You Are What You Read – A Critical Discourse Analysis of Falun Dafa

Abstract

The phenomenal growth of the Chinese modern religion Falun Gong (Falun Dafa) provides an opportunity to explore how modern religious texts are constructed and how ideologies rise in text. This paper employs a critical discourse analysis (CDA) methodology to investigate whether the perception of Zhuan Falun by its followers is in accord with the presentation of the script itself, aiming to highlight how language use is an integral part of the dissemination of religious discourse and its ideology. The study uses corpus analysis and interviews as complementary methods. Corpus analysis is based on the Falun Gong text ‘Zhuan Falun’. Interviews are conducted with 10 participants in Taiwan and 10 participants from China who reside in New Zealand. Findings demonstrate that despite the participants’ differences in nationality, generally, the text’s oriented style leads the members to recognise themselves as ‘elite’ as opposed to ‘ordinary people’ by intertextually connecting existing Chinese religious presuppositions. This study shows the characteristics of Falun Dafa and aims to enhance our understanding of how religious discourse operates in the 21st century.