i VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** NGUYỄN THU HIỀN NOMINALIZATION AS GRAMMATICAL METAPHOR IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (Nghiên cứu danh hóa như một hình thức ẩn dụ ngữ pháp trong các diễn văn chính trị tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt theo quan điểm ngữ pháp chức năng hệ thống) M. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Hanoi – 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ii VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** NGUYỄN THU HIỀN NOMINALIZATION AS GRAMMATICAL METAPHOR IN POLITICAL DISCOURSE IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR (Nghiên cứu danh hóa như một hình thức ẩn dụ ngữ pháp trong các diễn văn chính trị tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt theo quan điểm ngữ pháp chức năng hệ thống) M. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Assoc. Nguyễn Xuân Thơm Hanoi – 2011 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Certificate of originality .iii TABLE OF CONTENTS.
iv LIST OF TABLES. vi PART A: INTRODUCTION. Justification of the study. Aims and Objectives of the study.
Scope of the study. Method of the study. Format of the study. 4 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND…………………………….1 Systemic Functional Grammar .1 What is Grammatical metaphor? .2 Classification of Grammatical Metaphor .3 The Language of Political Discourse .2 The Language of Politics .3 Language, power and ideology .4 Some Basic Characteristics of American and Vietnamese Culture.
11 CHAPTER 2: NOMINALIZATION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE: A GENERAL DESCRIPTION……………….2 Nominalization in English .1 What is Nominalization in English? .2 Categories of Nominalization in English .3 Nominalization in Vietnamese .1 What is Nominalization in Vietnamese? .2 Categories of Nominalization in Vietnamese. 21 CHAPTER 3: NOMINALIZATION IN POLITICAL DISCOURSES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE……. 22 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.2 Nominalization in President Bush’s Speech: Address to Congress (September 20th, 2001) .1 The Realization of Nominalization .3 Nominalization in President Nguyen Minh Triet’s Speech: Diễn Văn Khai Mạc Đại Lễ 1000 năm Thăng Long (October, 10th, 2010) .1 The Realization of Nominalization. 35 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION: A CONTRASTIVE COMPARISON…………….2 The Similarities and the Differences on Linguistic Properties .3 The Similarities and the Differences on Cultural Properties.
Limitation and Suggestions for Further Studies. 43 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Types of Nominalization in President Bush‟s Speech Table 2: Semantic Roles of Nominalization in President Bush‟s Speech Table 3: Interpersonal Analysis of Nominalization in President Bush‟s Speech Table 4: Theme- Rheme Analysis of Nominalization in President Bush‟s Speech Table 5: Types of Nominalization in President N. Triet‟s Speech Table 6: Semantic Roles of Nominalization in President N. Triet‟s Speech Table 7: Interpersonal Analysis of Nominalization in President N.
Triet‟s Speech Table 8:Theme- Rheme Analysis of Nominalization in President N. Triet‟s Speech LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Justification of the study Grammatical metaphor in general and nominalization in particular is a familiar concept in Systemic Functional Grammar and recent research of Halliday (1985, 1988, 1994), have proved that grammatical metaphor involving nominalization play a key role in creating scientific discourse. Halliday considers nominalization from a systemic functional perspective.
This theory is functional because it aims to account for three basic kind of meaning, namely, the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual. Nominalization, a type of grammatical metaphor, is one of the most prominent syntactic features of political discourse. However, the use of this kind of metaphor in political discourse with the role in the enactment, reproduction, and legitimization of power and domination, may cause difficulties for the readers or the listeners in understanding what is meant or referred to by the writer or the speaker. Our thesis is entitled “Nominalization as grammatical metaphor in Political Discourse in English and Vietnamese from the perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar”.
The choice of our thesis is based on three reasons. Firstly, the nominalization, as explained in later sections, is the nominalizing process, which is “the single most powerful resource for creating grammatical metaphor” (Halliday: 1994: 352). The absence of sufficient research on nominalization as grammatical metaphor in political discourse poses an interesting challenge for us. Secondly, an insight into the nature and the functions of nominalization in political discourse can help the researcher to make comprehensive and comprehensible presentations of nominalization and help readers to realize its importance for the comprehension of English and Vietnamese political speeches.
Finally, we set out a view of the interrelationship of language and society, with the emphasis on power and ideology. Ideology is pervasively present in language, that fact ought to mean that the ideological nature of language should be one of the major themes of modern social science. Particularly, there is a close connection between a linguistic choice and a certain ideology maintained by relations of power, and the power phenomenon is manifested in a variety of linguistic structures. Aims and Objectives of the study The aim of this study is to make an inquiry into the nature of nominalization in English and Vietnamese in general.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 This study also points out the functions of nominalization in political discourse and therefore explains why nominalization should be given special treatment in working with this specialized genre. Its impacts on the message content are also explored. In carrying out the study this way, the following questions are raised for exploration. What is the Nature of Nominalization in English and in Vietnamese? 2.
What are the Linguistic Structure and the Functions of Nominalization in English and Vietnamese Political Discourses? 3. What are the Linguistic and Cultural Similarities and Differences between Nominalization in English political discourse and that in Vietnamese one? Hopefully, this research will provide some insight and practical help in decoding political speeches, in evaluating linguistic aspects of the ideas conveyed, the way the more powerful employ language in order to impose their ideas on the less powerful members of society, and finally the readers can figure out the similarities and differences in the use of nominalization in political discourse between English and Vietnamese. Scope of the study This study attempts to explore the concept of nominalization in English and in Vietnamese in terms of linguistic structure to find out the similarities and differences of the concept between the two languages. It is also the intent of this study to analyze the use of nominalization in political speeches in English and Vietnamese to figure out how it contributes to the metafunctions of the discourse, the overall meanings of the discourse and how it serves the speakers‟ ideologies.
Methods of the study We begin this study with a descriptive method to identify the phenomenon, then compare and contrast the phenomenon between English and Vietnamese. The researcher adopts the statistical method and analyzes the data in terms of quality and quantity. The study conducted is an inductive approach where data is collected from English and Vietnamese political discourses to describe nominalization as a natural linguistics process. In the exploration of nominalization in political discourse, the systemic functional theory as developed by Halliday (1994), Dik (1997), Matthiessen (1995), and other systemicists is adopted as the theoretical framework.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Format of the study The paper includes three parts namely Part A- Introduction, Part B- Development and Part C-Conclusion. Part B is divided into four chapters: Chapter 1 explores theoretical background of Systemic Functional Grammar, the concept of Grammatical Metaphor and the Language of Political Discourse. In chapter 2, the emphasis is on Nominalization in English and Vietnamese as a general description.
In chapter 3, the focus shifts to Nominalization in political discourse in English and Vietnamese with a case study on two speeches: one of the President Bush and the other of the President Nguyen Minh Triet. Chapter 4 brings focus on a comparative and contrastive analysis between nominalization in English and Vietnamese to find out both the similarities and the differences. Therefore, the researcher can suggest some implications for teaching and translating. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 PART B : DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Systemic Functional Grammar Systemic functional linguistics (hereafter abbreviated “SFL”) conceives of text as social interaction.
Systemic functional linguists view language as systems of meaning potential in human interaction that are realized by various structures. The organizing concept is not a structure described by rules, but as communicative behavior, as meaning making in a context of a culture, the behavior matrix within which all social interaction take place and the general context that gives meaning to culturally recognized activities. In addition, systemic functional grammar develops a profound analysis of language on the base of regarding reality- representational and communicative functions of language. These functions, termed by Halliday as metafunctions including ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions of language, are related to the issue how it is shaped to meet human needs.
Ideational metafunction is the one that helps to understand, organize and express perceptions of the world and our consciousness. The ideational component on the semantic plane consists of experiential meanings and logical meanings. Experiential meanings at the grammatical rank of the clause are those functions that reflect or represent processes, participants, and circumstances. In Halliday‟s analysis of English (Halliday, 1994: 106- 161), experiential meanings are accounted for in clauses by the transitivity system.
The transitivity system includes choices of process type and the configurations of possible participants, process and circumstances which are associated with a particular process type. Logical meanings are realized by relationships of coordination (or parataxis) and subordination (or hypotaxis) between clauses and other structure units. The way of analyzing the clause in terms of process, participants and circumstances produces constituency structures whereas logical meanings are associated with interdependency structures. The following example represents an experiential analysis of clause: Who has cleaned the floor? Actor Process: material Goal Interpersonal metafunction is concerned with the interaction between the speaker and the addressee(s)- the grammatical resources for enacting social roles in general, speech roles in particular, in dialogic interaction; i.
for establishing, changing and maintaining LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 5 interpersonal relations. The functions within the interpersonal component include giving or demanding information, expressing intention, assessing degree of probability, expressing attitude, and so on. These functions have to do with social interaction than with “content”. The grammar of interpersonal meanings put the focus of clause as a unit of exchange structured as Subject, Predicator, Complements and Adjuncts.
An analysis of a clause from this perspective can be shown in the following example: Who has cleaned the floor? Subject Finite Predicator Complement Textual metafunction is described through the system of theme. Thematic structure “gives the clause its character as a message (Halliday 1994: 37) and thus, creates relevant to the context. The descriptive elements used to show this are called Theme and Rheme. The theme serves as the departure of the message, which in English coincides with the initial element(s) of the clause; and the Rheme is the remainder of the message.
These elements may also be classified as Given, or information which identifies that which the clause is about, and New, information which relates to the Given. The following example shows the analysis of the textual perspective: Who has cleaned the floor? Theme Rheme There is a close relationship between these two structures. Within any set of contextual conditions, the speaker can exploit the potential that the situation defines, using thematic and information structure to produce an astonishing variety of rhetorical effect. The relationship of these three functions, which are in the discourse- semantic stratum, is called “metafunctional resonance” by Halliday (1994).1 What is Grammatical metaphor?