VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* NGUYỄN THỊ HẠNH A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF A PRESIDENTIAL SPEECH (Phân tích diễn ngôn phê phán một bài phát biểu của Tổng thống) MASTER MINOR THESIS Field: English linguistics Code: 8220201. Nguyen Hoa HANOI – 2018 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, Nguyễn Thị Hạnh, hereby claim the originality of my study. Unless otherwise indicated, this is my own piece of academic accomplishment. Signature i TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I wish to express my deep gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Prof.
Nguyen Hoa, for his friendly and patient guidance; insightful critiques during the research and preparation of this thesis. I would like to thank him for his advice and assistance for my paper in terms of linguistic and structural aspects. If it had not been for his invaluable supports, I could not have completed my study properly. Secondly, I am particularly grateful to the Post-Graduate Department, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University and all the lectures for the precious lectures and lessons; the encouragement and assistance which not directly but importantly support my thesis.
My great thanks go to my workplace, my managers and my colleagues at Faculty of English, Hanoi National University of Education for their support when I have been doing my degree. Finally, I wish to thank my family whose love, unconditional support and never -ending encouragement have carried me this far. Without constant support of these people, this thesis would not have been possible. ii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ABSTRACT This study critically investigates the main ideologies conveyed by linguistic features in a speech of Barack Obama.
It is premised on Halliday‘s Systemic Functional Grammar, and the qualitative research design was used for the content analysis of the text. The study shows the results of transitivity and modality. In terms of transitivity, material processes dominate the speech with a total occurrence of 55,4 % here as the existential process types are used minimally in the speech with a total occurrence of 12,5 %. This implies that Obama and his government are the main actors in an attempt to create a sense of developmental progression and continuity of the relationship between the two countries, US and Vietnam calls for immediate action and not a mere formality of assurances and wishful thinking.
Regarding modality, modal verbs, tenses and textuality are taken into consideration. The study finds out that positive modals, present tenses are used the most with 78,4% and 58,4% in turn. The study concludes that language structures can produce certain meanings and ideologies which are not explicit for readers. This is in affirmation to the assumption that language form is not fortuitous, but performs a communicative function.
iii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY. iii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. Background to the study. Rationale for the study.
Aims of the study. Significance of the study. Outline of the thesis .6 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Critical Discourse Analysis.
Halliday‘s Systemic Functional Linguistics Theory. Framework for CDA. Context of the speech .23 iv TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail. Obama and the speech.
The relationship between Vietnam and the US. Mode of Research .27 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. The ideologies of Obama in the speech. Obama‘s identities through this speech.
Limitations of the study. Recommendations for further studies. V v TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ABBREVIATION TABLE Abbreviations Words Abbreviations Words Pme mental process A actor Pm material process G goal Pb behavioral process S sensor Pv verbal process Sy sayer Pe relational process Rv receiver Pr existential process Bh behaver vi TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF TABLES Table 1: The Emergence of Transitivity Process Types in Obama‘s Speech. 31 Table 2: Transitivity Analysis of Obama‘s speech (Material Process).
32 Table 3: Personal Pronouns. 39 Table 5: Modality analysis of Obama‘s speech (Modal verbs). 42 Table 6: Tenses of sentences. 45 Table 7: Personal Pronouns.
47 vii TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This chapter presents the background of the study, rationale, aims, research questions, significances and outline of the study. Background to the study Our words, undoubtedly, are never neutral, transparent or innocent. They always carry the power and ideologies that reflect the interests of those who speak or write them (Taiwo, 2007). As language users, we have several words at our disposal to choose from when producing a text; the choice of certain words over others may reflect conscious and unconscious ideologies held by those who produce them.
At the same time they may shape the meanings of a text towards certain preferred ideologies. Therefore, as observed by Van Dijk (2006), the analysis of language is a critical component in discovering and understanding particular ideologies. He uses the term ideology to refer to attitudes, set of beliefs, values and doctrines with reference to religious, political, social and economic life, which shape the individual's and group's perception and through which reality is constructed and interpreted. Language can be also defined as a tool utilized for the communication of meaning.
However, there is much more than simple lexical or grammatical meaning encoded in text. People use language to achieve goals and express ideas. Through language, individuals establish and maintain social identity and relationships. According to Thompson (2004): “We use language to talk about our experience of the world, including the worlds in our own minds, to describe events and states and the entities involved in them.
We also use language to interact with other people, to establish and maintain relations with them, to influence their behaviour, to express our own viewpoint on things in the world, and to elicit or change theirs.30) Analyzing texts can provide insight into an individual‘s communicative objectives and beliefs about the world of the speaker that in this paper is Former US President Barack Obama. 1 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com In 2016, Obama paid a visit to Vietnam as the promise between him and Former President of Vietnam Truong Tan Sang. This visit was really paid much attention of the whole country Vietnam, and I was not an exception. This event somehow made the author of this paper so curious about this trip and made a good selection of questions about his style, his choice of cuisines, places, and his ideologies towards Vietnam.
Many scholars have analysed political speeches with reference to countries presidents (Horváth: 2009; Duran: 2008). They have realized that Presidents stand for their countries. They have also come to be viewed as common fathers of their citizens, burdened with the care of their children (Hinckley, 1990). They have become people‘s representatives; hence, they should speak for their people.
The voice of the President is taken as the voice of the people. The political ideologies embodied in presidential speeches and addresses, therefore, reflect the political ideologies and realities of their nations. Obama who was a first-term senator from Illinois, became the first African- American president of the United States. He was born in August 1961, in Hawaii and has lived in many places, including Indonesia.
He attended Columbia University in New York and earned a law degree at Harvard University in Massachusetts. After that, he worked as a lawyer and later for the University of Chicago. When Obama served in the Senate since 2004, he introduced bipartisan legislation which allows Americans to do distance learning online how their taxes dollars are spent. Also, he served on the Veterans Affairs Committee, which helped oversee the care of soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Therefore, his approval rate on the Internet was high. In 2008, he defeated McCain, the Republican Party presidential candidate and won the all three debates on television held in Oxford, Nashville and Hempstead. Finally, he won the final success and became the 44th American president and the first African-American president in American history. According to the statistics of The Telegraph since his first overseas visit to Canada in February 2009, Mr.
Obama has taken 156 trips to nearly 60 countries in Air Force One during his presidency (Henderson, 2017). Those trips were his 2 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ―extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples‖ and in 2009 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by the Norwegian Nobel Committee (Amr & Barnes, 2009). In 2016, Obama was the third American president to visit Vietnam since the end of the war in 1975 to fulfill a promise he made to Vietnam‘s President Truong Tan Sang in 2013 to do his ―level best‖ to visit Vietnam before his term in office expired. Obama is given flowers by Linh Tran as he arrives at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Image downloaded from https://dantri.vn/chinh-tri/toan-canh-chuyen-tham-viet-nam-cua-tong-thong- obama- htm in May 2016.] His three-day trip had been seen as an attempt to bolster Vietnam‘s capacity to deal with China‘s claims in the South China Sea and this first visit to the country sharing a complicated political and military history with the United States. The trip is also designed to highlight the President‘s continued pivot to Asia, specifically economic, trade and security cooperation and cement the President‘s legacy as his second term winds down. 3 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com According to Vietnamese sources in Hanoi, prior to Obama‘s visit, U. officials proposed to their hosts the possibility of raising their comprehensive partnership to a strategic partnership.
Obama‘s visit to Vietnam indicates that both sides have expanded their dialogue from a narrow focus on political and civil rights to a broader view that incorporates labor rights, human security, and legal reforms to bring Vietnam‘s domestic legislation into line with provisions in its state constitution and international obligations. The present work draws upon the discourse theory of systemic functional linguistics to analyze the political speech of the President Obama. Indeed, political speech is a special speech delivered by a politician on a particular occasion. It aims at convincing the audience regarding a political or social situation which is prevailing at a given period.
Rationale for the study One of the important features of DA is to study authentic text and conversations in the social context. The early DA has been concerned with the internal structure of texts. Halliday's systematic functional linguistics is a new evolution against internal structure of texts. According to Halliday (1978), texts should encode both personal and social processes.
In other words, texts should be generated, comprehended and put into a social context. Discourse analysis is based on micro and macro levels. Therefore, both linguistic and social analyses are important. Discourses are interpreted as communicative events because discourses between people convey messages beyond that of what is said at directly.What is important in such discourse is the social information which is transferred allusively.
Beside, as a matter of fact, many researchers have critically analyzed different speeches of politicians across the world but nobody has conducted research on the speeches of Barack Obama made in Vietnam National Convention Centre using critical discourse analysis (CDA) and systemic functional linguistics as a tool so far. In this thesis, the author uses the SFG to analyse the speech of Obama in made when he visited Vietnam. As the Head of the most powerful nation, Barack Obama may exert his nation‘s super power on the discussion at the conference. It is, 4 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com therefore, significant to study how the ideaologies of Obama were approached through the use of language, regarding transitivity and modality system in particular.
This visit and speech played an essential and strategic role in maintaining and developing the relations between the two nations.