VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES PHILANTHROCAPITALIST TRACES IN TED TALK’S INTERVIEW WITH BILL GATES ON “HOW WE MUST RESPOND TO THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC” — A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS PHAN TICH DIEN NGON PHE PHAN CAC YEU TO THIEN NGUYEN TU BAN TRONG BAI PHONG VAN CUA TED TALK VOI BILL GATES VE VAN DE UNG PHO VOI DAI DICH CORONAVIRUS M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201.01 HANOI - 2024 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYEN THI THANH TU PHILANTHROCAPITALIST TRACES IN TED TALK’S INTERVIEW WITH BILL GATES ON “HOW WE MUST RESPOND TO THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC” — A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS PHAN TICH DIEN NGON PHE PHAN M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field : English Linguistics Code : 8220201. Nguyén Hoa HANOI - 2024 DECLARATION I hereby declare that the thesis under the title “Philanthrocapitalistic traces in TED Talk’s interview with Bill Gates on “How we must respond to the coronavirus pandemic” — A critical discourse analysis” is my original scientific work which has been conducted as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art and submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies, the University of Languages and International Studies.
Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgment in the thesis text. Hanoi — 2024 Nguyễn Thị Thanh Tú ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My graduation thesis would not have been possible without support from various people, many of whom I may not mention. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisors: Prof. Nguyen Hoa whose vast knowledge in Discourse Analysis, especially Critical Discourse Analysis I have benefited from ever since I started my post-graduate studies, and has provided me with insightful guidance and feedback that played an important part in shaping this work.
I register sincere appreciation to Dr. Huynh Anh Tuan who, although not directly my supervisor, has contributed immensely to my understanding of grammar theories, which facilitated my understanding of the related papers. I would also like to give my sincere gratitude to all of the lecturers at ULIS- VNU, Hanoi for their professional knowledge, and dedication in their lectures. To all my role models in academics, thank you.
I immensely appreciate my family’s contribution to this study. To my aunt — Ms. Hoa: thank you for allowing me to pursue my dream of language studying and researching. You have left strong impact on me as a role model of resilience and persistence.
To my parents: you have taught me the value of patience and hard work. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my secondary school teacher — Ms. Oanh for her unending support to my path of career and study. Last but not least I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my friends for their encouragement and support.
Their emotional assistance and constructive feedback were extremely valuable for me during the course of my post-graduate study at the ULIS. My Master thesis could not have been completed without them. il ABSTRACT This paper explores the philanthrocapitalist traces underlying Bill Gates’ pandemic talks in his interview with TED Talk on ‘How to respond to the Coronavirus Pandemic’ in 2020. Particularly, the way ideology is embedded in political discourse, specifically how philanthrocapitalism is interwoven in Bill Gates’ pandemic talk is investigated.
Having adopted the combined analytical framework of Critical Metaphor Analysis proposed by Charteris Black (2004), Systemic Functional Grammar established by Halliday (1994), and Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal framework, the study discovers that Gates has implemented a range of linguistic devices such as metaphors, provisions of agencies, evaluative language, verb phrases, etc. to represent a pandemic scenario of the U. and the world in general with several agencies adopting certain stances. Through the construction of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gates strongly exhibited a philanthrocapitalist ideology throughout his speech.
The results of the study indicate an interrelation between the linguistic factors (metaphors, transitivity system, evaluation), the themes around which those factors are oriented, namely, Criticism (the U. government, population); Sharing knowledge (on the virus, the achievements of the Gates organization, and strategies to deal with the pandemic); and Characteristics of the virus, and the philanthrocapitalist notions that they express. As the social actor (Bill Gates) represents the COVID-19 pandemic in certain social contexts, it may be the case that the experience of the pandemic of Gates and the U. people in general are conditioned by the socio-cultural and politico-economic factors external to the pandemic.
The findings of this study contribute to the body of English linguistics on how philanthrocapitalism is hinted through the construction of a pandemic scenario, and suggest that an integrated framework of CMA, SFG, and Appraisal frameworks can be a versatile tool for analyzing the complex ways in which language is used to express the ideologies a person or a group. 11 TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION000157. HH HH HH HH HH Hệ il. 11 LIST OF ABBREVIA TION.
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Philanthrocapitalism and Bill Ciaf€S. 38 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .- -- G111 11 HH HH HH 39 K00 0 Ỷ. --- Án HH HT TT TH HH HH ng 41 3. Data Collection nnnẽ.ceccesccessccescecsneceseecesceceseecsnecesceceacecsaeecaeeeeeceaeecsaeeeee 42 CHAPTER 4: ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION.
Analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bill Gates’ statements employing 101721901081918E51i 4). The conceptualization of the pandemic COVID-19. 2G HH HH nh 50 4. Analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bill Gates’ statements through SFG.
Analysis of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bill Gates’ statements using the Appraisal framework.ccceccesccesceseeeseeesessecesececessceesececececeeseceaecsaeeseeeaeseceseesseeeaeeaes 68 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION. Hà HH HH HH Hàn HH ng, 75 3030. HH HH HH HH HT Tu TH TH HH HH ch Thi ng I APPENDIX SG. XXIX LIST OF ABBREVIATION SFG: Systemic Functional Grammar CMA: Critical Metaphor Analysis CTA: The COVID-19 Therapeutics Accelerator vi LIST OF TABLES Table 2.
The dimensions (forms of order) in language and. Summary of Halliday’s process fy€S. Mappings of PANDEMIC IS WAR. Mappings of PANDEMIC IS MARKET1.
cee eeeceeeceseecenreeeneeeeeeesnees 53 Table 4. Mappings of PANDEMIC IS GAME. Transitivity in Gates’ statements in the TED interview. Attitude types and their distribution (typical examples only).
69 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2. Fairclough’s three-dimensional model (1995) .- - «k1 k* HH ng ry 12 Figure 2. Lexicogrammar networks of language (Matthiesen & Halliday, 2004). Judgement and appreciation as institutionalized affect.
The mappings of the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR (Dancy gier, 2016:30) .-- -- TH HH HH HH HH 19 Figure 3. The research approach of the theS1S. Stages of Critical Metaphor Analysis (Charteris-Black, 2013:500). Overview of Appraisal FraACWOFKK.- ---- 5 + vn trên44 VI CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.
Rationale of the research Among the most prominent schools of thought, structuralism and functionalism were the first formal psychological theories that greatly affected the approaches to discourse in linguistics. Structuralism studies the internal structure of language while functionalism is concerned with its more practical facet: its functions. As the two theories approach different facets of language, the recent and more comprehensive trend in discourse study — the combined functional — structural approach, embraces both theories in a way that appreciates the various functions fulfilled by language, how they largely determine language structures and how different structures influence the communicative effect. Consequently, the emphasis of discourse study now is on how texts can be understood or how thoughts and ideology are conveyed in social process.
In this sense, language is not merely a means of reality reflection or interaction but also an essential tool for power and ideology for its capability of constructing reality. As a matter of fact, language is never neutral because it reflects the intentions of the communicators (Fiske, 1994; Fowler et al. The time we are currently living in is condensed with a variety of catastrophic events, including Amazon wildfire, Australia bushfire, Lake Michigan catastrophe, Coronavirus (or COVID-19) outbreak, etc., which lead to the rise of global economic recession and social instability regarding the sharp rise in social evils such as racial discrimination and terrorism. One of the most fundamental issues to resolve is the deadly pandemic caused by COVID-19.
Although it is not the first health-related crisis facing the world (SARS was the first international pandemic that spawned a variety of other medical issues including MERS, Zika and swine flu), COVID-19 has marked a shift in the global health security regime (Puyvallée and Kittelsen, 2019). According to Pharmaceutical technology online newspaper, from December 31“, 2020 — when the first case was detected until now — 9" June 2020, “the total confirmed cases of COVID-19 have reached over 7,138,000 with over 406,000 deaths and 3,311,000 recoveries”. The evolving speed of virus seems not to decrease as the expected cases are on the rise due to ineffective social distancing measures in countries such as the US, Brazil, India and a number of Middle East countries. In the pandemic context, communication of information related to the way to respond to Coronavirus and the management of public’s perception of the outbreak have fallen to prominent public figures.
As a result, public communication, practices of governance and the issues of epidemiology have got entangled with each other (BJørkdahl & Carlsen, 2019). With the wide spread of COVID-19, it comes to researcher’s notice that the global pandemic provides a fertile ground to study a variety of communication events related to and unfolding public health crisis (Powers, 2008). Among the prominent public figures, Bill Gates, who is deemed a worldwide billionaire, entrepreneur and enthusiastic philanthropist lies among the first to initiate the pandemic talks to the public. He makes several warnings about the possibility of an upcoming outbreak in his speech on TED — a world famous American media organization posting talks by influential figures around the word under the slogan “ideas worth sharing”.
At the time the COVID-19 pandemic occurs, the world is astounded by his previous warnings and several media organizations come to him for his opinions on the occurrence of the outbreak and how people should respond to this situation. In the interview hosted by the head of TED recorded on March 24" 2020, Gates emphasizes the significant role of large technological enterprises, particularly the Gates Foundation, in disease testing and vaccine production, and at the same time, addressing the ineffective health crisis management of the US government and a number of politicians. This raises the question of whether Gates simply discussed the events revolving around the pandemic and suggested ways to mitigate its consequences or whether he intends to use the interview as a means of promoting his ideas on leveraging private organizations as well as marginalizing the US government’s interference.