VIETNAM ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES GRADUATE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Nguyễn Thị Khánh Vân A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF KAMALA HARRIS’ IDEOLOGY IN HER SPEECH AT THE 2020 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION MA THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE HANOI, 2021 VIETNAM ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES GRADUATE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Nguyễn Thị Khánh Vân A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF KAMALA HARRIS’ IDEOLOGY IN HER SPEECH AT THE 2020 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION Field: English Language Code: 8220201 Supervisor: Nguyễn Thị Việt Nga, Ph. HANOI, 2021 DECLARATION BY AUTHOR I hereby state that this minor thesis entitled ‘A critical discourse analysis of Kamala Harris’ ideology in her speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention’ is the result of my own research. This work is original and all the sources that I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged. Moreover, I confirm that this M.A thesis has not been submitted or published for any degree to any other universities or institutions.
Author’s Signature Nguyễn Thị Khánh Vân i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would love to acknowledge my advisor, Nguyễn Thị Việt Nga, PhD, for her assistance in completing my thesis. I am deeply thankful for her patience and the time she has spent on me. Thanks to Prof. Võ Đại Quang introduced the whole new realm of Critical Discourse Analysis to me.
I would also like to express my gratitude to Mr. Đặng Nguyên Giang, PhD, and Department of Foreign Languages, Graduate Academy of Social Sciences, the professors, teachers and staff for providing various opportunities in developing myself. I want to acknowledge my classmates for encouraging me and sharing joy with me at difficult moments. Then I also want to thank my rector for giving me a chance to improve my knowledge.
Last but not least, I would like to express my gratitude for my family, my parents and my spouse. I would be the same without you. Thank you for putting your faith in me and giving me this opportunity. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION BY AUTHOR.
ii TABLE OF CONTENTS. vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. vii LIST OF FIGURES. viii LIST OF TABLES.
Rationale of the study. Aims of the Study. Scope of the Study. Significance of the Study.
Methods of the study. Data collection and data analysis. Structure of the Study. The origin of Critical Discourse Analysis.
Critical Discourse Analysis. The relations between CDA and Ideology. Central approaches to CDA on the ideology. Teun Van Dijk’s.
The Discourse-Historical Approach of Ruth Wodak. Norman Fairclough's approach. Norman Fairclough's framework. Review of previous studies.
35 CHAPTER 3: IDEOLOGIES OF KAMALA IN THE SPEECH. The background of the speech. Ideology of inspiration to women. Ideology ties to condemning racism.
Ideology as a power of persuasion. LINGUISTIC REALIZATION OF KAMALA’S IDEOLOGIES IN THE SPEECH. Experiential values of words. Relational values of words.
Expressive values of words. Experiential values of grammatical features. Relational values of grammatical features. Expressive values of grammatical features.
Situation context and discourse type. Intertexual context and presupposition. Limitations and Suggestions for Further Studies. 81 APPENDIX 1: Kamala Harris’ Speech at the 2020 DNC.
I APPENDIX 2: Types of Sentence Structures. IX v ABSTRACT This study attempts to discover the ideologies and how those ideologies are realized linguistically in the speech delivered by the elected vice president Kamala Harris at the 2020 Democratic National Convention using the CDA framework suggested by Norman Fairclough (2013). The study targets to learn more about the relationships between discourse and ideology to promote the awareness of CDA in an appropriate way in social studies. Moreover, the study intended to contribute to the development of English language education, particularly in studying CDA by giving some suggestions for learners.
The objectives are to investigate Kamala’s ideologies embedded in her speech and analyze how ideas are represented in the speech using linguistics components. The findings show that the ideologies embedded in the selected speech are the ideology of inspiration to women, the ideology of racist condemnation, and the ideology as a power of persuasion. Research shows that Harris' ideas are expressed through vocabulary strategies, flexible use of personal pronouns 'we', 'I' and 'you', and the use of voice. According to the results, Harris deft purpose is to introduce herself, inspire women and show her support to Joe Biden.
Additionally, she denounced the Trump racist administration. vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CDA: Critical Discourse Analysis CL: Critical Linguistics DA: Discourse Analysis DHA: Discourse-Historical Approach DNC: Democratic National Convention US: United States vii LIST OF FIGURES FIGURES Figure 2.1: Levels of theories and linguistic analysis …………………… 25 Figure 2.3: Explanation ………………………………… ……………… 31 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: Occurrences of lexical items……………………………….1: Lexical items for ‘in-groups’ and positive terms on women….2: Lexical items for ‘out-groups’ and negative terms…………… 53 Table 4.3: Lexical items for ‘in-groups’ on Joe Biden………………….4: Number of passive and active sentences…………………….5: Summary of modes of the sentences………………….6: Frequency of personal pronouns……………………………… 62 Table 4.7: Summary of modal auxiliaries……………………………….8: List of informal lexical items…………………………………. Rationale of the study There is no doubt that language is one of the most noteworthy inventions that people have ever made which is used as a means of communication, the foremost viable way to precise the wills, sentiments, and states of mind toward the world. It obviously becomes a social phenomenon, and it has been taken advantage of by many specialists from various fields, includes politics.
Language is supposed to be the most powerful tool for politicians to realize their goals. Generally, power and ideology are always enclosed in their discourses once uttered. Speeches have implications, so sometimes listeners struggle to grasp the meaning behind words. The quest for gaining a profound understanding of the meaning behind some speeches, both written and spoken, is the mission of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA).
The CDA provides an honest framework to capture the connotation of the spoken and written language. According to Fairclough (2012), ‘critical discourse analysis (CDA) brings the critical tradition of social analysis into language studies and contributes to critical social analysis a particular focus on discourse and relations between discourse and other social elements (power relations, ideologies, institutions, social identities, and so forth). Critical social analysis can be understood as normative and explanatory critique.9) Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the U. presidential elections in 2020 were processed as planned.
Former Democrat candidate Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris defeated the Republican coalition of the current president, Donald Trump, and the vice-presidents - Mike Pence. On August 11, 2020, Senator Kamala Harris gave her victory speech by paying tribute to the 1 national women and history, who made this moment possible and gave hope to many people. Kamala Harris became the first woman, and the first black and Asian American, to be the vice president-elect of the United States.
For all these reasons, I have decided to choose the CDA as the area of my study and to take ‘A critical discourse analysis of Kamala Harris’ ideology in her speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention’ for my MA thesis, using Norman Fairclough's views as the theoretical framework. Aims of the Study The study targets to learn more about the relationships between discourse and ideology to promote the awareness of CDA in an appropriate way in social studies. Moreover, the study intended to contribute to the development of English language education, particularly in studying CDA by giving some suggestions for learners. To achieve the above aims, the objectives are specified to: - Investigate Kamala Harris' ideologies embedded in her speech at 2020 Democratic National Convention.
- Analyze how ideas are represented in the speech using linguistics components. Research Questions To fulfill the aim and the objective of the investigation, the researcher is going to answer the following questions: - What ideologies are conveyed by Kamala in her speech at 2020 Democratic National Convention? - How are those ideologies realized linguistically? 2 1. Scope of the Study In this paper, I choose to analyze only Kamala Harris' speech during the third night of the Democratic National Convention (DNC), where she officially accepted the nomination as the Democratic vice presidential nominee. I focus primarily on the transcription of the speech.
Hence, we do not include the spoken version, such as non-linguistic features: gestures, stress, so forth. The thesis is a linguistic and not a political study, which means that we do not explore all the information surrounding politics. The thesis only tries to identify first the use of language and, above all, explain its ideology in the speech. Moreover, this is a CDA investigation, and ‘critical’ could be understood here as ‘having a distance from the data.
and focusing on self-reflection as scholars doing research’ (Wodak, 2002, p. I will analyze the speech from a social standpoint. Because the main themes of the discourse related to international social matters. As mentioned above, the main objective of this study is always linguistics, not a socio- political issue.
Significance of the Study Theoretically, this study reinforces CDA theories, particularly in terms of political discourse. CDA analysts can uncover ideology hidden behind words by examining texts objectively. Practically, the study also provides insights for those interested in discourse analysis in general and political discourse analysis in particular. Moreover, as previously said, this research aims to find some practical applications of CDA in English teaching and language education in general.
The author hopes it will be highly beneficial in teaching and learning English, 3 especially the translation aspect. It also aids the reader in understanding the coded message in political speeches. 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, Hillary Clinton, etc., have been critically analyzed.
However, there is no CDA of speeches delivered by Kamala Harris, the first colour woman in history who becomes vice-president-elect of the USA. Besides, she inspired women and pointed out the failure of the Trump administration, she also called for solidarity and stressed the need to elect Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States in her speech. Therefore, the thesis hopes to discover and demonstrate how effective language is used to transfer ideas that affect people's perceptions. Research approach The Critical Discourse Analytical framework, introduced by Fairclough (2001), is used in this paper.
The three stages include description, interpretation, and explanation will be employed. Yet, it is worth noting that this study does not address all of Fairclough's questions. Only the most notable features of the speech are highlighted to clarify the declaration of ideology. This decision is based on CDA's, concern about the social context, that is used.
Texts are viewed as products of a socially or politically certain context. Language elements can be chosen at random or for the luxury of different options, but they can also be chosen to reflect the world in a way that is biased toward one's point of view or ideology. The analysis of a text is beyond the scope of textual analysis because it requires researching the processes of text 4 production, interpretation, and explanation on the social and cognitive conditions that give them meaning. In the first stage, a natural textual description of the speech, in terms of lexis and syntax, will be done to find out the ideologies in Kamala Harris’ utterance.
In the second stage, questions relating to the situational context will be explored to define the ideologies embedded in the speech. Finally, in the third stage, the text is interpreted as part of the social process. The author is well aware of the subjectivity of this framework when selecting to use it. As the term 'critical' implies, doing CDA entails having a political stance when analyzing facts, which inevitably leads to personal judgments.
‘Unlike much other scholarship, CDA does not deny but explicitly defìnes and defends its own socio-political position.