VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES *** BÙI THỊ ANH VÂN A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ON NON-CANONICAL CONSTRUCTIONS IN SOME SPEECHES DELIVERED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA IN SOME DIFFERENT SOCIAL AFFAIRS PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN PHÊ PHÁN VỀ CÁC CẤU TRÚC PHI QUY PHẠM TRONG MỘT SỐ BÀI PHÁT BIỂU CỦA TỔNG THỐNG OBAMA TRONG NHỮNG VẤN ĐỀ XÃ HỘI KHÁC NHAU M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field : English Linguistics Code : 60.201 HANOI - 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES *** BÙI THỊ ANH VÂN A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ON NON-CANONICAL CONSTRUCTIONS IN SOME SPEECHES DELIVERED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA IN SOME DIFFERENT SOCIAL AFFAIRS PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGÔN PHÊ PHÁN VỀ CÁC CẤU TRÚC PHI QUY PHẠM TRONG MỘT SỐ BÀI PHÁT BIỂU CỦA TỔNG THỐNG OBAMA TRONG NHỮNG VẤN ĐỀ XÃ HỘI KHÁC NHAU M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field : English Linguistics Code : 60. Võ Đại Quang HANOI - 2016 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY I hereby certify that the thesis entitled “A Critical Discourse Analysis on non- canonical constructions in some speeches delivered by President Obama in some different social affairs” 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.
i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGEMENT For the completion of this thesis, I have been fortunate to receive invaluable contributions from many people. First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Associate Professor, Dr. Võ Đại Quang for his hearty guidance and his valuable criticism, detailed comments and corrections, without which the work would not have been completed. My thanks also go to my Dean, my Head of Division and my colleagues at Faculty of English, Hanoi National University of Education whose supports undeniably help me concentrate on my thesis.
Last but not least, I would love to show my gratitude to my mother, who always gives me endless encouragement and takes pride in her daughter. Without all of them, this thesis could not have been completed. ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT This paper critically analyzes some non-canonical constructions in some chosen speeches of Mr President from Critical Discourse Analysis perspective according to Van Dijk‟s socio-cognitive approach. In the analysis of model contexts, the researcher provided readers with context of three speeches to describe the historical, social as well as political reasons for the speeches to be delivered including: Obama inaugural address in 2009, Jewish American Heritage Month, and Civil Society Forum in 10 April 2015, Panama City, Panama.
The thesis has found out that Obama mostly uses passivization structures in order to hide the agents of the actions, which in other words helps focus on the victims and their hardship. The use of ideological square as well as non-canonical constructions together reflects his ideology on both “us” and “them” sides. Besides, Obama also employs other non-canonical constructions like left dislocation or inversion. Through the critical analysis of these talks, it is clear that language can be a powerful tool to transmit ideas.
iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENT CERTIFICATION OF ORIGINALITY. ii PART A: INTRODUCTION. Significance of the study. Scope of the study.
Objectives and aims of the study. Background of data. Design of study. 7 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND.
An overview about critical discourse analysis. Definition of discourse. Three levels of a discourse. The Socio-Cognitive Approach to CDA.
Social cognition: ideology and “Ideological square” and syntax. An overview about non-canonical constructions. Discourse and information structures. Sentential-level information structure.
Canonical and Non-canonical constructions. 19 CHAPTER 3: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ON NON- CANONICAL CONSTRUCTIONS IN SPEECHES DELIVERED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA IN DIFFERENT SOCIAL AFFAIRS. A critical discourse analysis on non-canonical constructions in Obama inaugural address in 2009. An analysis of semantic macrostructures and social cognition: ideology through the analysis of local meanings.
21 iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. A critical discourse analysis on non-canonical constructions in remarks by the President on Jewish American Heritage Month. An analysis of semantic macrostructures and social cognition: ideology through the analysis of local meanings. A critical discourse analysis on non-canonical constructions in Civil Society Forum Address delivered 10 April 2015, Panama City, Panama.
An analysis of semantic macrostructures and social cognition: ideology through the analysis of local meanings. Summary of findings. Limitations and suggestions for further study. 40 REFERENCES APPENDIX 1 APPENDIX 2 APPENDIX 3 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1.
Rationale The relationship between discourse and ideology has always been an interesting topic, and it is also the duty of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to discover this relationship. In the past twenty years, CDA developed quickly all over the world. A large number of scholars have made contributions in the fields of critical analysis of political discourse, especially Wodak, Jager, Scollon, Fairclough. One of these great analysts is Van Dijk, a pioneer who developed the social-cognitive approach in which an important dimension incorporated is that of human mind.
He assumes that social cognitive is the bridge between discourse and society. It can be understood that the intentional utility of text structures can reflect the ideology of the speaker or writer and his society or the social context when the text was produced. It could be considered syntax a part of text structures in discourse. As cited in Van Dijk (2011), the ideological implications of syntactic sentence structures referred to in the literature are familiar.
For example, it has often been shown that word order as well as transactional structures of sentences may code for underlying semantic (or indeed, cognitive) agency (Fowler et al. In general, at least in English, responsible agency is associated with grammatical subject, and initial position, or information structures. This means that ideologically monitored opinions about responsibility for socially positive or negative acts may be differentially expressed in different syntactic forms. In terms of information structures, a text is the combination of both canonical constructions and non-canonical constructions.
Therefore, the users can employ these constructions on purpose. Hence, an analysis on the use of non- canonical construction could shed light to the journey to figure out the ideology of speakers. The objective of CDA is public speech, such as advertisements, newspaper, articles, political propagandas, official documents, laws, regulations 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com and so on. Its aim is to explore the relationships among language, ideology and power.
Therefore, politics is the field that is mainly focused. Among all the influential speakers of the time, President Obama has been a phenomenon, for he was the first black President of the United State. During his Presidency, he has delivered hundreds of speeches in public about different social affairs. As a lawyer and a politician, he has a talent for word utility to influence his fellowmen; therefore, the critical discourse analysis of his speeches is worth doing to discover his ideology.
In short, the objective of this paper is to critically analyze some non- canonical constructions in some chosen speeches of Mr President according to Van Dijk‟s socio-cognitive approach. It is expected that, after the analysis, we can understand more about the hidden messages delivered in the chosen political discourse by applying the theories on CDA of Van Dijk. Significance of the study The critical discourse analysis of different politic-related speeches is not an unfamiliar topic for research. Especially, speeches delivered by President Obama are always the objectives to be critically analyzed because of his worldwide reputation.
However, not much research is conducted to analyze his employment of the information structures, non-canonical constructions in particular from the perspective of critical discourse analysis. Therefore, it is expected that thanks to the objectives of only investigating use of non-canonical constructions, the researcher can make the critical discourse analysis of speeches by President Obama deeper, more careful and more successful. Scope of the study The analysis of President Obama‟s speeches is confined to verbal aspects of the documents and some features of the historical context at the time of the speeches although the analyst is well aware that paralinguistic and extra linguistic factors are of certain importance in the discourse. Particularly speaking, this research studies non-canonical constructions of sentential 2 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com information structures in three speeches delivered by President Obama in three different social affairs.
1- Obama inaugural address in 2009 2- Remarks by the President on Jewish American Heritage Month 3- Civil Society Forum Address delivered 10 April 2015, Panama City, Panama 4. Objectives and aims of the study This research aims at enhancing language competence of language learners by raising their awareness of understanding the grammatical structures on the surface of language and explaining speaker‟s choice of linguistic features. The researcher, as a language teachers also wants to raise students‟ critical thinking through explicit teaching of some techniques of critical discourse analysis. In order to achieve these aims, the research‟s objectives is to discover the relations among language, power, and ideology, especially the relations between language and ideology, then find out how the ideas of the speaker are implied by the language he uses and prove why he uses non-canonical constructions as a tool of action.
To fulfill these purposes, the following questions should be answered: 1) What and how is the ideology of President Obama reflected via his employment of non-canonical constructions in his speeches? 2) What is the relationship between non-canonical constructions, their producers and consumers and the social environment in which text production and interpretation occur? 5. Methods This study is based on the analytical framework created by Van Dijk. It consists of three discourse analysis stages: Investigate the context model, find out the semantic macrostructures, and investigate social cognition: ideology 3 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com through the analysis of local meanings. This framework will be described in details in part B, chapter 2.
Quantitative and qualitative methods are both employed through three stages, with the dominance of the latter. Quantitative methods is used in order to analyze linguistic features (non-canonical constructions). Qualitative method is used in investigating social cognition: ideology of speaker through the analysis of local meanings expressed through linguistic features, investigating the context model, as well as finding out the semantic macrostructures of the talks. In brief, this study employs quantitative and qualitative approach to the critical discourse analysis of non-canonical constructions in three different speeches delivered by President Obama in different social affairs.
Background of data On November 4, 2008, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois was elected president of the United States. Obama became the 44th president, and the first African American to be elected to be the U. During his early life and his political career, he took a job as a community organizer with a church-based group, the Developing Communities Project. For the next several years, he worked with low-income residents in Chicago‟s Roseland community and the Altgeld Gardens public housing development on the city‟s largely black South Side.
Obama would later call the experience “the best education I ever got, better than anything I got at Harvard Law School,” the prestigious institution he entered in 1988. He helped create a state earned-income tax credit that benefited the working poor, promoted subsidies for early childhood education programs and worked with law enforcement officials to require the videotaping of interrogations and confessions in all capital cases. Obama notably went on record as an early opponent of President George W. Bush‟s push to war with Iraq.