Abstract:
Government microblogs are novel, interactive platforms used by public agencies to disseminate authoritative information, gauge online public opinion, and provide public services. Drawing on the framework of pragmatic identity and adopting a corpus-assisted discourse analysis approach, this study examines how government identity is discursively constructed in government microblog posts. By analyzing high-frequency words, keywords, collocational patterns, and discursive strategies, the study finds that government agencies enact multiple pragmatic identities, including integrated-media disseminator, public servant, grassroots worker, information transmitter, advocate of the rule of law, virtual friend, and epidemic-prevention agent. These identity performances align with governance objectives by enhancing communication and fostering harmonious government-citizen relations through specific discursive practices. The findings further suggest that such pragmatic identity construction indexes the language governance capacity of government social media and constitutes an important channel for strengthening the language capacity of the national governance system. This study also offers practical insights for microblog-based governance, public opinion monitoring, and grassroots governance.