VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES -----***----- TRẦN THỊ LONG A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE EDUCATION TALKS BY SIR KEN ROBINSON (PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN PHÊ PHÁN MỘT SỐ BÀI NÓI CHUYỆN VỀ GIÁO DỤC CỦA KEN ROBINSON) M. MINOR THESIS FIELD : ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE : 60220201 HA NOI, 2013 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES -----***----- TRẦN THỊ LONG A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE EDUCATION TALKS BY SIR KEN ROBINSON (PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN PHÊ PHÁN MỘT SỐ BÀI NÓI CHUYỆN VỀ GIÁO DỤC CỦA KEN ROBINSON) M. MINOR THESIS FIELD : ENGLISH LINGUISTICS CODE : 60220201 SUPERVISOR : PROF. NGUYễN HOÀ HA NOI, 2013 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com i CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify that the thesis entitled ―A Critical discourse analysis of the education talks by Sir Ken Robinson‖ is my own study in the fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For the completion of this work, I have been fortunate to receive many invaluable contributions from many people. First of all, I should like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Nguyễn Hoà for his detailed instructions and valuable critical comments, without which the work would not have been completed. In addition, I give my sincere thanks to friends and classmates of the Post – Graduate Studies for their encouragement and assistance in accomplishing my paper.
I also would like to give my warmest thanks to my loving parents and my relatives who have comforted and taken great care of me to help me finish my study. Finally, due to the limited time to complete this work, it is unavoidable to have mistakes; therefore I am solely responsible for them and would like to have comments from others who concern to my study. Hanoi, September22nd 2013 Tran Thi Long LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iii ABSTRACT The thesis is a critical discourse analysis of the talks ―schools kill creativity‖ and ―bring on the learning revolution‖ by Sir Ken Robinson in TED conferences. The thesis aims at exploring the relations among language, power and ideology manifested in two of these talks.
Especially, the author wants to find out the ideology embedded in the talks via vocabulary and grammatical features. At the same time macro-structure and argumentative strategies of the talks are also revealed to explain why these talks record the most view TED talks on the Internet. To fulfill the above purposes, an overview of discourse, critical discourse analysis, the relations among language, power and ideology are provided. Though there are different approaches towards critical discourse analysis, the author chose the framework suggested by Fairclough with three stages of analysis which are textual description, interpretation and explanation, in combination with Hallidayan Systemic Functional Grammar to analyze the chosen discourse.
The analysis of the discourse comes to the major findings that language is shaped by society around it but it is also a powerful and effective tool to convey ideas, at the same time affect the listeners/readers‘ opinions with those ideas, and then affect society. Moreover, through the analysis of Ken Robinson talks, we learn that sometimes we do not need flowery words to make our talks engaging and effective. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES List of figures Figure 1: Interpretation (Fairclough, 2001: 119). 21 List of tables Table 1: Process types, their meanings and participants (Halliday, 1994: 143).
23 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com v ABBREVIATIONS CDA: Critical Discourse Analysis MR: Members‘ Resources SFG: Systematic Functional Grammar LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi TABLE OF CONTENT CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY. iii LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES. v TABLE OF CONTENT. vi PART A: INTRODUCTION.
Significance of the study. Scope of the study. Aims of the study and research questions. Background of the data.
Design of the study. 6 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND .1 What is discourse?.2 Critical discourse analysis .1 Concepts of CDA .2 Power in language .3 Language and ideology .3 Main approaches to CDA .4 Fairclough‘s analytical framework .5 Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) and its roles in CDA. 22 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vii CHAPTER 2: A CDA OF KEN ROBINSON’S TALKS. Experiential value of words.
The relational value of words. The expressive value of words. The experiential values of grammar. The relational values of grammar.
Expressive values of grammar. Macro-structure and argumentative strategy analysis. Intertexual context and presupposition. Summary of findings.
Suggestions for further study. I LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 1 PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Language has been playing a very important role in the development of mankind through the history of society. We use language to communicate with others.
Language helps us to express inner thoughts and emotions, make sense of complex and abstract thoughts. It also helps us to establish and maintain relationship. Moreover, it is a tool to help us get what we want and need. Therefore we usually use language with specific and clear purposes in our mind.
We know we can transmit our ideas and affect other people‘s mind through ideology embedded in the language lexically and syntactically. Thus, it is undoubted that language and power have a close connection. Language can be a tool for social change. On the other hand, language is shaped by social structure.
Critical discourse analysis (CDA) is an approach of discourse analysis which is based on a speech act theory that says that language is used not only to describe things but to do things as well (Brown and Yule, 1985). Therefore, CDA focuses on language as it is used by real people with real intentions, emotions, and purposes. According to this approach, there is a correlation between linguistic production and social variables because people are members of the society and their speech is a reflection of a set of experiential, relational, and expressive values (Fairclough, 1992). Through CDA, we can clearly see the close relations among language, power and ideology.
Moreover, Fairclough adds that CDA is an orientation towards language, which associates linguistic text analysis with a social theory of the functioning of language in political and ideological processes. By doing CDA, we are identifying these processes which help to identify the internal building of discourse and the connotations it implies. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 2 In this paper, I will examine two talks delivered by Sir Ken Robinson at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference which is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, under the slogan ―ideas worth spreading‖. These talks are also put online at the website www.com for those who may concern.
Sir Ken Robinson, an educationalist from England, supports teaching the arts in schools. He frequently criticizes the current system for being too centered on math and language, and he argues traditional schooling not only limits students‘ potential, but actually destroys their creativity. He has spoken around the world on the subject – in Europe, America, and Asia; and two of his most well-known presentations were at a TED conference in 2006 – titled ―schools kill creativity‖ and in 2010 – titled ―bring on the learning revolution‖. I will analyze these talks, using as a base, the framework for CDA described by Fairclough (1989), which I feel provides a suitable set of analytical questions for the data I have chosen.
The speaker of these talks does not belong to authority system as other speakers of political talks; thus he also has less power on the audience. However, language is still an effective tool for him to transmit his ideas and affect the audience. Therefore, when analyzing these talks I also focus more on the relation between discourse and ideology. Significance of the study Political and social-matter-related discourses are considered to be the targets of CDA.
Plenty of speeches on these issues by George Bush, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, etc. have been critically analyzed. However, there is no CDA of speeches delivered by Sir Ken Robinson though he is a well-known speaker on education in the world. Moreover, social-matter-related issues embedded in the discourses which have been critically analyzed usually are globalization, nuclear weapon, population and anti-terrorism war, environment, etc.
There is rare analysis LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 3 on the issues of education, though education is also among the most concerned ones today. Therefore, the thesis hopes to discover and prove how effective language is used to transfer ideas, affect people‘s perception about things in education in particular and affect society in general. Scope of the study In this thesis, I only chose to analyze two talks delivered by Sir Ken Robinson at TED conferences because they are not only among Robinson‘ most popular talks but also have a considerably large number of views on Internet. In addition, I just focus on the transcript of two talks.
Hence, the spoken version (including non- linguistic features, gesture, voice of speaking, stress, etc.) is temporarily neglected. The thesis is a linguistic study rather than an educational one; thus not all information surrounding education, creativity and innovation is explored. The thesis only tries to explore the speaker‘s use of language first, then and more importantly to make explicit his ideologies of education, creativity and innovation. In addition, this is a CDA research and ―critical‖ here could be understood as ―having distance to the data… and having focus on self-reflection as scholars doing research‖ (Wodak, 2002: 9).
That means critical discourse analysts have to take a clear stance or explicit position in understanding and analyzing discourse. Therefore, in this thesis I take a social view to look at the two talks by Ken Robinson because the main themes of both talks are related to social – matter issues. However, as stated above, the main object of this study is still linguistics, not social matters. Aims of the study and research questions By doing a critical discourse analysis of these talks, the author aims at discovering the relations among language, power, and ideology, especially the relations between LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4 language and ideology, then finding out the ideas of the speaker implied by the language he uses, and prove how he can use language as a tool of action.
To fulfill these purposes, the following questions should be answered: 1. What and how is Robinson‘s ideology (and/or power) reflected lexically and syntactically in the talks? 2. What is the relationship between texts, their producers and consumers and the social environment in which text production and interpretation occur? 5. Methodology This study uses, as a base, the analytical framework of Fairclough.
It includes three discourse analysis stages: description, interpretation, and explanation. This framework will be described in detail in part B, chapter 1, and section 1. Quantitative and qualitative methods are also employed through three stages, with the dominance of the later. Quantitative method will be used to analyze linguistic features (vocabulary, processes, etc.
Qualitative method will be used in the description stage to assess the effects of such linguistic features on expressing ideology, and/or power, and the persuasiveness of the talks. This method is also used in interpretation and explanation stage. The data of the study, two talks, is collection from the website www. Some of his online articles on the websites of HuffingtonPost, The New York Time are also collected to provide more insight in the production and interpretation of the text.