i VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ------------- o0o ------------- TRẦN THANH TÚ INTERPRETABLE IMPLICATURES IN THE VIETNAMESE PRIME MINISTER NGUYỄN TẤN DŨNG'S SPEECH AT THE 62ND UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY SESSION (Những hàm ý có thể thuyết giải được trong bài phát biểu của Thủ tướng Việt Nam Nguyễn Tấn Dũng tại kỳ họp lần thứ 62 của Đại hội đồng Liên hợp quốc) M. Minor Program Thesis Field: English linguistics Code: 60.15 Hanoi – 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ii VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ------------- o0o ------------- TRẦN THANH TÚ INTERPRETABLE IMPLICATURES IN THE VIETNAMESE PRIME MINISTER NGUYỄN TẤN DŨNG'S SPEECH AT THE 62ND UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY SESSION (Những hàm ý có thể thuyết giải được trong bài phát biểu của Thủ tướng Việt Nam Nguyễn Tấn Dũng tại kỳ họp lần thứ 62 của Đại hội đồng Liên hợp quốc) M. Minor Program Thesis Field: English linguistics Code: 60. NGÔ ĐÌNH PHƯƠNG Hanoi - 2010 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS APEC: Asian Pacific Economic Co-operation ASEAN: Association of Southeast Asian Nations e.e : That is to say ibid.
: Ibidem (in the same book or piece of writing as the one has just been mentioned) MDGs: Millennium Development Goals PM: Prime Minister UN : United Nations WTO: World Trade Organization +> : marks implicatures >> : marks presuppositions LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration .iii Abbreviations and symbols. iv Table of contents. Rationale of the study. Aims of the study…….
Scope of the study…. Methods of the study……. Design of the study……. 4 Chapter 1: Literature Review and Background information of the data.
Theory of Discourse. Concept of Discourse. Discourse and Text. Discourse analysis and Text analysis.
Spoken discourse versus Written discourse. 9 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. The Co-operative Principle. Types of presuppositions.
Background information of the data. 16 Chapter 2: Interpretable implicatures in the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng's Speech at the 62nd UN General Assembly Session. The establishment of the rapport to the audience. The world problems' statement and the appeal to the UN and countries for taking more actions to promote the sustainable development.
The construction of a positive image of Việt Nam. The presentation of Việt Nam's achievements for over past 30 years as a member of the United Nations. The desire to make further contribution to the international community. Revealed-implicature-type discussion.
Limitation of the study. Suggestions for further study. 38 REFERENCES APPENDIX LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the study Many people, including many linguists, assume that the primary purpose of language is to communicate information.
Language, in fact, serves a great many functions. Linguists, over a good many years, have attempted to understand how language works in a fully integrated way as simultaneously a mental, social, cultural, institutional and political phenomenon. Language has been seen now as not only a practice but also reflection of reality. People also have witnessed a rise in the awareness of language and its power, especially how it helps people gain power over the others through ideology, which is underlying assumptions in the language.
This is obviously the case of politics, where language is the tool of authority holders to gain and to realize power. Besides, political speech is also the place where the political actor conveys his political ideologies. Work on persuasive speeches in general, and political speeches in particular suggests that speakers adopt a range of rhetorical devices and strategies to appeal to their hearers; there are interesting implicatures in their speeches, as well as political actions achieved by linguistic means. The data analyzed in this study is the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng‟s speech delivered at the 62nd United Nations General Assembly Session on September 27, 2007.
This 1,700–word speech was retrieved from the Việt Nam Government‟s website at: http://www. This speech became tremendously important as it appeared two days before the election for non–permanent seat of the United Nations Security Council, in which Việt Nam is one of the candidates. If elected, the role of Việt Nam in the international stage will be advanced. Because of this significance, the speech turned out to be a good opportunity for Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng to highlight the positive image of his country.
Aims of the study The aims of this study are: - To uncover the implicatures conveyed in the speech under study. - To study the discursive strategies employed by the speaker to build the implicatures. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 - To study types of the revealed implicatures. Scope of the study The interpretable implicatures in the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng‟s Speech at the 62nd UN General Assembly Session will be the focus of this study, including the establishment of the rapport to the audience; the world problems' presentation, the appeal to the UN and nations for actions; and the construction of a positive image of Việt Nam.
This study is purely conducted in terms of linguistic research with a hope for better understanding of how linguistic means are employed to achieve certain communicative purposes. No attempts of taking an insight into or judgments on the political science are made. Besides, the data is the English translated version of the Prime Minister‟s speech. And the study will entirely focus on dealing with the English version, ignoring any linguistic features related to the Vietnamese one and proposing no comparisons between the two versions.
The text is broken up into sentences and numbered in order to be easily followed. Methods of the study - The study is done basing on Discourse analysis approach. - Quantitative method is used for a sufficient theoretical background, in combination with qualitative method to study the data for uncovering the implicatures. Analysis procedure The study is carried out relying on the following procedure: - The data speech–Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng‟s Speech at the 62nd UN General Assembly Session, many other newspaper articles and news analysis are collected.
- Collecting materials for literature review and describing theoretical background (to the problem under investigation). - General textual analysis and description of the speech are made, in terms of discourse properties and pragmatics towards the finding of interpretable implicatures in the speech. Intonation, posture, and all non-verbal aspects are excluded from the analysis procedure though the author is fully aware that they do have some role in the success of the speech-maker. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.
Design of the study Except for declaration, acknowledgements, table of contents, references and appendix, this paper consists of three main parts: Part A: Introduction states the rationale of the study, its aims, its scope, methods, analysis procedure and design. Part B: Development consists of two chapters: Chapter 1: Literature review and Background information of the data. This chapter aims at discussing the theoretical background, in which we will have a look at the theories related to the study, including the theory of discourse and text, discourse context, discursive strategies, inferencing, the cooperative principle, presupposition and implicatures, and providing information of the data under study. Chapter 2: Interpretable implicatures in the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyễn Tấn Dũng's Speech at the 62nd UN General Assembly Session.
This is the main part of the study which includes the interpretable implicatures and the discussion of their types. Part C: Conclusion reviews major findings of the study, states limitation of the study and gives suggestions for further study. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW AND BACKGROUND INFORMATION OF THE DATA 1. Theory of Discourse 1.
Concept of Discourse Operating within the language theories of the Bloomfielddian and Chomskian schools, traditional linguists have concentrated on phonological, lexical, syntactical features which are considered the basis of foreign language knowledge. Today‟s view, however, is concerned with understanding the stretches of language which can only be obtained if they are considered "in their full textual, social and psychological context" (Cook, 1989:1). Context-free sentences do not help to achieve successful communication since the language in use does not exist in isolation from its user and the context in which it is being used. Therefore, it is of necessity that when communicating, we must go beyond the formal structure of language as a context-free system of usage and use the language which is context- sensitive.
This language, the knowledge of which, as Widdowson (1977) explains, can not be automatically followed from the knowledge of sentence, is known as discourse. Though the concept of discourse is still discussed, discourse can be defined as a stretch of language consisting of several sentences which are perceived as being related in some way, in terms of the ideas they share and in terms of the jobs they perform within discourse – that is, their functions (Nunan 1993, cited in Discourse Analysis, Vinh University-Foreign Language Department, 2006:3). Basically, it may be defined as “the language in use for communication”. The study of discourse is often referred to as Discourse analysis.
And as McCarthy (1993:10) states, Discourse analysis is fundamentally concerned with the relationship between language and the contexts in which it is used, that is, it involves the study of language in use. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 As far as the scope of discourse is concerned, discourse refers not only to spoken interactions, interviews, but also to written and printed works such as newspapers, articles, letters, stories, recipes, instructions, notices, comics, billboards, etc. Discourse and Text So far, the term “discourse” and “text” have been used as though they are synonyms and there have been many ways of viewing the terms discourse and text. Crystal (1992:72) distinguishes that “text” should be reserved only for writing and “discourse” for speech.
Discourse is “a continuous stretch of (especially spoken) language larger than a sentence, often constituting a coherent unit, such as sermon, argument, joke or narrative” (ibid.), while “text” is “a piece natural occurring spoken, written, or signed discourse identified for purposes of analysis. It is often a language unit with a definable communicative function, such as a conversation, a poster” (ibid.) Cook (1989:158) considers “text” as „a stretch of language interpreted formally, without context”, whereas “discourse” is “stretches of language perceived to be meaningful, unified and purposive”. Halliday and Hasan (1976:1), however, use these two notions interchangeably. They use “text” to actually refer to “discourse” for they say that “a text is unit of language in use” and “it may be spoken or written, prose or verse, dialogue or monologue”.
Brown & Yule (1983:6) point out that texts are the representations of discourse and the verbal record of a communicative act: “we shall use text as a technical term, to refer to the verbal record of a communicative act”. In short, we can understand “text” as the term used to refer to any written record of a communicative event, while the term “discourse” refers to the interpretation of the communicative event in context. Although discourse and text are different, they are related to each other. The difference and interrelationship between discourse and text is best captured by Widdowson‟s claim: “Discourse is a communicative process by means of interaction.
Its situational outcome is a change in a state of affairs: information is conveyed, intentions made clear, its linguistic product is Text” (Widdowson, 1984:100). LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.