Xi Jinping's keynote in the Belt and Road Forum: a pentadic cartography

Abstract

In this essay, we utilize pentadic cartography to analyze Xi's keynote speech in the Belt and Road Forum in May 2017. Following the steps offered by Anderson and Prelli, we first identified the five pentadic terms in Xi's speech and then located two potential mappings with different featured ratios: agency-act in the first mapping and scene-agent in the second. Examining the two potential mappings of Xi's keynote, this paper argues that by constructing the BRI as a ‘great undertaking’ benefiting all mankind, Xi attempted to enhance the influence of China's discourse, the soft power, and demonstrated his competence to lead the world to prosperity. Finally, we provided an alternative pentadic ratio (agent-scene) to counter the dominant one (scene-agent) discovered in the second mapping aiming to reopen the closed universe of discourse.