MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY NGUYỄN XUÂN THI LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF DONALD TRUMP’S TWEETS FROM THE SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR PERSPECTIVE MASTER THESIS IN ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Binh Dinh, 2020 e MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY NGUYỄN XUÂN THI LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF DONALD TRUMP’S TWEETS FROM THE SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR PERSPECTIVE FIELD: English Linguistics CODE: 8. NGUYỄN THỊ THU HIỀN e BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN NGUYỄN XUÂN THI CÁC ĐẶC ĐIỂM NGÔN NGỮ CỦA DONALD TRUMP’S TWEETS THEO QUAN ĐIỂM NGỮ PHÁP CHỨC NĂNG Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8.01 Người hướng dẫn: PGS. NGUYỄN THỊ THU HIỀN e i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify that this thesis with the title “Linguistic features of Donald Trump‟s Tweets from the Systemic Functional Grammar Perspective” is entirely my own original work. In addition, I emphasize that this thesis has not been submitted for any purposes in any materials.
Any works of other authors consulted in this thesis are listed in the reference. Quy Nhon, 2020 NGUYỄN XUÂN THI e ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This master thesis would not have been accomplished in time without the huge assistance of all individuals around me. First and foremost, I have to thank my research supervisor, Assor. Nguyen Thi Thu Hien, who has devoted her time and effort to guiding and giving invaluable counsel for me despite her huge workload.
Without her assistance and dedicated involvement in every step throughout the process, this thesis would have never been taken shape. Secondly, My sincere thanks also go to all my friends for sharing helpful materials and experiences during my study. They raised many precious points in our discussion and I hope that I have managed to address several of them here. Thirdly, I am deeply grateful to all lectures not only from Quy Nhon University but also from other universities for their whole-hearted contribution to sharpening my academic knowledge during the previous semester.
I would like to sincerely thank for the cooperation and support of the Department of Postgraduate Training and the Department of Foreign Languages of Quy Nhon University Last but not least, I would like to thank my family who always stands by me while my thesis was in process and has helped me overcome many unexpected difficulties during the course and the thesis. Quy Nhon, 2020 e iii ABSTRACT This thesis applied the Systematic Functional Grammar framework developed by Halliday to offer an overall analysis of the linguistic features of President Donald Trump‟s Tweets. More specifically, the main purpose of this study is to investigate three metafunctions of the language to reveal the experiential, textual, and interpersonal features of Donald Trump's tweets. President Donald Trump‟s Tweets which are from the reliable website: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump are collected and analyzed.
The quantitative and qualitative method is employed in this thesis to investigate the frequency of the linguistic resources and to discuss three meanings expressed through their functional systems, namely Transitivity, Theme, Rheme, and Mood structure. In detail, as for Interpersonal features, the declarative mood presenting dominant Mood and modal verbs as a type of Modality are utilized at a higher rate than the others. In terms of textual features, unmarked topical themes become the dominant theme type among the others. Regarding experiential features, the tendency in the use of material process and the relational process is more favored than other processes by the presenter in Donal Trump's Tweets.
From these results, the thesis is expected to significantly contribute to addressing the gap in previous studies related to functional grammar and helpful material for people who are interested in writing, especially writing Tweets. e iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. iv LIST OF TABLES. vi LIST OF CHARTS.
vii LIST OF FIGURE. vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION. Aim and Objectives. Aim of the study.
Objectives of the study. Significance of the study. Scope of the study. Organization of the study.
3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Systemic functional grammar. The Experiential metafunction. The interpersonal metafunction.
The Textual metafunction. The application of Systemic Functional Grammar in discourse analysis. Tweets as a genre. 23 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.
Validity and Reliability. 26 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. Mood in Donald Trump‟s Tweets. Modality in Donald Trump‟s Tweets.
59 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS. Suggestions for further research. 66 e vi LIST OF TABLES Table Name of Tables page number 2.1 Summary of Processes, their meanings and Participants 13 2.2 Types of circumstances 14 2.3 Primary speech role 15 2.4 Types of Modality 17 2.5 The degree of Modalization & Modulation 17 4.1 Mood types in Donald Trump‟s Tweets 28 4.2 Declarative structures in Donald Trump‟s Tweets 30 4.3 Types of modality in Donald Trump‟s Tweets 34 4.4 Probability Indicators in Donald Trump‟s Tweets 37 4.5 Obligation Indicators in Donald Trump‟s Tweets 37 4.6 Usuality indicators in Donald Trump‟s Tweets 38 4.7 Inclination indicators in Donald Trump‟s Tweets 39 4.8 Topical Theme in Donald Trump‟s Tweets 41 4.9 Unmarked and marked Topical Theme in Donald 42 Trump‟s Tweets e vii LIST OF CHARTS Chart Name of Charts page number 4.1 Distribution of Full and Elliptical declarative in Donald 31 Trump‟s Tweets 4.2 Probalitity value in Donald Trump‟s Tweets 35 4.3 Types of Theme in Donald Trump‟s Tweets 40 4.4 Distribution of Interpersonal elements in Donald 44 Trump‟s Tweets 4.5 Textual Theme in Donald Trump‟s Tweets 47 4.6 Process types in Donald Trump‟s Tweets 51 4.7 Distribution of Circumstances in Donald Trump‟s 59 Tweets LIST OF FIGURE Figure Name of Figure page number 2.1 Metafunctional Solidarity across Planes (Halliday and 6 Martin, 1993, p. Rationale The past few decades have witnessed an emergence of discourse analysis as the main topic in a large number of worldwide scholars‟ researches because of their language in use which is in an organized and well- established structure.
Discourse analysis has been taken up in a variety of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences by various researchers such as Encarnacion (2011) to redefine what Critical Discourse Analysis is; Robin (2011) using conversation analysis as an impressive and valuable approach to studying discourse; Scherbak (2018) pinpointing the essential methodology required for analyzing media discourse; Maria (2010) analyzing written academic discourse by combining two approaches: corpus linguistics and discourse analysis; Elena (2010) using Discourse Analysis to understand the genre of Newspaper Article; and Basil (1987) investigating Narrative discourse. As for the genre of politician speeches, various studies using different approaches or theoretical frameworks have investigated different features of this genre. For example, Wang (2010) uses Critical Discourse Analysis to identify features of Obama's speeches, Jetal (2019) compares Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's language use by applying the Critical Discourse Analysis framework, or Beeman (2018) applies Discourse Analysis to identify three characteristics of Trump's speeches. Among the approaches to discourse analysis, Functional grammar is recently considered the useful one to help researchers understand the linguistic features of the language in use in different genres such as academic, e 2 Hidalgo Tenorio (2011) news, Joye (2010) and even political speeches, Bayram (2010).
As a result, Functional grammar has proved itself as a very effective grammatical approach to understand the different features of discourse. From what has been mentioned in the literature, it is clear that although politician's discourses of different genres have been deeply and widely investigated, Tweets seem to be the linguistically untouched field. Despite their prevalence in the integrated world as a tool for politicians to express their viewpoints as well as their policies. For the above reason, I have decided to write the topic “Linguistic features of Donald Trump’s Tweets from the Systemic Functional Grammar Perspective” for my thesis.
Aim and Objectives 1. Aim of the study The aim of the study is to investigate the linguistic features of Donald Trump‟s Tweets following Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) developed by Halliday (1994). More specifically, these linguistic features would be identified via the analysis of experiential, interpersonal, and textual features. Objectives of the study To achieve the aim above, the study is to focus on the following objectives: - To investigate the Experiental features of Donald Trump‟s Tweets via Transitivity system.
- To identify the Interpersonal features of Donald Trump‟s Tweets via Mood and Modality. - To analyze the Textual features of Donald Trump‟s Tweets via Theme and Rheme structure. Research questions To obtain the aim and objectives of the study, the following research e 3 questions have been raised: 1. How are Experiential features realized in Donald Trump‟s Tweets? 2.
How are Interpersonal features realized in Donald Trump‟s Tweets? 3. How are Textual features realized in Donald Trump‟s Tweets? 1. Significance of the study Identifying and analyzing three features in Donald Trump's Tweets offers many contributions in theory and practice. Theoretically, while a considerable number of studies related to one of three metafunctions have been carried out, there has not been a thorough research done on this type of genre in terms of the combination of three metafunctions.
Therefore, the findings of this research are expected to make a significant contribution to the theory of Systemic Functional Grammar perfectly. Practically, the research hopefully becomes the basis for further research on political leaders‟ messages on Twitter as a social network. Scope of the study Although there are many ways to identify the linguistic features of a discourse, the study focuses on analyzing three metafunctions of SFG. In this study, 212 Donald Trump‟s Tweets from October to November in 2019 are collected for the investigation.
There have been many functional approaches, but the research is strictly carried out based on Halliday‟s framework. Organization of the study Chapter 1, Introduction, includes the rationale, the aim and objectives, research questions, the significance of the study, scope of the study, and organization of the study. Chapter 2, Literature Review, reviews Functional Grammar Theory by Halliday (1994). Some previous studies from the perspective of those theories and Tweets are also introduced.
e 4 Chapter 3, Methodology, consists of research method, research procedures, and the procedure of data collection and data analysis for the study. Chapter 4, Findings and discussions, presents the results of the data analysis related to the linguistic characteristics of three metafunctions used in Donald Trump‟s Tweets. Chapter 5, Conclusion and implications, summarizes the major findings, draws conclusions and pedagogical implications, limitations and puts forward suggestions for further studies. e 5 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.
Systemic functional grammar Michael Halliday as the father of Functional Grammar really helps the study of language in a practical way. In fact, this theory is a tool to consider and analyze the language in use. Halliday (1985) indicates “Systemic linguistics is a theory of meaning as a choice, by which a language, or any other semiotic system, is interpreted as networks of interlocking options”. Halliday (1994) also emphasizes that SFG is to give priority to paradigmatic relations and interprets language not as a set of structures, a network of systems, but as interrelated sets of options for making meaning.
Metafunction is known as the generalized functional principle of linguistic organization. In SFG, functions are performed through language, which explains why speakers say something and say it in the way they do. Speakers are encouraged to have to make relevant choices among three kinds of features including the Experiential features, the Interpersonal features, and Textual features. The experiential function of a language is to talk about our experience of the world, including the world in our minds, to describe events and states, and the entities involved in them.
The interpersonal function is to enable us to participate in communicative acts with other people to establish and maintain relations with them, to express our own viewpoint on things, to elicit and exchange theirs, or/and to influence their behavior. The textual function mentions the use of language to organize our experiential, logical, and interpersonal features into a coherent whole.