VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FALCULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ------------------------------- NGUYỄN DIỆU HẰNG AN ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S SPEECH AT PRESIDENT NELSON MANDELA’S MEMORIAL, FROM CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS PERSPECTIVES PHÂN TÍCH BÀI PHÁT BIỂU CỦA TỔNG THỐNG BARACK OBAMA TẠI LỄ TƯỞNG NIỆM TỔNG THỐNG NELSON MANDELA TỪ BÌNH DIỆN PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN PHÊ PHÁN MA. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201 Hanoi - 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FALCULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ------------------------------- NGUYỄN DIỆU HẰNG AN ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S SPEECH AT PRESIDENT NELSON MANDELA’S MEMORIAL, FROM CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS PERSPECTIVES PHÂN TÍCH BÀI PHÁT BIỂU CỦA TỔNG THỐNG BARACK OBAMA TẠI LỄ TƯỞNG NIỆM TỔNG THỐNG NELSON MANDELA TỪ BÌNH DIỆN PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN PHÊ PHÁN MA. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60220201 Supervisor: Prof. NGUYỄN HÒA Hanoi - 2014 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deep gratitude towards my supervisor, Prof. Nguyễn Hòa, for his constant and invaluable assistance without which my study would be far from finished. I am also greatly indebted to all my colleagues at Thuan Thanh High School 3 who provided me with valuable materials and enthusiastic support. Finally, my sincere thanks go to my beloved family for their love, encouragement, and support while I was carrying out this research. Hanoi, May 2014 Nguyễn Diệu Hằng i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This study presents an attempt to apply a critical discourse analysis perspective to investigating a political speech addressed by President Barack Obama on the occasion of the Nelson Mandela’s memorial on December 10th, 2013. Based on a brief overview of critical discourse analysis introduced by Norman Fairclough, the study follows a framework with three parts: Description, Interpretation and Explanation. It focuses on the analysis of language features (lexical ones and grammatical ones), the relationship between situational and intertextual context, and the discourse process and social process. Data for the research, thanks to which the objectives are achieved, are collected from the research. The findings show that the author employs linguistic features as the strategies to represent his power and ideology. The ideology of freedom, democracy and tolerance does not only belong to Nelson Mandela, but to Barack Obama as well. That is the way Obama hopes to exert his power and gain support from people around the world. The analysis also proves that critical discourse analysis is the smartest choice for those whose concern is about political discourse, especially political speech. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Common pronouns in the speech. 19 Table 2: Summary of thematization analysis . 26 Table 3: Reasons of making the speech. 28 Table 4: Mandela as a liberator, a person who struggles for liberation and democracy . 28 Table 5: Mandela as a person of tolerance and non-violence . 29 Table 6: The on-going struggles. 31 Table 7: Our actions . 36 Table 12: Summary of the findings . 38 iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . ii LIST OF TABLES .iii PART A: INTRODUCTION . Rationale of the Study. Objectives of the Study . Scope of the Study . Method of the Study . Structure of the Study . 2 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND . Political Discourse and Speech . Critical Discourse Analysis . Definition of CDA . Stages of CDA . CDA as the main approach for this study . 6 CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHOD . 8 CHAPTER 3: AN ANALYSIS OF BARACK OBAMA’S SPEECH AT NELSON MANDELA’S MEMORIAL . Context of the chosen text . Textual Description and Analysis . Macro-level Analysis . Interpretation of the relationship between the productive and interpretative processes . Interpretation of situational context . Intertextual context and presupposition . Explanation of the Discourse Process and Social Practice in the Discourse . 38 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Recommendations and implications.VII v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the Study Along with the development of the human society, language has evolved to satisfy human needs. An important move in linguistics in recent years has introduced a new model and method of analysis of language known as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), a new branch of Discourse Analysis (DA). Different from Discourse Analysis in general, CDA views language as a social practice – language is a part of society, language is a social process, and language is a socially conditioned process (Norman Fairclough, 1989). This is a linguistic approach widely applied for the analysis of political discourse. In politics, CDA is often applied to explore and discover power and ideology hidden in the political discourse held by the authority. This inspired me to choose Norman Faircoulgh’s as the theoretical framework for my MA thesis. Furthermore, I myself find CDA really useful and interesting as it provides us an analytic tool to illustrate and clarify CDA concepts, along with uncovering the speaker’s power and ideology. For those reasons, I have decided to choose CDA as the field of my study and take “An analysis of President Barack Obama’s speech at President Nelson Mandela’s memorial, from critical discourse analysis perspectives” as a text for my thesis, using Norman Fairclough’s viewpoints as a theoretical framework. Objectives of the Study Basing on CDA approach and Norman Fairclough’s framework , the study aims at: Analyzing the grammatical and lexical features, and the structures of the discourse. Analyzing Nelson Mandela's values presented in the discourse, and the purpose of the author making this speech through grammatical and lexical items, and the structures of the discourse With the above objectives, the study deals with the following research questions: What are Nelson Mandela's values presented in the discourse? How are these values realized in terms of lexical and grammatical features, and structure of the discourse? 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Scope of the Study The study takes the written text of the speech at Nelson Mandela’s memorial by the incumbent president of the USA, Barack Obama. It is the speech Barrack Obama delivered in Prague on Tuesday, December 10, 2013, paying tribute to Mandela’s life, and calling on the world to remember him by continuing to fight injustice, on the occasion of Mandela’s memorial at the First National Bank Stadium (FNB Stadium), South Africa. In this study, I focus only on relevant salient features. Since this research is pure linguistic, I have no intention of giving an in-depth research into political science. Nevertheless, social-political context is presumed to result in the realization and representation of power and ideology of the speaker. Method of the Study The methodology in this paper follows the view of the most outstanding theoreticians in this approach (Fairclough1989, 1992, 1995, 2001, 2002; van Dijk1993, 1997, 1998, 1980, 2000). Methods of description and analysis are applied to investigate the realization and representation of power and ideology of the discourse. Although several approaches to CDA have been chosen and analyzed, the one by Norman Fairclough is prior as it supplies most fundamental knowledge in the CDA. Structure of the Study The study consists of three main parts. Firstly, the Introduction part explains the rationale, aims, scopes and methods of the research. The next part is Theoretical Background, which sets a theoretical and suppositional orientation for the study. A detailed Analysis will follow this with a thorough look into description, interpretation and explanation stage. And the two parts ending this study are Conclusion and References. 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1. Political Discourse and Speech We may come across two interpretations of a discourse. A broader one and a narrower one. The former, as called by Teun A. van Dijk, is a communicative event, which “involves a number of social actors in a specific setting (time, place, circumstances) and based on other context features”, and the latter is “the verbal dimension of the spoken or written communicative act of a communication event” (Teun A. van Dijk, 1998: 194), basically a talk or text. In Fairclough’s view, it is “the whole process of social interaction of which a text is just a part” (Fairclough, 2001: 24). So the communicative event is equally important to the product of it. van Dijk defines political discourse as “the text and talk of professional politicians or political institutions, such as presidents and prime ministers and other members of government, parliament or political parties, both at the local, national and international levels”, and forms of which “have political functions and implications” (1997). Whether or not a discourse is political is decided by the context- the event in which the discourse presentation takes place. Hence, the study of a discourse cannot be only dependent on the written text or talk itself, but is based on the context for investigating its inside ideological meanings as well. Many linguists suggest political discourse be seen as a form of political action. In his opinion, Barber supposes “political talk is not talk about the world; it is talk that makes and remakes the world. Kirillov, a lecturer at Samara State Teacher Training University says “As politics is action in its essence, political language or political discourse can be treated as a purposeful social communicative act in the sphere of politics “(2003). van Dijk accepts that it is a constitutive part of the political process of e. governing, legislating, election campaigns, party propaganda, and so on.” (1997: 21) The most familiar types of political discourse involve speech. Speech is a written type of political discourse which is done by one representative of a particular political party. One speaker talks about a topic in front of a number of audiences. Although it is a text spoken aloud by someone, it lacks the features of spoken discourse. Clearly, 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com speech is characterized by formal monolog form and there is no oral communicative interaction between the speaker and the audience. The speaker expresses his/her ideas, opinions and attitudes with no hope to receive response from the audience, particularly then. The speaker plays the role as the speaker only, and the audience plays the role as the hearers, not the listener- the fundamental characteristics of spoken language. In political speeches, there is no direct interaction between the sender and the receiver of the information. Most of the speeches, with specifically chosen lexicology and syntactic structures as well, have the main characteristics of being formal, impersonal and polite (Jana Langrová, 2010: 11). For the first one, speeches are one type of formal documents such as official reports or academic writing. Their linguistic features to be detected are complex sentences, explicit clause and sentence linkers, subordination, non-finite and verbless clauses, subjunctive mood, impersonal constructions, uncontracted forms, generic pronoun one, polysyllabic, classical vocabulary. The second one can be exemplified by the fact that almost all speeches avoid too personal reference, which is signaled by the lack of first person singular. Instead, the use of formal subjects, collective nouns, abstract noun subjects and passive voice are promoted (Dontcheva-Navratilova 63, cited by Jana Langrová). The last one may be detected by the form of address, the social communication formulae, the use of indirect speech acts, the formula please, and the use of slang. This is not easy to do, since whether a used language is polite or not depends on the knowledge of both linguistic and socio-cultural aspects. The general purposes of speeches are to orientate the audience towards the future and persuade them to believe in and act as the speaker’s will.
