Otherness and suspiciousness: a comparative study of public opinions between the Confucius Institute and Goethe-Institut in developing countries

Abstract

This study aims to examine the differences in lexical priming features between Confucius Institutes and Goethe-Instituts in developing countries using lexical priming theory and natural language processing techniques. By collecting news media coverage from 2014 to 2023, this study analyses the corpus through collocation, colligation, semantic association, and semantic prosody. In this study, it was found that the Goethe-Institut has a more stable institutional identity, while the Confucius Institute is still largely recognized for language teaching and cultural dissemination activities. The association of the Confucius Institute with China and its government creates a stronger sense of "otherness" and leads to negative perceptions. Overall, this study contributes to a better understanding of public perception and institutional image in developing countries.