Vietnam National University university of languages and international studies Faculty of Post- graduate studies -----***----- NGUYỄN THỊ THANH HUYỀN A study on RACE DISCRIMINATION EMBEDDED IN THE SHORT STORY "CHRISTINA ROSENTHAL (BY JEFFREY ARCHER) FROM A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (Nghiên cứu sự phân biệt chủng tộc trong truyện ngắn "Christina Rosenthal" (Jeffrey Archer) dưới góc độ phân tích diễn ngôn phê phán) Minor thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Hanoi, 2010 Vietnam National University LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -2- university of languages and international studies Faculty of Post- graduate studies -----***----- NGUYỄN THỊ THANH HUYỀN A study on RACE DISCRIMINATION EMBEDDED IN THE SHORT STORY "CHRISTINA ROSENTHAL (BY JEFFREY ARCHER) FROM A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (Nghiên cứu sự phân biệt chủng tộc trong truyện ngắn "Christina Rosenthal" (Jeffrey Archer) dưới góc độ phân tích diễn ngôn phê phán) Minor thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Prof. Nguyễn Hòa Hanoi, 2010 DECLARATION LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -6- TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii TABLE OF CONTENT. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.
vii LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES, AND CHARTS. viii Part A: Introduction.Significance of the study. Aims of the study and research questions. Scope of the study.
Methodology of the study. Design of the study. 4 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. Background to Critical Discourse Analysis.
Key concepts of CDA. CDA theories and Practice. Overview of the approaches to CDA. Three main schools of CDA.
Van Dijk‟s school – Socio-cognitive approach. Ruth Wodak‟s school – The discourse – historical approach. Fairclough‟s school – Systemic Functional Grammar. Fairclough‟s framework of CDA.
Systemic functional grammar in CDA. 13 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY AND ANALYSIS PROCEDURES. About the object of the enquiry. Some brief information about the story.
The story itself. Context of the story. Data analysis procedure. Analysis of discourse macrostructures of the story.
Analysis of discourse microstructures of the story. The title: Christina Rosenthal. Christina Rosenthal - who teased Benjamin and taunted him. Christina Rosenthal - who teased Benjamin and taunted him.
Christina Rosenthal sacrificed her life for love. Christina's death left a regret to her parents and the rabbi. Conversation between Benjamin and Christina. Conversation between Benjamin and Christina‟s father.
Conversation between Benjamin and Christina‟s mother. 31 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Christina as a participant. Benjamin as a participant.
The rabbi as a participant.Christina's parents as participants. Summary of the findings. Suggestions for further study. IV LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -8- ABBREVIATIONS CDA Crtical Discourse Analysis CL Critical Linguistics SFG Systemic Functional Grammar SFL Systemic Functional Linguistics MR Member's Resource sM sub-Macroproposition Dir Directive Ex Expressive Com Commissive Rep Representative Dec Declarative B Benjamin C Christina LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -9- FIGURES, TABLES AND CHARTS Line FIGURE 1 Interpretation.
11 TABLE 1 Summary of process typ. 12 FIGURE 3 The macrostructure of the text. 18 TABLE 2 Examples of the use of "Christina" in the story. 19 TABLE 3 The number of words spoken by Christina and Benjamin.
27 CHART 1 Chart 1: The number of words spoken by Christina and Benjamin in 28 their conversations. TABLE 4 Summary of speech acts in the conversation between Christina and 28 Benjamin. CHART 2 Summary of speech acts in the conversation between Rosemary and 28 the girl. FIGURE 4 Structural analysis of the assertive "She will never marry a 31 Jew".
TABLE 5 Participant types of the characters in the story. 32 TABLE 6 Summary of the processes in which Benjamin is a participant. 32 TABLE 7 Material and Mental processes that Benjamin is engaged in. 33 TABLE 8 Summary of the processes in which Christina is a participant.
34 TABLE 9 Summary of the processes in which the rabbi is a participant. 35 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com - 10 - PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), as it was, is a relatively new research area in Vietnam, which were introduced just about five years now. Interest in CDA is growing and appealing to many.
Thus, this study is another attempt aimed at enhancing the consciousness of how power and ideology are embedded in language in particular, and the relations between language and society in general. It then somehow brings the contribution to applying CDA to doing linguistic research. CDA has been drawing the attention of many researchers, both linguists and social analysts since its introduction. Its applicability is considered in every context and every discipline.
Not only CDA is applied within disciplines such as humanities and sciences but also in professional areas like medicine, environmental studies, engineering, social policy, education, law, etc. CDA subsumes a variety of approaches towards the social analysis of discourse which differ in theory, methodology, and the type of research issues to which they tend to give prominence. In contrast to other paradigms in discourse analysis and text linguistics, CDA focuses not only on texts, spoken or written, as objects of inquiry but also on the social processes and structures, which give rise to the production of a text, and of the social structures and processes within which individuals or groups as social-historical subjects, create meanings in their interaction with texts (Fairclough, 1993). This is particularly the case for literature – one of the prominent types of discourse in which the values, beliefs and ideologies of particular nations, social classes and social groups could be represented through language.
However, as it happens, literary discourse has not been the object of CDA investigation, to the best of my knowledge. I have decided to do the study on the short story: "Christina Rosenthal" by Jeffrey Archer from a CDA perspective. The short story is so moving, so meaningful and comprehensive in terms of race discrimination. In the thesis, I hope to be able to discover and analyse critically the race discrimination hidden in the Canadian society of the time from such a story.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com - 11 - All of the above reasons have encouraged me to conduct the research entitled "A study on race discrimination embedded in "Christina Rosenthal" by Jeffrey Archer from a critical discourse analysis perspective. Significance of the study In fact, as CDA is quite a new research area in Vietnam, this study is aimed at enhancing the consciousness of how power and ideology are embedded in language in particular, and the relation between language and society in general. It can make some significant contribution to applying CDA to doing linguistic research. Aims of the study and research questions 3.
To provide a CDA analysis of the short story: “Christina Rosenthal” from a new perspective of discourse analysis. Through this study, readers can access how race discrimination are represented lexically, grammatically and macro-structurally as well. The research questions: a. What kinds of power and social relations are expressed in the story? b.
How are these relations expressed? c. How can they be explained and interpreted? 4. Scope of the study - The CDA analysis of the short story “Christina Rosenthal” is confined to some linguistic aspects and some features of context. - Among some social issues, race discrimination is mainly dealt with in the study.
- The study is oriented to discover the linguistic aspects, not literary ones. Methodology "Language as a form of social practice" (Fairclough, 2001) is always being adhered strictly throughout the study. "Christina Rosenthal", a literature work, is not going to be taken into pieces but to be considered a system which is created by sub-systems. When analyzing a LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com - 12 - particular lexical item, the writer will always put it in relation with other elements of its sub-system and the whole system as well, with its macrostructures and its context.
The study bases itself on the common sense assumptions that there are “implicit conventions according to which people interact linguistically” (Fairclough 2001). Regarding the short story, there exists some aspects influencing the lexical and grammatical choice of the writer. It then follows the inductive, that is all underlying patterns and principles are drawn from description of data and generalization of findings. The study is inclined to follow the integrated approaches; I try to conduct it through a combination of some popular approaches in CDA (approaches of van Dijk, Fairclough, Ruth Wodak).
However, the greatest linguist I had influence when carrying out this thesis is Halliday's systemic functional grammar. In carrying out this study, I follow these procedures: At first, several approaches to CDA are reviewed so that an appropriate theoretical framework suited to the aims and subject of the study could be mapped out. The study is not based on a particular approach, rather, it is drawn upon a combination of two most outstanding approaches proposed by two CDA practitioners, Fairclough and van Dijk. Secondly, the discourse I chose is a short story “Christina Rosenthal”, the analysis is done in two phases: General textual description of the story is made in terms of lexis and syntax towards the underlying ideology in the story.
The story is analyzed in terms of lexical and grammatical choice, conversation structure, transitivity, and implicatures is to find out how ideology is linguistically realized. Later on, this serves as the underpinning for the interpretation and explanation of the findings. Design of the study The study includes three main parts: Part 1: Introduction discusses the rationale, significance, scope, aims, methodology and design of the study Part 2: Development. This part is divided into two chapters LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com - 13 - Chapter 1: Theoretical background and Literature review presents a brief theoretical background of Critical Discourse Analysis, Systemic Functional Grammar.
Chapter 2: Methodology and analysis procedures describes the data collection and the procedure of analyzing data to detect the race discrimination embedded in the story and discusses the findings of the analysis. Part 3: Conclusion summarizes the major findings, provides concluding remarks and make suggestions for further studies. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com - 14 - PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1. Background to Critical Discourse Analysis 1.
CDA’s definition According to van Dijk (1998a), CDA is a field that is concerned with studying and analyzing written and spoken texts to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality and bias. It examines how these discursive sources are maintained and reproduced within specific social, political and historical contexts. In a similar vein, Fairclough (1993) defines CDA as discourse analysis which aims to systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power (p. Key concepts of CDA It is necessary to bring the explanation of one of the most controversial issues which is subject to quite a lot of discussion among CDA and even non-CDA practitioners.
“Investigating language in relation to power and ideology” (Wodak and Meyer, 2001:6) is the primary concern of CDA. According to van Dijk (1998), CDA is a field that is concerned with studying and analyzing written and spoken texts to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality and bias. It examines how these discursive sources are maintained and reproduced within specific social, political and historical contexts. Moreover, the investigation is conducted by critical and historical view.
Therefore, the following concepts figure indispensably in CDA: critical, historical. At first, „what is meant by critical approaches‟, Critical approaches mean to be critical of the present social order. CDA is seen to be a means of criticizing the social order. Rather, it is because it is rooted in a radical critique of social relations.