Towards a Twin City: A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Study of Hong Kong Factors in Shenzhen Media Discourse

This study integrates text mining and corpus linguistics into critical discourse analysis to provide a corpus-assisted examination of Shenzhen-Hong Kong relations. Adopting the three-dimensional framework of the discourse-historical approach, we investigate themes and topics, discursive strategies, and linguistic realisations in Shenzhen official news portal’s representation of inter-city relations. By moving between quantitative corpus techniques and qualitative discourse analysis, the study investigates the discursive strategies of regional integration, revealing Hong Kong factors to a ‘quasi-twin city’ narrative. Furthermore, it explores the development of Shenzhen-Hong Kong relations since the 1980s and identifies the socio-political factors influencing their current dynamic. The method integrating text mining tools, corpus software, and human close reading yields a synergistic approach to discourse analysis.