VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES REPRESENTING THE VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT?’S RESPONSE TO THE 4TH WAVE OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN ONLINE NEWSPAPERS UNG PHO CUA CHÍNH PHU VIỆT NAM TRƯỚC LÀN SÓNG THỨ 4 CUA DAI DỊCH COVID-19 TRONG CAC BÀI BAO ĐIỆN TỬ M.MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201.01 HANOI- 2023 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGUYEN THI THUY DUNG REPRESENTING THE VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT?’S RESPONSE TO THE 4TH WAVE OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN ONLINE NEWSPAPERS CUA DAI DICH COVID-19 TRONG CAC BAI BAO DIEN TU M.MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201. Nguyén Hoa HANOI- 2023 DECLARATION I declare that the thesis under the title “Representing the Vietnamese Government’s Response to the 4th Wave of Covid-19 Pandemic in Online Newspapers” 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 acknowledgement in the text of the thesis. Hanoi — 2023 Nguyễn Thi Thùy Dung Approved by SUPERVISOR (Signature and full name) Prof.
Nguyễn Hoà Date:. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply grateful to whom for the completion of this Master's thesis, and I would like to express my heartfelt appreciation to those who have played pivotal roles in this journey. First and foremost, I want to extend my sincerest thanks to my thesis advisor, Professor Nguyen Hoa. Your guidance, wisdom, and unwavering support have been the guiding light throughout this research endeavor.
Your mentorship has not only enriched my academic growth but also inspired me to strive for excellence. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my family, with a heartfelt emphasis on my husband. Your unwavering belief in me, your patience, and your constant encouragement have been my pillars of strength. I am profoundly thankful for your sacrifices and understanding during the long hours spent on this thesis.
I also want to acknowledge the dedicated faculty and staff at University of Languages and International Studies. Your commitment to academic excellence and the resources you provided have been instrumental in the successful completion of this thesis. Your support has created an environment conducive to learning and research. To all those who have stood by me throughout this academic journey, whether through guidance, emotional support, or understanding, I extend my deepest appreciation.
Your contributions, in various forms, have made this achievement possible. Thank you for being an essential part of this significant milestone in my life and academic career. il ABSTRACT This study employs a combined approach, drawing upon van Leeuwen’s (2008) social action framework, Halliday’s transitivity system, and Charteris- Black’s (2004) critical metaphor analysis to examine the representation of the Vietnamese Government's response to the 4th wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study uncovers four significant findings that shed light on the portrayal of the government's actions and its image during this critical period.
Firstly, the use of instrumentalized and objectivated material actions, along with non-transactive semiotic actions, reveals a powerful government with autocratic leadership. These linguistic choices emphasize the government's assertive and dominant role in responding to the pandemic. Secondly, the thesis highlights that the government's actions take center stage in the discourse and the image constructed of the government portrays it as wise, active, and preventive. Lastly, the adoption of war metaphors plays a role in conveying government policy tendency and constructing the image of an optimistic and confident government in its battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.
This research provides valuable insights into how the Vietnamese Government's response to the 4th wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is linguistically constructed and represented in discourse, shedding light on the government's leadership style, actions, and image during this challenging period. 1H TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARRA TÍHON. scsscccccccssssescccsscssccsccsscesscsssssscsssccssccssssscssscesssesesescesscesscsscssscssoeeees iii LIST OF TABLES .005009 000 vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTTON. Scope of the r€S€arCH.- - s11 nọ HH it 2 1.
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The reactions of the Vietnamese Government to the 4th wave of COVID-19.1, COQNItVE TEACTIONS 6n eee. The actions of the Vietnamese Government to the 4th wave of COVID-19. Semiotic vs Material Á CÍÏOIHS. Non-Transactive vs Transactive Semiotic ACTIONS.
Non-Transactive vs Transactive Material ACfÏOPS. Instrumental vs Interactive Material ÄCÍÍOTIS. A summary of key ẨInITỹS. ng kg ng ngư,43 5.
Implications for future research. Limitation and recommendation for future studies. 5< <5 Họ cọ HH TH. 0100000090 48 LIST OF TABLES Table 2.
Government’s Organizational Structure (2021). Examples of different process types from 20 articÌes.- -----«++<<+<<++<++ 25 vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the research Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) is assumed to have first appeared in Wuhan, China in late December 2019 and is declared as a severe global threat, a pandemic by The World Health Organization (WHO) on 11th of March 2020. Up until now, the phase in which the world experienced large numbers of deaths and pressure on hospitals contemporarily passed, which does not mean countries should let down their guard but continue to manage COVID-19 as an infectious disease.
Sharing a long land border with China and receiving millions of Chinese visitors to Vietnam each year according to The Vietnamese Ministry of Culture Sport and Tourism, 2020. Vietnam has contained the spread of the pandemic at the beginning. The first COVID-19 case in Vietnam was documented on 23 January 2020, when Ho Chi Minh City officials reported two confirmed cases involving people who had recently travelled from Wuhan, China. In response to the emergence of COVID-19, the Vietnam Party-State (VPS) directed all levels of government and society to respond to the situation and take immediate measures to prevent and control the epidemic (Viet-Phuong et al.
Vietnam has so far managed to avoid a health catastrophe, given its proximity to China. The present study is interested on the actions of government in handling the pandemic and how they are textually reconstructed by the press. There have been many previous studies focusing on the topic of COVID-19 pandemic situation in Vietnam. For example, the research articles named Policy Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in Vietnam (Nguyen et al., 2021) and Summary of the COVID-19 outbreak in Vietnam — Lessons and suggestions by Nguyen et al., (2020) described the characteristics of COVID-19 infectious disease in Vietnam and the main factor contributing to the success of Vietnam was the immediate Government’s policy interventions.
Other research like Outbreak investigation for COVID-19 in northern Vietnam (Thanh et al., 2020) works on case reports or Policy Response, Social Media and Science Journalism for the Sustainability of the Public Health System Amid the COVID-19 Outbreak: The Vietnam Lessons (La et al., 2020) studies the role of policy responses and media communication during the pandemic. However, the present paper attempts to fill the gap of the previous discourse studies which have not looked at how Vietnamese government’s policy of dealing with the pandemic is viewed through the lens of the news media. Scope of the research This study is focused on analyzing the responses of the Vietnamese government during the fourth wave, Vietnam’s worst outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, which started from April 21, 2021. This wave from April to October, 2021 was reported to be the most complicated and dangerous with the highest number of cases and deaths.
Vietnam had reported 6,01,349 cases and 15,018 deaths as of September 12, 2021, according to National Institute of Health. The data were collected from five official and powerful online newspapers of the government such as Government News, Thanh Nien, VietnamNet, VNEconomy, The Voice of Vietnam 5. The chosen articles were published from April to October, 2021 and focused on reporting COVID-19 policies from central/national government level (not provincial government level). The most significant reason for choosing these sources is their credibility and popularity, which means they are one of the main sources that Vietnamese citizens domestically and aboard get official messages from the government.
Aims and objectivities of the research The study aims to investigate how Vietnamese Government’s responses to the 4th wave of COVID is informed by Vietnamese national news report linguistically and the reasons for the representation of those actions. To achieve this aim, the study seeks to achieve the following objectives: - to explore strategies that were used to represent social actions; - to analyze the underlying reasons why the actions are reported in such a way. Research questions In order to address two objectives, the study is intended to answer two corresponding research questions as follows: (i) How was the response of Vietnamese Government to the 4th wave of COVID-19 represented linguistically? (1) Why was it represented in such a way? 1. Significance of the research Theoretically, this research attempts to introduce a useful adapted framework to analyze news’ language used to represent social actions.
Practically, as one of the references for critical discourse analysis with online media sources, this could provide valuable insights for journalists, linguistics scholars, or students majoring in linguistics and social media to conduct sociolinguistic studies in the future. Research methodology A critical qualitative research design was deployed in this study. This study used a combined approach based on van Leeuwen’s social actor representation framework and Halliday’s transitivity analysis, as a tool to examine how the action of government handling Covid-19 are constructed in news discourse. Structure of the thesis The study consists of five chapters Chapter One: Introduction Presents the rationale, scope, aim and objectives, significance, general methodology, and design of the study.
Chapter Two: Literature Review This part comprises explanation of principal terminologies that direct the data collecting process and theoretical framework structure by reviewing related researches to the study. Chapter Three: Methodology This section builds on qualitative research with Halliday’s transitivity system and adapted van Leeuwen’s (2008) social actor framework to identify and classify actions in the texts. Chapter Four: Findings and discussion This chapter presents the findings of the study concerning the government’s actions as represented by the online news and a discussion thereof. Chapter Five: Conclusion The final section recapitulates the key findings of the study.
It discusses the limitations as well as suggests some recommendations for future research. CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter begins with a presentation of relevant literature pertaining to the structure of Vietnamese Government and the social context when the fourth wave of COVID-19 happened. Secondly, the chapter offers a review of emerging literature surrounding the analyzing discourses about COVID-19 in other countries which reveals that the dissemination of pandemic communication was an ideologically informed process and expressed features associated with political communication literature. Subsequently, the central tenets of representing actions are explored, focusing particularly on process types.
Finally, this chapter presents the foundation of a theoretical framework for the research. As the primary objective of this study is not only a textual analysis, but also an exploration of the interactions between language and power, the authors’ background knowledge of social and political contexts plays a crucial role in the interpretation and explanation stage.