Confucius in *The Times* from 1785 to 2019: a diachronic news discourse analysis of newsworthiness

Confucius's immeasurable influence on Asian and Western intellectual and social history has led to varied Western perceptions, including idealization, deification, dismissal, vilification, and rehabilitation. This study focuses on the British perception of Confucius, examining how his image evolved in the British public through the lens of news values. News values, reflecting public perception filtered through journalistic representation, reveal how the Western public viewed Confucius and its evolution. The study adopts a discursive news value approach (DNVA), analyzing the British newspaper *The Times* from 1785 to 2019 to explore how the newsworthiness of Confucius was constructed and how this changed over time. The research questions are: 1) How was Confucius defined and described in *The Times*? 2) What news values were constructed by these definitions? 3) How did these news values evolve over time in *The Times*' reporting on Confucius? Existing research primarily focuses on Confucius Institutes and Confucian texts, often employing synchronic lenses. This study, however, uses a diachronic approach and examines the full data corpus of *The Times* to identify how Confucius was perceived in British society and refine the methodology accordingly.

Existing studies on Confucius in Britain primarily focus on two aspects: English translations of Confucian texts (mainly from the 1780s-1890s), examining concepts like filial piety and their adaptation into English philosophy; and the more recent focus on Confucius Institutes, exploring the experiences of Chinese teachers, motivations of various interest groups, and the Institutes' overall development in China and Britain. However, these studies primarily use a synchronic approach and often assume that these two avenues (texts and Institutes) were the dominant ways the British society engaged with Confucius throughout history. This study challenges this assumption and explores the limitations of this view, particularly noting that familiarity with Confucius's works lagged behind awareness of his identity in earlier periods. The study highlights the need for a diachronic approach to analyze the historical changes in the perception of Confucius in Britain.

This study utilized the diachronic corpus of *The Times* newspaper from 1785 to 2019, a comprehensive database containing 72,831 news texts and 11,383,298,453 word tokens. The researchers searched for concordances of terms like 'Confucius,' 'Confucian,' 'Confucianism,' and 'Confucianist' to retrieve Confucius-centered news texts. This resulted in 24 corpora, one for each decade, allowing for diachronic analysis. Due to the limited and dispersed nature of Confucius-related mentions within the larger corpus, the analysis focused on collocations and concordance lines rather than entire articles. A manual analysis categorized the instances of Confucius into four sub-themes: 'the person of Confucius,' 'works/theories of Confucius,' 'Confucius Institutes,' and 'followers of Confucius.' These sub-themes were then analyzed using the DNVA framework, which identifies ten news value categories: Consonance, Eliteness, Impact, Negativity, Positivity, Personalization, Proximity, Timeliness, Unexpectedness, and Superlativity. The study investigated how these categories were constructed throughout the chosen period, considering the cultural sensitivity of news values and taking into account the cultural context of a Chinese philosopher being presented to a British audience. The analysis considered how the Sino-UK relations also influenced the journalistic values and social ideologies reflected in the reporting.

The study's semantic analysis categorized references to Confucius into four sub-themes: 'the person of Confucius,' 'works/theories of Confucius,' 'Confucius Institutes,' and 'followers of Confucius.' Early reporting (1780s-1830s) primarily focused on 'the person of Confucius' and his 'followers,' suggesting that initial interest wasn't driven by his writings or institutions. From the 1840s onwards, 'works/theories of Confucius' gained prominence, alongside 'the person of Confucius.' 'Followers of Confucius' and 'Confucius Institutes' remained at lower frequencies throughout the entire period. Regarding 'the person of Confucius,' four framing strategies were identified: religionization (comparing Confucius to religious prophets), Westernization (linking him to Western thinkers), sinicization (emphasizing his Chinese attributes), and depreciatization (criticizing or devaluing him). Before 1840, Westernization and religionization dominated, constructing news values of Eliteness and Proximity. After 1840, sinicization increased, while Westernization and religionization continued to counterbalance the increasing foreignness of the Chinese identity. The 1970s showed a peak in depreciatization due to the Cultural Revolution in China. From the 2000s, sinicization became dominant, suggesting a shift towards presenting more comprehensive information about Confucius and China. For 'works/theories of Confucius,' Eliteness was the dominant news value. This was constructed through comparisons to Western works, religious texts, and through quotations by Western elites. The study found that the inherent professionalism of the sub-theme, combined with the enhanced status through analogies and endorsements, significantly reinforced the Eliteness aspect. 'Confucius Institutes' inherently possessed Eliteness due to their professional nature and association with the Chinese government. The reporting consistently highlighted their governmental ties, reinforcing the Eliteness value. 'Followers of Confucius' were framed in two ways: as ordinary Chinese people (constructing Personalization) and as Chinese elites (constructing Eliteness). Before the 1880s, Personalization dominated, focusing on the collective Chinese identity without individual specificity. From the 1890s, Eliteness gradually increased, portraying more specific Chinese elite figures. The study notes that Personalization in this context was used to identify the nationality rather than focusing on individual details. This evolution from a general national conception to more concrete elite personalities reflects changes in the British perception of Chinese people and the increased interaction between Chinese and British elites.

The study's findings address the research questions by demonstrating how the *Times*' portrayal of Confucius evolved over time, driven by changing news values and influenced by the socio-political context of Sino-British relations. The initial Westernization and religionization strategies aimed to enhance the acceptability of a foreign concept by associating it with familiar figures and values. The subsequent sinicization reflects an increased acceptance and understanding of Chinese culture and a desire for more comprehensive information. The shift in the representation of 'followers of Confucius' from ordinary people to elites indicates a changing perception of China from a generalized view to a more nuanced appreciation of its diverse populace and leadership. The negative portrayal during the 1970s highlights the influence of external events on journalistic decisions and the impact of social attitudes on news value construction. The diachronic approach provides insights into the dynamic interplay between societal changes, media representation, and the evolution of perceptions.

This study showcases DNVA's ability to analyze news values from scattered historical data. It offers a novel corpus-based quantitative analysis of Confucius's integration into British society, contrasting with previous synchronous studies. The findings reveal the dynamic interplay between news discourse, news values, and public cognition, explaining how the *Times* packaged and presented Confucius. This offers valuable historical data, particularly highlighting the initial focus on Confucius's person and followers, contradicting previous assumptions. Future studies should include analysis of other British newspapers to broaden the perspective and enhance the understanding of British public perceptions of Confucius.

The study's limitation lies in its focus solely on *The Times* newspaper. Future research should incorporate other British newspapers like *The Guardian* and *The Daily Telegraph* to gain a broader understanding of how various media outlets constructed the narrative around Confucius. The inclusion of different newspapers could reveal varied interpretative packages and provide richer insights into the British reader's cognition towards Confucius.