)

Excerpt 10: Over the past 30 years, we have joined hands in common pursuit of development. Two-way trade and investment have grown over a hundred times. Several big projects of strategic importance have been successfully completed. (20220125 Xi Jinping)

Similarly, American leaders used first-person pronouns to express sorrow and regret for the loss of Americans and international partners. This sentiment is substantiated by the CAL corpus, wherein ‘we’ has been mentioned 3472 times in 82 texts, ‘our’ 1468 times in 82 texts, and ‘us’ 402 times 64 times. In Excerpts 11 and 12 below, American leaders attempted to repair their image with mortification by underlining the shared feeling of loss and the obligation to action. ‘We’ and ‘our’ convey a sense of sympathy and solidarity with those who have suffered a loss due to COVID-19. The reiteration of ‘we’ indicates that everyone has a part to play in preventing additional loss of life. Using first-person pronouns in plural form can also assert the shared responsibility and collaborative spirit of the United States and its international partners in the fight against the pandemic.

Excerpt 11: Today, we mark a tragic milestone: one million American lives lost to the COVID-19. One million empty chairs around the dinner table. Each an irreplaceable loss. Each leaving behind a family, a community, and a nation forever changed because of this pandemic. As a Nation, we must not grow numb to such sorrow…We must remain vigilant against this pandemic and do everything we can to save as many lives as possible. (20220512 Biden)

Excerpt 12: Despite these challenges, the U.S. commitment to an equitable COVID-19 response and recovery remains unwavering, and we recognize that the United States and its international partners have the tools and expertise to a manageable illness. Through driving forward in these areas, we hope to honor the more than 6.5 million people globally whose lives have been lost to this disease. (20220915 Watson)

Corrective action

The third shared strategy employed by Chinese and American leaders in their pandemic communication is corrective action. Corrective action is a strategy to address and solve the issue or prevent its recurrence (Brinson and Benoit, 1999). Chinese and American leaders both adopted this strategy by offering plans and visions for the future beyond the pandemic.

While existing literature stresses both the encouragement and restraint of China’s narrative entrepreneurship within the present American-led international order (Hagström and Gustafsson, 2021), Chinese leaders put forward macro and micro plans to improve China’s perception in the international community, which can be observed in the following excerpts:

Excerpt 13: We are confident that China will emerge stronger from the epidemic. Its pent-up consumer demand and growth potential will be quickly unleashed, and China will enjoy sounder and more sustainable economic and social development. (20200215 Wang Yi)

Excerpt 14: We will continue to foster a market-oriented, world-class business environment governed by a sound legal framework to see that China remains a fertile ground for foreign investment… China will also keep scaling new heights. (20201015 Li Keqiang)

Excerpt 15: No matter how the international landscape may evolve or how developed China may grow, China will always remain a good neighbor, partner, friend, and brother that Central Asian countries can trust and count on. (20220125 Xi Jinping)

All leaders focused on the prevailing and positive values and plans of China, which far outweigh the social problems caused by the pandemic. Chinese leaders reiterated China’s dedication to global cooperation during and after the pandemic in various international conferences. Firstly, Chinese leaders projected confidence in China’s ability to recover from the pandemic, fostering optimism in the public’s hearts, as demonstrated in Excerpt 13 at the Munich Conference. Additionally, they reinforced China’s commitment to creating a conducive business environment, as seen in Excerpt 14 at the 130th Canton Fair. While Xi asserted China’s commitment to regional stability and development in Excerpt 15. These leaders transcended the immediate situation by highlighting China’s resilience and growth potential, creating a favorable business environment, and supporting neighboring countries in pursuing national revitalization.

In contrast to their Chinese counterparts, American leaders appealed to others to take corrective actions and improve the government’s image. The strategic communication in the CAL is coherent among two main groups of front-line figures: the head of the political system and the head of the health system. Harris, Trump, and Biden represent the political side of the crisis management procedure, setting a tone of unity, while spokesmen from the health system represent the scientific and medical aspects of management (Aspriadis, 2021b, p. 398). Political leaders put forward corrective actions by pinpointing other leaders or shifting blame to other parties, as illustrated in the following excerpts.

Excerpt 16: I support the President’s leadership under the national emergency declaration that he signed. And we’re standing before you today, the first time in American history, when all 50 states have issued emergency declarations and the territories. This is an unprecedented time in the life of the nation. (20200413 Harris)

Excerpt 17: I feel very badly about the World Health Organization, but it’s been a tool of China. It’s been, as I say, China-centric. You take a look at everything that’s happened; they’re wrong. I was all for it at the beginning…They didn’t want our borders closed…They’re criticizing me for closing the border. (20200415 Trump)

Excerpt 18: I got my booster shot as soon as they were available. And just the other day, former President Trump announced he had gotten his booster shot…In March of 2020, no one was fully vaccinated. Over 200 million Americans should have the peace of mind that they did not have in March of 2020: They’re protected from hospitalization, and they’re protected from death. (20211221 Biden)

It is evident from Excerpt 16 that Harris urged the audience to recognize the magnitude of the current crisis. By expressing her admiration for the President’s leadership, she endeavored to enhance the public perception of the administration, creating the impression that it is taking forceful action to resolve the situation. In Excerpt 17, Trump accused the WHO of being “China-centric” as corrective action. By comparing his early actions with what he perceived as unfair criticism from the WHO, he positioned himself as an influential leader who takes bold action to protect Americans. This strategy combines anti-China sentiment with efforts to divert attention from missteps in his administration’s response to the pandemic, aligning with the findings of Kim and Kesari (2021). In contrast, Biden focused on his administration’s progress and the benefits of vaccination to restore the tarnished image in Excerpt 18. His use of statistics on vaccination shots informed the audience of the government’s efficiency in distributing vaccines and protecting Americans. Additionally, he highlighted the importance of bipartisan cooperation in combating the pandemic by referring to his predecessor’s decision to get vaccinated. This aligns with the assertion of Ayuningtyas (2021) that Biden presents himself as a visionary, powerful, and sympathetic figure.

The second group of frontline figures significantly contributed to strategic pandemic crisis communication as well, having been mentioned in pandemic speeches by political leaders or delivering speeches themselves. Leaders can justify their corrective action by ‘appointing political friends or experts’ (Watkins and Clevenger, 2021). Further statistical evidence can be found in the corpus. For example, the word ‘Dr’ has been used 124 times in 26 of 84 texts. Among them, Dr. Fauci (Chief Medical Advisor and member of the United States COVID response team), Dr. Birx, Dr. Christ (the Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services), and Dr. Sally were the most frequently quoted health experts, reinforcing their authority in managing pandemics, as shown in the following excerpts.

Excerpt 19: Listen to Dr. Fauci, one of the most distinguished and trusted voices in the world. He has assured us the vaccines are safe. They underwent rigorous scientific review. I know they’re safe. Vice President Harris and I know they’re safe. That’s why we got the vaccine publicly in front of cameras—for the world to see, so you could see us do it. The First Lady and the Second Gentlemen also got vaccinated. (20210311 Biden)

Excerpt 20: I’m so glad that Dr. Goza is here from the American Pediatric Society Association because we are now understanding that I think an analysis of 45 studies recently showed that the preponderance of evidence indicates that children are less likely to be symptomatic, have the severe disease, or be really susceptible and transmit COVID-19. (20210707 Trump)

Biden and Trump adopted the corrective action strategy along with mortification, bolstering, and denial. By emphasizing Dr. Fauci’s expertise in Excerpt 19, Biden portrayed himself and Harris as responsible leaders and individuals who follow expert advice and adhere to vaccination guidelines, enhancing their credibility. Trump downplayed the severity of COVID-19 by citing 45 studies in excerpt 20. He utilized the denial strategy to diminish the perceived risk and criticism directed toward his handling of the pandemic.

In essence, the content analysis of the American corpus revealed that top American leaders took the other side as a mouthpiece and mutually constructed an imagined binary opposition of “good” versus “bad” or “us” versus “them”. For instance, Harris compared the current dire situation with promising future actions to justify policies with important values; Trump utilized anti-China sentiment to contrast China-centric WHO with an influential and courageous leader fighting for Americans; and Biden used vaccination statistics to highlight his administration’s progress and stress the importance of bipartisan cooperation.

Conclusion and implications

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has presented significant challenges for crisis communication, it has also offered valuable opportunities to enhance the current understanding of effective communication during a crisis. Through statistical corpus analysis and discourse analysis, this study reveals the utilization of shared image restoration strategies with distinctive features in Chinese and American pandemic crisis communication. According to the two rounds of keyword and semantic domains analysis, the study finds that Chinese leaders repair and enhance their global standing by fostering a responsible national image, emphasizing unity, economic priorities, and public health, with more focus on the impact of the pandemic and its response measures. In contrast, American leaders aim to highlight an effective crisis response with strong leadership, national identity, and public health, focusing more on vaccination and preventative actions. This difference highlights how each country seeks to restore its global image, particularly in light of criticisms of its early responses to the pandemic. Despite the distinct themes in the two corpora, common keywords such as ‘world’, ‘people’, ‘COVID-19’, ‘COVID’, and ‘health’ point to the global impact of the pandemic and the imperative of international cooperation in the battle against it. The results of the collocation analysis show that China’s image repair strategy is deeply rooted in governance, cultural values, and global cooperation. On the other hand, American leaders repair national image with economic growth, leadership, resilience, public engagement, and innovation with ideals. Chinese leaders strategically emphasize themes of national governance and cultural heritage, leveraging narratives of leadership and traditional wisdom to strengthen domestic cohesion and project an image of stability and continuity.

Faced with a global health crisis and a damaged public image, top leaders in China and the United States implemented relatively effective measures by reducing offensiveness, mortification, and corrective action. Both nations utilize bolstering strategies to reduce offensiveness and enhance their respective national image by highlighting achievements and successes, emphasizing the resilience of their people. Besides, Chinese leaders tend to use a differentiation strategy to reduce offensiveness, while American leaders rely on a minimization strategy to downplay the gravity of the pandemic and loss of America to get group identification. But the Trump government’s minimization and shifting blame to China undermine its attempts and credibility. This lack of credibility is supported by the study by Watkins and Clevenger (2021), which found that some leaders suffered political repercussions for being inattentive to COVID-19 and ineffective in their policy responses. The second strategy of mortification involved expressing empathy and concern through frequent usage of person deixis. Chinese leaders have exemplified collective efforts in addressing national social issues while acknowledging and tackling global challenges in health, economy, and politics. Similarly, American leaders employ person deixis to show concern for Americans and international partners, accentuating shared loss and the need for action.

In addition, both Chinese and American leaders adopt the corrective action strategy to envision a future beyond the pandemic with abstract or concrete plans. Chinese leaders highlight China’s resilience and growth potential, foster a proper business environment, and support neighboring countries to restore China’s tarnished image in the international community during the early phase of the pandemic. The United States, on the other hand, mainly relies on two primary groups, namely politicians and experts, to transcend the immediate situation. In summary, through effective offense-reducing, mortification, and corrective action strategies, Chinese leaders seek to shape a positive national image of a responsible country, while American leaders strive to construct an ambitious national image of the country’s leading geopolitical role in the world. The attempts of both countries are in line with the study of Berrocal et al. (2021) that solidarity and nationalism are constructed with the virus as the main out-group.

This corpus-assisted discourse analysis elucidates how political leaders use public speeches to manage domestic public opinion and national sentiment during the pandemic, which benefits both researchers and practitioners. The exploration of the crisis communication of several influential political leaders contributes to the understanding of political leadership as discourse mediated in times of crisis. Despite cultural and political differences, Chinese and American pandemic political speeches reflect common strategies to manage public perception and address public health concerns. Apart from contributing significantly to the comparative research on Chinese and American pandemic political speeches, the research findings carry implications for the practice and promotion of national ideologies. The study highlights the significance of employing effective image restoration strategies to the requirements of various populations, providing valuable insights for handling pandemics or other crises in the foreseeable or distant future. It also stresses the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration between linguistic and communication scholars and crisis management experts for continued research and analysis. Ultimately, the findings contribute to the expanding body of research on crisis response strategies for pandemic management.

A fundamental limitation of the study is its focus on crisis communication strategies within only two countries based on the pandemic speeches of their political leaders. The research provides a deep but narrow perspective on image restoration efforts. Therefore, future research could consider conducting broader comparative studies of speeches in different countries and continents to understand global pandemic communication strategies better. Additionally, it can address the shifted public sentiments by conducting longitudinal studies to track how crisis communication evolves in response to economic, social, and political conditions, improving the generalizability of the results. While the study engages primarily with linguistic and communication theories, it would benefit from interdisciplinary collaboration. An interdisciplinary approach among public health, political science, and crisis management perspectives could enrich the analysis by offering a more comprehensive view of the multidimensional impacts of crisis communication. Besides, future research could expand the scope to include diverse crisis communication channels, such as social media and international diplomatic efforts, to present a more holistic view of image restoration efforts.