MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY TRẦN THỊ TỐ NGA A FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF MARTIN LUTHER KING‟S SPEECH “BEYOND VIETNAM: A TIME TO BREAK SILENCE” MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH Binh Dinh, 2020 e BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN TRẦN THỊ TỐ NGA PHÂN TÍCH BÀI PHÁT BIỂU “BEYOND VIETNAM: A TIME TO BREAK SILENCE” CỦA MARTIN LUTHER KING THEO NGỮ PHÁP CHỨC NĂNG Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8 22 02 01 Người hướng dẫn: PGS. Trần Văn Phước e i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in the whole or part from the thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma. No other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the thesis. This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any tertiary institution.
Binh Dinh, 2020 Tran Thi To Nga e ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First and foremost, I would like to express my thanks to all the lectures who have the given the foundation for this thesis and all the staff of the Post- graduate Department at Quy Nhon University for their encouragement, kindness and administrative assistance. My deepest gratitude and appreciation goes to my supervisor Trần Văn Phước, Assoc. for his invaluable guidance. My thanks are also due to I am immensely grateful to my aunt, Nhuan Tri, for her help and kindness.
Many, many thanks to all the teachers at Ton Duc Thang High School in Duc Co District, Gia Lai Povince for creating the best conditions to me. I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to my coworkers and friends, whose kindness and support to my study were great. I would like to show my sincerce thanks to many people who have given me great help during the time I managed to complete this thesis. Last but not least, I feel deeply indebted to my family, especially my parents for always by my side whenever I got troubles.
e iii ABSTRACT This Thesis entitled: A functional analysis of Martin Luther King‟s speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” is conducted to aim at examing the metafunctions of Martin Luther King‟s speech by analyzing its topic, content and attitudes. This work identified the Tenor/Interpersonal metafunction, Field/Experiential metafunction, Mode/ Textual metafunction and thematic progressions were applied. In terms of Interpersonal metafunction, most of the clauses are declarative, the main role of the speech is to declare the facts that America‟s government neglecting their poverty program to interfere to Vietnam war, which leads to the tragic consequences forward not only lives but resources of both Vietnamese and American. In King‟s speech, the Modality becomes prominent through a range of modal auxiliary verbs to indicate the necessity and urgency of a protest against the war.
From the Experiential metafunction analysis, it can be concluded that the material processes dominate in six kinds of processes. The central purpose of King is to mainly convey information about the actions of breaking the rules and the cruel actios of America‟s government in Vietnam. Morever, King mentions about the positive changes of life after conducting a new revolution. Regarding to Textual metafunction, it helps listeners to integrate in the King‟s messages.
Topical theme accounts for the highest percentage and multiple themes play a vital role to latch a sentence explicitly on to the preceding context. Last but not least, is the analysis of thematic progression, it is found that the speech also tends to employ the constant theme pattern because it is easy for the speaker to develop the topic and for the audience to be accepted. Thanks to thematic progression patterns the related problems of ending Vietnam war are mentioned throughout the speech. Hopefully, the reasearch is helpful to those whose are studying political languages as well as learning how to make a successful speech.
e iv ABBREVIATIONS King: Martin Luther King E: Example SFG: Systemic Functional Grammar TH: Theme RH: Rheme e v LIST OF TABLES Table Page Title Number Number 2.1 Six processes of Halliday's theory 14 2.2 The principle categories of relational clause 17 A summary of all the types of process and their 2.3 18 general category meaning 2.4 Marked and unmarked themes 23 4.1 Frequency and percentage of mood structures 33 4.2 Frequency and percentage of each type of modality 37 4.3 Frequency and percentage of each process 41 Frequency and percentage of topical, interpersonal 4.4 49 and textual theme Frequecy and percentage of simple and multiple 4.5 52 themes Frequency and percentage of marked and unmarked 4.6 55 theme Frequency and percentage of thematic progression 4.7 59 patterns e vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page Title Number Number Giving or demanding, goods-&- services or 2.2 Theme- rheme structure in English clause 20 2.3 Simple theme and multiple theme in English clauses 22 2.4 Unmarked theme in English clauses 25 2.5 Marked theme in English clauses 25 2.6 The constant pattern of thematic progression 26 2.7 The zig-zag pattern of thematic progression 27 2.8a The multiple rheme pattern of thematic progression 27 2.8b The multiple rheme pattern of thematic progression 28 4.1 The constant pattern of thematic progression 60 4.2 The zig-zag pattern of thematic progression 61 4.3 The multiple rheme pattern of thematic progression 63 e vii TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. iv LIST OF TABLES. v LIST OF FIGURES. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS.
vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. Rationale of the study. Aims of the study. Objectives of the study.
Scope of the study. Significance of the study. Organization of the thesis. 5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.
Review of previous studies related to the research. Definition of Speech and Text. Systemic Functional Grammar. Interpersonal meaning of the text.
Experiential meaning of the text. Textual meaning of the text. Thematic progression patterns. Martin Luther King.
28 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Data collection and coding procedure. Text analysis method. 33 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS.
Interpersonal function in Martin Luther King‟s speech. Frequency of mood structures. Description and lexico-grammatical realizations of moods. The usage of mood structures to express the interpersonal function.
Frequency of Modality. Description and lexico-grammatical realizations of modality. The usage of modality to introduce the interpersonal function. Experiential function in Martin Luther King‟s speech.
Frequency of each process. Description and lexico-grammatical realizations of processes. The usage of processes to introduce the experiential function. Textual function in Martin Luther King‟s speech.
Topical, interpersonal and textual themes. Simple and multiple themes. Marked and unmarked themes. Thematic- progression patterns.
Frequency of thematic progression patterns. Descriptions and lexico- grammatical realizations of thematic progression patterns. The constant pattern of thematic progression. The zig-zag pattern of thematic progression.
The multiple rheme pattern of thematic progression. The usage of thematic progression to present the interpersonal function. 66 e x CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS. Main findings of the study.
Rationale of the study Language is used as the most effective transportation not only to express meanings but also carry out various functions in distinctive contexts and situations of our lives. English has become an international laguage and the second laguage of almost nations. Systemic Functional Grammar gradually tends to the popular topics for reseachers and linguistists. If Syntax plays a vital role in indicating the set of rules, principles, and processes that govern the structures of the sentences in a particular language, Grammar is the sallient key in recognizing the sounds of words, the meanings of those words and the different ways of arranging words together to make meaningful sentences.The linguistic items are investigated in various functional aspects synchronously because a linguistic unit may have not only one function at a particular time.
It is a well- known fact that laguage is the main tool that human beings use to communicate to each other, to express our attitudes and feelings to the world around us such as in literatures, social problems, political aspects and so on. According to Habermas (1992) stated, communication is an extremely complex and ever- changing phenomenon. Communication allows humans not only to express the shared set of physical, emotional, and psychological needs that are alive inside us at any given moment, but also give this information to others for enriching life for others and ourselves (Habermas, 1992). However, only by using language, what the speaker‟s meaning can not be understood thoroughly.
Hearers have to combine it with its context and functions for the apprehending of speaker‟s meaning. It is used for the interpretation of hearer which hear the speaker, or reader which read the text. SFG can do this because the way of this model of language explains the connection between context and text for understanding the meaning of a language. In functional e 2 linguistics, people can understand how the wording of the text simultaneously encode three types of meaning: textual meaning, interpersonal meaning, and ideational meaning, which are influenced by their context of situation: mode, tenor, and field (Halliday, 1978, p.
From such a fact, to have deep insights into the nature and functions of language analyzed by many methods and approaches, Functional Grammar has attracted interest of not only many linguistists but also learners. A number of studies were conducted and based on Functional Grammar. The social functions language was emphasized by Halliday, the works of Schegloff, Jefferson and Sack are important in the research of conversation, turn-taking and other aspects of spoken interactions (Schegloff, Jefferson, & Sacks, 1977). Depending distinctive situations or contexts, language will have different function forms, for example: stories, news, speech, poems, movies or songs.
In terms of speech, it an an aspect of language which is represented by the use of signals produced by meant of human exhalation, phonation, articulation, resonance, communicated by acoustic and auditory means (Milloy, 2013). The writer has reasons of choosing speech as her object research which is going to be analyzed. First, it is particularly true that language is the salient method to communicate in our daily life. Especially, language seems to be a very important tool used by political communities to establish group awareness and cement voters by making them feel that their vote count.
Therefore, Van Dijk observed that each speech delivered by a politician is a realization of his intention and has its own function (Van Dijk, 1997). In addition to the powerful language, the speech also played on the emotional story with a range of semiotic resources including the facial expression, gestures, intonation and the impressive wait and pause before speaking. Given that the speech has attracted so much attention and caused a e 3 great sensation, it is worthwhile to take a closer look at it. Furthermore, the reasons why the writer chooses Martin Luther King‟s speech are, firstly, this speech is his most famous and influenced speech among his seventeen speeches.
In addition, it had influences not only in America but Vietnam (the hometown of the writer) with title “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”. He delivered it to oppose the America‟s role in Vietnam war. King also criticized American opposition to North Vietnam's land reforms in his speech. Besides, Martin Luther King was a social activist and Baptist minister who played a salient role in the American civil rights movement from the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968.
Martin Luther King was well-known of all time by his famous speeches which have fluency, persuasives and the power to touch and charm million‟hearts. “And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace.