A critical discourse analysis of a presidential speech

In terms of transitivity, material processes dominate the speech with a total occurrence of 55,4 % here as the existential process types are used minimally in the speech with a total occ

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

*********************

NGUYỄN THỊ HẠNH

A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

OF A PRESIDENTIAL SPEECH (Phân tích diễn ngôn phê phán một bài phát biểu của Tổng thống)

MASTER MINOR THESIS

Field: English linguistics Code: 8220201.01

Supervisor: Prof Nguyen Hoa

HANOI – 2018

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I, Nguyễn Thị Hạnh, hereby claim the originality of my study Unless

otherwise indicated, this is my own piece of academic accomplishment

Signature

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I wish to express my deep gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Prof Nguyen Hoa, for his friendly and patient guidance; insightful critiques during the research and preparation of this thesis I would like to thank him for his advice and assistance for my paper in terms of linguistic and structural aspects If it had not been for his invaluable supports, I could not have completed

my study properly

Secondly, I am particularly grateful to the Post-Graduate Department, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University and all the lectures for the precious lectures and lessons; the encouragement and assistance which not directly but importantly support my thesis

My great thanks go to my workplace, my managers and my colleagues at Faculty of English, Hanoi National University of Education for their support when I have been doing my degree

Finally, I wish to thank my family whose love, unconditional support and never -ending encouragement have carried me this far

Without constant support of these people, this thesis would not have been possible

ABSTRACT

This study critically investigates the main ideologies conveyed by linguistic features in a speech of Barack Obama It is premised on Halliday‘s Systemic Functional Grammar, and the qualitative research design was used for the content analysis of the text The study shows the results of transitivity and modality In terms of transitivity, material processes dominate the speech with a total occurrence

of 55,4 % here as the existential process types are used minimally in the speech with a total occurrence of 12,5 % This implies that Obama and his government are the main actors in an attempt to create a sense of developmental progression and continuity of the relationship between the two countries, US and Vietnam calls for immediate action and not a mere formality of assurances and wishful thinking Regarding modality, modal verbs, tenses and textuality are taken into consideration The study finds out that positive modals, present tenses are used the most with 78,4% and 58,4% in turn The study concludes that language structures can produce certain meanings and ideologies which are not explicit for readers This is in affirmation to the assumption that language form is not fortuitous, but performs a communicative function

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the study 1

1.2 Rationale for the study 4

1.3 Aims of the study 5

1.4 Research questions 5

1.5 Significance of the study 5

1.6 Outline of the thesis 6

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7

A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 7

2.1 Critical Discourse Analysis 7

2.2 Halliday‘s Systemic Functional Linguistics Theory 8

2.3 Ideology 14

2.4 Transitivity System 9

2.4.1 Material Processes 10

2.4.2 Relational Processes 10

2.4.3 Mental Processes 11

2.4.4 Behavioral Processes 11

2.4.5 Verbal Process 12

2.4.6 Existential Processes 12

2.5 Modality 13

2.6 Framework for CDA 14

2.6.1 Description Stage 15

2.6.2 Interpretation Stage 19

2.6.3 Explanation Stage 19

B PREVIOUS STUDIES 20

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 23

3.1 Context of the speech 23

3.1.1 Obama and the speech 23

3.1.2 The relationship between Vietnam and the US 23

3.2 Data 25

3.3 Research Instrument 25

3.4 Procedure 26

3.5 Mode of Research 27

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 28

4.1 The ideologies of Obama in the speech 28

4.2 Obama‘s identities through this speech 30

4.3 Transitivity analysis 30

4.3.1 Material process 32

4.3.2 Relational Process 35

4.3.3 Mental Processes 36

4.3.4 Behavioral Process 38

4.3.5 Verbal Process 39

4.3.6 Existential Process 40

4.4 Modality Analysis 41

4.4.1 Modal verbs 41

4.4.2 Tenses 45

4.4.3 Personal pronouns 47

4.5 Textuality 50

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 52

5.1 Recapitulation 52

5.2 Limitations of the study 53

5.3 Recommendations for further studies 53

REFERENCES I APPENDICES V

ABBREVIATION TABLE

Pme mental process A actor

Pm material process G goal

Pb behavioral process S sensor

Pv verbal process Sy sayer

Pe relational process Rv receiver

Pr existential process Bh behaver

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: The Emergence of Transitivity Process Types in Obama‘s Speech 31

Table 2: Transitivity Analysis of Obama‘s speech (Material Process) 32

Table 3: Personal Pronouns 39

Table 5: Modality analysis of Obama‘s speech (Modal verbs) 42

Table 6: Tenses of sentences 45

Table 7: Personal Pronouns 47

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the background of the study, rationale, aims, research questions, significances and outline of the study

1.1 Background to the study

Our words, undoubtedly, are never neutral, transparent or innocent They always carry the power and ideologies that reflect the interests of those who speak

or write them (Taiwo, 2007) As language users, we have several words at our disposal to choose from when producing a text; the choice of certain words over others may reflect conscious and unconscious ideologies held by those who produce them At the same time they may shape the meanings of a text towards certain preferred ideologies Therefore, as observed by Van Dijk (2006), the analysis of language is a critical component in discovering and understanding particular ideologies He uses the term ideology to refer to attitudes, set of beliefs, values and doctrines with reference to religious, political, social and economic life, which shape the individual's and group's perception and through which reality is constructed and interpreted

Language can be also defined as a tool utilized for the communication of meaning However, there is much more than simple lexical or grammatical meaning encoded in text People use language to achieve goals and express ideas Through language, individuals establish and maintain social identity and relationships According to Thompson (2004):

“We use language to talk about our experience of the world, including the worlds in our own minds, to describe events and states and the entities involved in them We also use language to interact with other people, to establish and maintain relations with them, to influence their behaviour, to express our own viewpoint on things in the world, and to elicit or change theirs.” (p.30)

Analyzing texts can provide insight into an individual‘s communicative objectives and beliefs about the world of the speaker that in this paper is Former US President Barack Obama

In 2016, Obama paid a visit to Vietnam as the promise between him and Former President of Vietnam Truong Tan Sang This visit was really paid much attention of the whole country Vietnam, and I was not an exception This event somehow made the author of this paper so curious about this trip and made a good selection of questions about his style, his choice of cuisines, places, and his ideologies towards Vietnam

Many scholars have analysed political speeches with reference to countries presidents (Horváth: 2009; Duran: 2008) They have realized that Presidents stand for their countries They have also come to be viewed as common fathers of their citizens, burdened with the care of their children (Hinckley, 1990) They have become people‘s representatives; hence, they should speak for their people The voice of the President is taken as the voice of the people The political ideologies embodied in presidential speeches and addresses, therefore, reflect the political ideologies and realities of their nations

Obama who was a first-term senator from Illinois, became the first American president of the United States He was born in August 1961, in Hawaii and has lived in many places, including Indonesia He attended Columbia University in New York and earned a law degree at Harvard University in Massachusetts After that, he worked as a lawyer and later for the University of Chicago When Obama served in the Senate since 2004, he introduced bipartisan legislation which allows Americans to do distance learning online how their taxes dollars are spent Also, he served on the Veterans Affairs Committee, which helped oversee the care of soldiers back from Iraq and Afghanistan Therefore, his approval rate on the Internet was high In 2008, he defeated McCain, the Republican Party presidential candidate and won the all three debates on television held in Oxford, Nashville and Hempstead Finally, he won the final success and became the 44thAmerican president and the first African-American president in American history

African-According to the statistics of The Telegraph since his first overseas visit to

Canada in February 2009, Mr Obama has taken 156 trips to nearly 60 countries in Air Force One during his presidency (Henderson, 2017) Those trips were his

―extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples‖ and in 2009 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by the Norwegian Nobel Committee (Amr & Barnes, 2009)

In 2016, Obama was the third American president to visit Vietnam since the end

of the war in 1975 to fulfill a promise he made to Vietnam‘s President Truong Tan Sang in 2013 to do his ―level best‖ to visit Vietnam before his term in office expired

[U.S President B Obama is given flowers by Linh Tran as he arrives at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi, Vietnam Image downloaded from

obama-20160525160347463.htm in May 2016.]

https://dantri.com.vn/chinh-tri/toan-canh-chuyen-tham-viet-nam-cua-tong-thong-His three-day trip had been seen as an attempt to bolster Vietnam‘s capacity

to deal with China‘s claims in the South China Sea and this first visit to the country sharing a complicated political and military history with the United States The trip

is also designed to highlight the President‘s continued pivot to Asia, specifically economic, trade and security cooperation and cement the President‘s legacy as his second term winds down

According to Vietnamese sources in Hanoi, prior to Obama‘s visit, U.S officials proposed to their hosts the possibility of raising their comprehensive partnership to a strategic partnership Obama‘s visit to Vietnam indicates that both sides have expanded their dialogue from a narrow focus on political and civil rights

to a broader view that incorporates labor rights, human security, and legal reforms

to bring Vietnam‘s domestic legislation into line with provisions in its state constitution and international obligations

The present work draws upon the discourse theory of systemic functional linguistics to analyze the political speech of the President Obama Indeed, political speech is a special speech delivered by a politician on a particular occasion It aims

at convincing the audience regarding a political or social situation which is prevailing at a given period

1.2 Rationale for the study

One of the important features of DA is to study authentic text and conversations in the social context The early DA has been concerned with the internal structure of texts Halliday's systematic functional linguistics is a new evolution against internal structure of texts According to Halliday (1978), texts should encode both personal and social processes In other words, texts should be generated, comprehended and put into a social context Discourse analysis is based

on micro and macro levels Therefore, both linguistic and social analyses are important Discourses are interpreted as communicative events because discourses between people convey messages beyond that of what is said at directly.What is important in such discourse is the social information which is transferred allusively Beside, as a matter of fact, many researchers have critically analyzed different speeches of politicians across the world but nobody has conducted research on the speeches of Barack Obama made in Vietnam National Convention Centre using critical discourse analysis (CDA) and systemic functional linguistics as a tool so far

In this thesis, the author uses the SFG to analyse the speech of Obama in made when he visited Vietnam As the Head of the most powerful nation, Barack Obama may exert his nation‘s super power on the discussion at the conference It is,

therefore, significant to study how the ideaologies of Obama were approached through the use of language, regarding transitivity and modality system in particular This visit and speech played an essential and strategic role in maintaining and developing the relations between the two nations Thus, Obama‘s speech is a good source for the analysis of language employed by the President to convey his nation‘s message to the audience as well as to the world at large

1.3 Aims of the study

We try to explore and reveals the way the language serves as a vehicle to exercise the notions of ideology and power This study is conducted with the four aims Firstly, it plays a role in providing more evidence to affirm the relationship between the language, culture and the society Secondly, analyzing this study can be a good exercise of systemic functional grammar and proves that it can be a suitable theoretical framework for discovering a discourse Beside that, a discourse not only informs the ideologies but also indicates the identities of the speaker of the speech Finally, this aims to find out the similarities as well as the differences between this study and other previous study, whether they are in line or not in terms of the results

A detailed analysis of this speech enables us to understand their basic purpose of the used language in the speech Additionally, we can have a good understanding of the political purpose of the speech in our daily lives

In particular, the purpose of the study is two-fold: to identify the major process types and modality used in the address, and to examine their communicative implications

1.4 Research questions

To achieve the aims stated above, the research was conducted to answer the following research questions:

1 What are the ideologies underlying Obama‘s speech at NCC of Vietnam?

2 How transitivity processes and modality are employed to help him construct those ideologies?

1.5 Significance of the study

The study is important for several reasons Firstly, the findings of this research will contribute a more profound understanding of the ideologies and social

contexts underlying the speech of the president This better understanding might serve as a basis for actions to change and to enhance people‘s knowledge of and attitudes towards the relationship with Vietnam that the US want to establish and maintain Also, it is expected to make a modest contribution to the development of CDA and Functional Grammar in general and those in Vietnam in particular Such contribution can be further useful for the understanding of the significance of CDA and Functional Grammar In particular, this study discusses the ideologes of Obama in the speech about Vietnam and further indicates some identities underlying those, which not many previous have done Last but not least, this study may be a source of reference for further research in the field

1.6 Outline of the thesis

This thesis consists of five chapters: Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Findings and Discussions, and Conclusion

Chapter 1 introduces the background to the study, the rationale, the aims, the research questions and the outline of the thesis

Chapter 2 reviews the related literature, including the theoretical background and the review of previous researches of the same field of SFG, transitivity and modality in particular

Chapter 3 describes the methodology of this paper, consisting of the data, analytical framework and the analytical procedure

Chapter 4 presents and discusses the findings of the research, mainly transitivity and modality and more importantly, about Obama‘s intentions are behind the use of these personal pronouns

Chapter 5 give some information about the significance of this study to the understanding of Obama‘s words and to the CDA in general

Chapter 6 concludes what has been achieved from the present study In addition, in this chapter, several recommendations are made from the result of this study Furthermore, this part presents the limitations of the research as well as

suggestions for further study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

The writer explores two theories which underpin the analysis, those are Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) It is later completed by the explanation of ideology as the main term of this research

In this chapter, the writer also presents some previous studies that support this present study

A THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

2.1 Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical Linguistics or also known as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is one of the approaches to discourse analysis which adopts a macro analytical view of language It means that the analysis of this study not only concerns on the text itself but also involves the relation of the text with the context CDA research specifically considers how language works within institutional and political discourses (e.g in education, organization, media, government), as well as specific discourses (around gender and class), in order to uncover overt or more often covert inequalities in social relationships (Litosseliti, 2010: 126) Paltridge (2006: 179) adds that CDA explores the connection between the use of language and the social and political contexts in which it occurs It explores some issues such as gender, ethnicity, cultural difference, ideology and identity and how these are constructed and reflected in the text It also investigates the ways in which language constructs and

is constructed by social relationships In other words, CDA aims to investigate critically social inequality as it is expressed, signaled, constituted, legitimized and

so on by language use or in discourse (Wodak & Meyer, 2001: 2)

Fairclough and Wodak (1997) in Paltridge (2006: 179) describe some principles for critical discourse analysis which underlie many of the studies done in this area The first principle is that critical discourse analysis addresses social and political issues and examines ways in which these are constructed and reflected in the use of discourse The next principle is that power relations are both negotiated and performed through discourse One way in which this can be looked at is through

an analysis of who controls conversational interaction, who allows a person to speak, and how they do this A further principle of CDA is that discourse not only reflects social relation but is also part of, and reproduces, social relations That is, social relations are both established and maintained through the use of discourse Another key principle of CDA is that ideologies are produced and represented in the use of discourse

Considering those principles, this study is the realization of the last one which deals with ideology In this case, ideology for CDA is seen as an important aspect of establishing and maintaining unequal power relations CDA takes a particular interest in the ways in which language mediates ideology in a variety of social institutions (Wodak&Meyer, 2001: 10) As cited in Paltridge (2006: 186), van Dijk (1998) has argued that it is through discourse that many ideologies are formulated, reinforced, and reproduced Critical discourse analysis aims to provide

a way of exploring this and, in turn, challenging some of the hidden and ―out of sight‖ social, cultural, and political ideologies and values that underlied texts

2.2 Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics Theory

Systematic functional grammar (SFG) is developed by M.A.K Halliday and

it is based on grammatical description It says that language is considered as intertwining options or network of systems for creating meaning Functional language is a tool for interaction based on this idea that language forms are inevitably specified by the functions or uses that they provide (Huzhunglin, 1988: 307) According to Halliday and Hassan (1989: 10), a text, in the general term, is ''language that is functional''; meaning written and verbal language which transmits social meaning in a specific and real situation Indeed, he claims that the texts serve

as the study of meaning and use of phrases and words rather than just the union of words and sentences It takes into account two perspectives simultaneously such as text as product and text as process A text is considered as a product when it embraces the linguistic structures Concurrently, it is a process in terms of semantic component or encoding the meaning These grammatical systems provide a basis

for explaining the meanings of different kinds Halliday's basic idea is that language

is established metafunctionally Therefore, Halliday's functions of language are called metafunctions and they have three kinds of semantic units: ideational functions, the interpersonal function, and the textual function

Moreover, Halliday (1985) observes that these meanings are referable to the context of situation and lexico - grammar Indeed, the context of situation includes three variables known as register variables These are: the field of discourse (what is going on), the tenor of discourse (who are taking part in) and the mode of discourse (role assigned to language) The lexico - grammatical patterns realized by language are transitivity, mood and theme Thus, for Halliday (1985), Halliday and Hasan (1985/1989), the field is expressed through the experiential meanings which are realized through the transitivity patterns As or the mode, it is expressed through the textual meanings; these meanings are realized through the Theme patterns Finally, the tenor is expressed through the interpersonal meanings; these textual meanings are realized through the mood and modality

This paper is mainly concerned with aspects of experiential and interpersonal meanings More specifically, it deals with transitivity and modality patterns

This paper analyses transitivity processes and modality just to find out the ideologies underlying the language used That is because ultimately the author wishes to find out the ideas of the speaker but she cannot just guess but should base

on some evidence Therefore, transitivity and modality are the tool for the ultimate aims of the research

2.3 Transitivity System

The main issue of the transitivity system is that our most powerful conception of reality consists of ―goings-on‖ of doing, happening, feeling, being These goings-on are categorized in the semantic system of the language, and expressed through the grammar of the clause (Halliday, 1994) The clause is, therefore, explored for its potential to represent both the outer and the inner world

of human beings The representation of reality is achieved by means of a set of processes along with their participants and the circumstances in which they unfold

(Filho, 2004) It expresses what‘s happening, what‘s being done, what is felt and in what state it is (Cheng Yumin, 2007) The transitivity system embodies six processes: material, mental, relational, behavioral, verbal, and existential The term

―process‖ is used here in a broad sense to cover all phenomena and anything that is expressed by a verb; this can be an event, whether physical or not, state, or relation

2.3.1 Material Processes

Material processes are processes of doing in the physical world They have two inherent participants involved in them The first is the Actor, which is an obligatory element and expresses the doer of the process (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004) The second is the Goal, which is an optional element and expresses the person or entity whether animate or inanimate affected by the process

According to Eggins (2004), material process are ones of doing or about actions, usually concrete and tangible ones They show that some entity does something; take certain actions which may be done to some other entity; in contrast, processes encoding the meanings of thinking, feeling or perceiving are regarded as mental processes

For example:

She catches bus no.5 everyday

2.3.2 Relational Processes

Relational processes are concerned with the process of being in the world of abstract relations (Thompson, 2004) Normally, an abstract relationship that exists between two participants associated with the process is considered, but unlike the case of material process, a participant does not affect the other participant in a physical sense

Relational processes can be classified into two types: Attributive and Identifying (Thompson, 2004) Attributive relational process expresses what attributes a certain object has This type of relational process basically suggests the relationship of ‗x carries the attribute y,‘ where an attributive adjective is assigned

to a participant, the carrier

For example:

This singer is eminent

For example:

The relationship between the attribute and the carrier is commonly expressed

by the verb be The identifying relational process expresses the identical properties

of two entities This process contains two independent participants: a token that is a holder or an occupant that stands to be defined, and a Value that defines the token

by giving it meaning, referent, function, status, or role (Halliday, 1994)

2.3.3 Mental Processes

For example:

Mental processes encode the meanings of feeling or thinking They are internalized processes, in contrast to the externalized processes of doing and speaking Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) observe that, unlike material processes, mental processes always involve at least one human participant who has the mind in which the process occurs The participant involved in the mental process is known as Sensor The Phenomenon is the entity which is felt, thought, or perceived by the sensor

2.3.4 Behavioral Processes

Behavioral processes are processes of physiological and psychological behavior They are the least salient of six process types, and the boundaries of behavioral processes are indefinite, they are partly material and partly mental

(Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004)

For example:

People are smiling on the streets

Behavioral processes represent outer manifestations of inner workings, the acting out of processes of consciousness and physiological states The participant

who is behaving is called Behaver

2.3.5 Verbal Process

A verbal process is the process of saying, and it exists on the borderline between mental and relational processes Just like saying and meaning, the verbal process expresses the relationship between ideas constructed in human consciousness and the ideas enacted in the form of language (Thompson, 2004) For example:

People asked the president many questions

The participant who is speaking is called Sayer, the addressee to whom the process is directed is Target, and what is said is Verbiage

2.3.6 Existential Processes

They represent processes of existing and happening Existential sentences typically have the verb be, and the word there is necessary as a Subject although it has no representational function (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004)

For example:

There are common rules for all countries

The object or event that is being said to exist is called Existent An Existent

can be any kind of phenomenon, such as a thing, person, object, institution or abstraction, action, or event

2.4 Modality

Modality refers to a speaker‘s attitudes towards or opinion about the truth of a proposition expressed by a sentence It is ―the area of meaning that lies between yes and no - the intermediate ground between positive and negative polarity‖ (Halliday, 1985: 335) Simpson (2004: 123) contends that modality is that part of language which allows us to attach expressions of belief, attitude and obligation to what we say and write It is the grammar of explicit comment, and it includes signals of the varying degrees of certainty we have about the propositions we express, and of the sorts of commitment or obligation that we attach to our utterances This point of view

is shared by Fowler (1986), who says ―that modality is the grammar of explicit comment, the means by which people express their degree of commitment to the truth

of the propositions they utter, and their views on the desiderability or otherwise of the state of affairs referred to‖ (p 131) As observed by Eggins (1994, it expresses two kinds of meanings which are: probability, where the speaker expresses judgments regarding the likelihood or probability of something happening or being, and usuality, where the speaker expresses judgments as to the frequency with which something

happens or is It is expressed through the choice of a finite modal operator like can, could, may, might, or mood adjunct of probability or certainty like possibly, I think, I‟m sure, and finally through both modal Finite and a mood Adjunct Modulation is

the expression of obligation, necessity and inclination It is used with finite verbal

operators like should, must, need, shall, ought to, have to, etc It is important to note

that the use of modality has a significant impact on the tenor dimensions of a discourse Through it, one can draw the power, contact and affective involvement of the interactants of the discourse This study concentrates on researching modal verbs because their much appearance is enough for the analysis of modality of the study

The extensive bulk of literature on modality shows a clear tendency among linguists to accept that semantic areas such as possibility, necessity and prediction (knowledge or epistemic ―modality‖), on the one hand, and ―permission‖,

―obligation‖ and ―volition‖ (―deontic‖ or ―root‖ modality), on the other hand constitute the domains of modality

Besides, tenses and personal pronouns are aspects included in modality Tenses refer to ―the time of the action or state expressed by the verb‖ and pronouns are ―a word that is used instead of a noun or noun phrase‖ (Oxford Dictionary, 2016) All the three aspects of modality (modals, tenses and personal pronouns) are all included and used for analysis of this study

2.5 Ideology

Etymologically, the term ideology is derived from the word ―idea‖ which means ―thought‖ or ―belief‖ then the word ―logos‖ later becomes ―logy‖ which means way or knowledge According to van Dijk (2006: 116), ideology is defined

as socially shared representations of groups, it is the foundation of group attitudes and other beliefs Sargent also asserts that an ideology is a value or belief system that is accepted as fact or truth by some group It is called as a ―system‖ because ideology refers to a belief that is organized He adds that ideology is composed of sets of attitudes toward the various institutions and process of society It provides the believer with a picture of the world both as it is and as it should be, and, in so doing (Sargent, 1981: 3) Here, the ideology which is shared by a group of people can emotionally affect people‘s attitude, it influences an individual or other groups

of people to choose, act or do something However, in this study, the word

―ideology‖ is considered as the ideas of the speaker and that sounds more reasonable And that is also the reasons why it is used in the plural form

2.6 Framework for CDA

According to Fairclough (1989: 26) in seeing language as discourse and social practice, one is committing oneself not just to analyzing texts, nor just to analyzing processes of production and interpretation, but to analyzing the relationship between texts, processes, and their social conditions This notion produces what we call as the dimensions of discourse, contained of texts, interactions, and contexts Corresponding to these dimensions of discourse, Fairlough relates them to the three stages analysis of Critical Discourse Analysis,

namely: description, interpretation, and explanation The relation of three dimensions of discourse with the stages analysis of CDA can be seen clearly through the diagram

The three-stage framework of Fairclough, Fairclough (2015)

The three stages are the procedures for doing critical discourse analysis It implies that in conducting the analysis, it should pass or change from one stage to another stage Related to this case, Rasman (2014: 17-18) stated that one thing that should be kept in mind is that these three stages are important so that it is necessary

to carry out description, interpretation, and explanation when we would like to conduct a research of discourse using critical discourse analysis method Particularly, the analysis at the description stage will be different from analysis at the interpretation and explanation stages For further understanding, the writer gives the explanation about the framework of three stages below:

Vocabulary, Grammar and Text structures Each of these formal features has values that a text may have Fairclough (1989:112) notes that the values include experiential, relational, and expressive value A formal feature with experiential value deals with the way in which the text producer‘s experience of natural and social world is represented Relational value deals with social relationships which are enacted via the text in the discourse Then, expressive value deals with the producer‘s evaluation of the bit of the reality it relates to Here, any formal feature

of the text may simultaneously have two or three of these values related to the formal features and its values, there are several important points that can be used as

a framework to do analysis of the text The points are organized around ten following questions (Fairclough, 1989):

1) What experiential values do words have?

The aspect of experiential values of this question regards how ideological differences between texts in their representations of the world are coded in their vocabularies In this part, there are some sub-questions that can be asked as realizing this point, such as what classification schemes are drawn upon, whether there are words which are ideologically contested, whether there are rewording or over-wording and what ideologically significant meaning words (synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy) between words

2) What relational values do words have?

This question includes in vocabulary aspect which has relational value It focuses on how a text's choice of wordings depends on, and helps create, social relationships between participants The sub-questions of this point are whether there are euphemistic expressions and whether here are markedly formal or informal words

3) What expressive values do words have?

This part reflects vocabulary aspect focusing on expressive value The expressive value of words has always been a central concern for those interested in persuasive language In such case, expressive value is referred to ideologically contrastive classification schemes

4) What metaphors are used?

Metaphor is a means of representing one aspect of experience in terms of another, and is by no means restricted to the sort of discourse, it tends to be stereotypically associated with poetry and literary discourse The metaphorical representation of this aspect specifies different ideological attachments in a text

5) What experiential values do grammatical features have?

The experiential aspects of grammar have to do with the ways in which the grammatical forms of a language code happenings or relationships in the world, the people or animals or things involved in those happenings or relationships, and their spatial and temporal circumstances, manner of occurrence, and so on Then, this question is broken down into sub-questions like what types of process and participant predominate, whether agency is unclear, whether the processes are like what they seem, whether nominalizations are used, whether sentences are passive or active, and whether sentences are positive or negative

6) What relational values do grammatical features have?

This question is a variety of grammatical features of texts which have relational values In this point, Fairclough focuses upon three topics: modes of sentence, modality, and pronouns Its sub-questions can be what modes (declarative, grammatical question, imperative) are used, whether there are important features of relational modality, and whether the pronouns we and you are used, and if so, how those are used

7) What expressive values do grammatical features have?

In this point, expressive value of grammatical aspect is carried out Here, Fairclough limits expressive values to expressive modality It is answered by regarding one sub-question that is whether there are important features of expressive modality or not

8) How are (simple) sentences linked together?

Fairclough focuses here on the connective values of formal features of text The values of this grammar feature have a role in connecting together parts of texts

It is also to do with the relationship between texts and contexts Relating to this, the question can be followed by sub-questions such as what logical connectors are used, whether complex sentences characterized by coordination or subordination, and also what means are used for referring inside and outside the text

9) What interactional conventions are used?

This question represents textual structure of formal feature Formal features

at the textual level relate to formal organizational properties of whole texts This includes organizational feature of dialogue such as conversations, lessons, and interviews It is also broadly concerned with higher-level organizational features which have relational value To reveal this point, the sub-question that can be asked

is whether there are ways in which one participant controls the turns of others

10) What larger-scale structures does the text have?

This last question is concerned with textual structure of formal features which have experiential value As opposed to Question 9, it includes both organizational features of dialogue (e.g conversations, lessons, interviews) and of monologue (e.g speeches, news, paper articles)

The questions above provide procedure that can be asked of a text to carry out description stage, those are also considered as guidance However it should be stressed that they are not standard method, they are framework that Fairclough proposed for beginners Faiclough (1989:110) explains that the set of formal features found in a specific text can be regarded as particular choices from among the option (e.g of vocabulary or grammar) available in the discourse types which the text draws upon Thus, the writer specifically conducts this study based on the fifth question, which is experiential value of grammatical point which focuses on the types of process and participant The research uses transitivity system in the analysis to examine linguistics feature of the text because through transitivity analysis, such proses and participant will be identified as reflecting experiential values of the text

2.6.2 Interpretation Stage

Interpretation stage is concerned with the relationship between text and interaction with seeing the text as the product of a process of production, and as a resource in the process of interpretation Thus, interpretation is considered as the cognitive processes of participants (Fairclough, 1989:26-27) In this stage, we are introduced with the influencing term that is members‟ resources (MR) MR are defined as interpretative procedures or often called as background knowledge Members‘s resources have a role for helping to generate interpretations Here, interpretations are generated through a combination of what is in the text and what

is in the interpreter, in the sense of the members‘s resources (MR) which the latter brings to interpretation Fairclough then explains that from the point of view of the interpreter of a text, formal features of the text are 'cues' which activate elements of interpreters' MR, and that interpretations are generated through the dialectical

interplay of cues and MR (Fairclough, 1989: 141)

2.6.3 Explanation Stage

Explanation stage is concerned with the relationship between interaction and social context with the social determination of the processes of production and interpretation, and their social effects In another word, it is the relationship between transitory social events (interactions) and more durable social structures which shape and are shaped by these events (Fairclough, 1989: 26-27) Fairclough (1989: 162-163) states that the objective of explanation stage is to portray a discourse as part of a social process, as a social practice, showing how it is determined by social structures, and what reproductive effects discourses can cumulatively have on those structures, sustaining them or changing them The transition from interpretation stage to explanation stage can be noticed by considering the term reproduction Reproduction connects the stage of interpretation and explanation because whereas the early is concerned with how MR are drawn upon in processing discourse, the latter is concerned with the social constitution and changing of MR, including of course their reproduction in discourse practice

To sum up all theoretical framework that have been explained above, the writer presents the diagram to give an illustration how those theories work

B PREVIOUS STUDIES

To support the analysis, the writer presents four previous studies related to the two fields of studies that are used in this research These previous studies also show how the present study differs from the previous researches so that it produces the new findings Many of the linguists have conducted studies related to political speech which ―is a kind of public speech given by authorities with political purposes that tries to influence a certain group of people‖ (Feng & Liu, 2010: 1) As

a result, political speech is an aspect of political discourse, i.e., a discourse which is itself political, concerned with formal/informal political contexts and political actors and with politicians, political institutions, governments, political media, and political supporters operating in political environments to achieve political goals.A

study was from journal article written by Bustam (2011) under the tittle Analyzing Clauses by Halliday‟s Transitivity System His paper aimed to acquire a clear

description of the transitivity system that functions as one of the clauses analysis methods in an ideational function of language Some books from M.A.K Halliday,

especially An Introduction to Functional Grammar, are used to explore transitivity

system as the part of Systemic Functional Grammar Theory By using his own examples, the writer proved that the theory is capable to help the clause analysis He used three components of transitivity process: the process itself, participants in the process, and circumstances which is associated with the process The process itself contained six types: material, mental, relational, behavioral, verbal, and existential

As the result, Bustam showed in detail how Halliday‘s transitivity system could be used to analyze the clauses effectively

Ade Rahmadania (2011) had conducted the research on transitivity process used in political stance by the title An Analysis of Transitivity Processes of Inauguration Speeches of Two Prime Ministers of Australia John Howard and Julia Gillard The result of the study showed that Relational process (42,6%) was the

most dominant process found in the Inaugural speeches of two Prime Ministers, it was followed by Material process (35,7%), Mental process (13,6%), Verbal process (9,6%), Behavioral process (2,9%), and Existential process (1,7%) Then, the writer asserted that the relational process became the most dominant due to the relationship of carrier and attributive participants that was found through some verbs in the Inauguration Speeches Here, the researcher had done her research very well because she did not only give a clear understanding about the kinds of transitivity process but also its reason why certain process appeared more often than the others

The third, journal article by Sharififar & Rahimi (2015) presented the research of Critical Discourse Analysis of Political Speeches: A Case Study of Obama's and Rouhani's Speeches at UN The aim of this paper was to survey the art

of linguistic spin in Obama's and Rouhani's political speeches at UN in September

2013 by using Halliday's systematic functional linguistics theory completely From the analysis, the writer made some inferences that Obama applied a colloquial language consisting of simple words and short sentences while Rouhani used more difficult words and his language was rather hard and formal Regarding transitivity analysis, both addressers‘s speeches had included the material processes as a process of 'doing' and 'happening' more than other processes Then, from modality,

it could be understood that presidents used modal verbs to show their firms plan to fulfill the tasks and make their language easy as much as possible as well as shortening the distance between the president and the audience Another role of modal verbs, especially the frequent use of 'will' and 'can' in presidents‘s inaugural speeches, can persuade the audience to have faith in the government's ability about the difficulties that their country may confront in the future

As focusing on transitivity aspect, a study came from Oktifati & Damanhuri (2014) in their journal article by the title Transitivity and Ideology: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Obama‘s Second Inaugural Speech This research was set to analyze how the 44th United States president Barrack H Obama manipulated

language in his second inaugural address to enhance his political ideologies by using Halliday‘s transitivity system that has already adopted by Fairclough in his critical discourse analysis framework By applying descriptive - qualitative method, the writer examined linguistic features of the speech, the researcher used four types

of transitivity process adopted by Fairclough consisted material, mental, relational, and event In the result of the study, it was concluded that Material processes dominated Obama‘s speech, followed by mental process and relational process comes in the last Then, from the transitivity processes found in the data, the writer drew some themes; equality, nationalism and patriotism, democracy and national unity The themes found indicated as Obama‘s political ideologies that he tried to instill and synchronize them to the people Obama was succeeding to deliver his speech as well as instill his ideologies proven by the enthusiasm of his people in giving applauses

By presenting the research of Transitivity process and Ideological construction of Barack Obama‘s speeches in this present study, it would create good findings about Obama‘s ideologies of Vietnam It is because the writer does not only investigate transitivity system as a part of Systemic Functional Linguistics theory, but also relates the result of transitivity analysis to another discipline, Critical Discourse Analysis These two attractive collaborations are viewed as an appropriate combination since both of them are closely related each other in case the two studies consider language as a means of social practice Furthermore, this research is also intended to develop the analysis from Oktifati & Damanhuri (2014) that is by applying transitivity analysis from Halliday in which it provides six types

of transitivity process This way is used to produce better result because the six types of transitivity process applied would explore more the linguistics feature to prove the ideology of the speeches

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

The vital procedures for conducting this research are clearly explained in this chapter It is classified into several items, namely data collection, research instruments, procedure and mode of the research

This paper tries its best to analyze selected materials to explore workings of power in Barack Obama‘s speech The most significant aspect of this study is the way Obama makes use of linguistic resources to create positive power The approach which is adopted in this research is multilevel critical discourse analysis which is mostly under the impact of Norman Fairclough‘s and M.A.K Halliday‘s perspectives

3.1 Context of the speech

3.1.1 Obama and the speech

President Obama began his week-long trip to Asia in Vietnam‘s capital, Hanoi, where he spent three days before visiting Japan, as he aimed to cement a renewed cooperation with two of the U.S.‘s biggest former wartime adversaries and counteract China‘s growing assertiveness in the region His visit was much more about the protocol of reciprocating the earlier visit of Vietnam‘s head of state It is evident that Obama has set about clearing the deck of legacies of the past in America‘s relations with Cuba, Iran, Myanmar, and Vietnam in his final months in office In Vietnam‘s case, Obama completely lifted the U.S ban on the sale of lethal weapons that he said had been in place for five decades His speech expressed his concerns about some main issues which are complicated history of the arms embargo, arms sales and human rights, the China factor, human rights, civil society and strategic partnership with Vietnam (Thayer, 2016)

3.1.2 The relationship between Vietnam and the US

Vietnam-US relations have progressed steadily since bilateral normalization

in 1995 On the political front, high-level visits between the two countries have become more frequent Before President Obama, Presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush had also visited the country, in 2000 and 2006 respectively Vietnamese leaders have also made calls on Washington on a frequent basis In

June 2005, Mr Phan Van Khai became the first Prime Minister of Vietnam to pay

an official visit to the US since the end of the Vietnam War Other official visits by Vietnam‘s top leaders include those by President Nguyen Minh Triet in 2007 and Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in 2008 The progress in bilateral relations culminated in the establishment of a ―comprehensive partnership‖ between the two countries in July 2013 during a visit by President Truong Tan Sang to the US However, the most significant visit by a Vietnamese leader to Washington so far has been that by Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong in July 2015

Mr Trong was the first communist party leader to ever set foot to the US, and his visit signified a new high in bilateral relations and an unprecedented show

of mutual trust between the two former enemies The two countries have also made

a lot of progress in terms of economic relations They signed a Bilateral Trade Agreement in July 2000, which has helped bilateral trade to grow exponentially The US has since become Vietnam‘s largest export market In 2015, for example, Vietnam‘s exports to the US amounted to $33.48 billion, accounting for more than

20 per cent of its total exports Meanwhile, US exports to Vietnam also increased 23.8 per cent in the same year to reach $7.8 billion (General Department of Customs, 2016) In terms of investments, the US is now Vietnam‘s eighth largest foreign investor with the accumulative stock of registered capital reaching $11.3 billion by the end of 2015 (Foreign Investment Agency, 2015) Bilateral trade and investment may be promoted even further if the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), of which both the US and Vietnam are members, comes into force

Although bilateral security and defense cooperation was strengthened only recently, it has attracted a lot of international attention and promises to be an area where deeper ties between the two can be fostered The two sides concluded a Memorandum of Understanding on defense relations in 2011, later supplemented by

a ―Joint Vision Statement‖ announced in June 2015 The statement called for, among other things, an expansion of defense trade between the two countries,

―potentially including cooperation in the production of new technologies and equipment, where possible under current law and policy restrictions‖ (Mehta, 2015)

In addition, Vietnam-US relations have also been gaining breadth and depth through cooperation in areas such as education, science and technology, health, people-to-people exchanges, human rights, humanitarian, and war legacy issues Be that as it may, the most notable trend in bilateral relations in recent years is perhaps the growing level of political trust between the two former enemies thanks to their joint efforts, especially the US commitment to respect the CPV‘s domestic political interests The strengthened mutual trust is a valuable asset for bilateral ties, because,

as both sides acknowledged, ―trust plays a crucial role in enabling sustainable, healthy, and long-term friendship and cooperation‖ between the two countries (The White House, 2016)

3.2 Data

In this research, the material utilized is only a speech of a president That is the speech of US Former President Barack Obama This speech was on Vietnam-US relations reviewing milestones and substantial progress between the two countries over recent years The scripts of the speech were taken from CNN website by URL address www.cnn.com on October 9th, 2017 This website was an official American news website that contained some information about world news, business, technology, health, sports, and many others It was chosen because it was the trusted website which provided the speech video completed by its script

Additionally, the data analysis for the present study were in the form of sentences taken from the textual script of Obama‘s speeches The writer used the entire speech as the data since they were needed to cover the three research questions

of this study Referring to the first question, the entire address were used to find the total number of transitivity process types occurred in the speeches Then, for the second case which examined ideological construction, the analysis needed the involvement of the entire clauses to understand the content of the speech so that the implied ideology could be caught

3.3 Research Instrument

The key tool of this study is the researcher herself who has role to collect and analyze the data As Ary (2010: 424) stated, in qualitative studies, the human investigator was the primary instrument for the gathering and analyzing of data Because qualitative research studied human experiences and situations, researchers needed an instrument which is flexible enough to capture the complexity of the human experience, an instrument capable of adapting and responding to the environment Moreover, there are also some supporting instruments that help the writer to conduct the research such as books, computer and some office softwares Those tools are used for searching and gathering the information, and also doing the analysis of the research

3.4 Procedure

First and foremost, the data of the study is identified in its original text The researcher identified the collected data into the types of transitivity process based on Halliday‘s theory According to Halliday (1985), there are six types of transitivity process They are material, mental, relational, behavioral, verbal, and existential Then some other elements are investigated namely modality (including modal verbs, tenses and personal pronouns) and textuality

Second, from the total number of each type of transitivity process, the researcher additionally creates the result in the form of percentage The percentage is showed by using chart so that the different total of each type of transitivity process could be clearly seen Here the writer presents the formula that is applied to produce the percentage form

Third, sentences are identified according to Hallidayian Systemic Functional Grammar in which the most attention is paid to specific lexis or clauses which operate as indexes enabling the researcher to identify power and consequently interpret them In this research, researcher will additionally tries to analyze the chosen speech critically in terms of some categories of discourse analysis which are introduced by Norman Fairclough because Hallidayian Systemic Functional Grammar does not consider pragmatic features So, having analyzed speech on the

base of Systemic Functional Grammar, noticing six types of processes (material, mental, relational, verbal, behavioral and existential), and modality (modals, tenses and pronouns), Fairclough‘s critical model of discourse analysis is captured to study persuasion, hesitation, threat, religious statement and illusively speaking

Finally, the last step in data analysis is the conclusion Here the researcher makes the conclusion by giving a brief explanation from the result of analysis

3.5 Mode of Research

The mode of research for this research work is descriptive- qualitative dominantly and as well as quantitative because much of the statistical analysis will be there in analysis of speech In this study, descriptive-qualitative method was considered as the most appropriate research design to be adopted Ary (2010: 474) noted that descriptive qualitative inquiry dealt with data that were in the form of words or pictures rather than numbers and statistics, in this case the data itself were the text of speech As detailed, the researcher used descriptive method because it was the best way to investigate what types

of transitivity process found in the speeches and how transitivity process reflected the ideology of the speeches as the research questions of this present study That is why, this method was suitable for this research since the analysis involved accumulating, organizing, explaining, and describing the data And the aim of this qualitative research was to discover the underlying motives of human behavior by analyzing linguistics element which resulted either in non-quantitative form or in the form which were not subjected to rigorous quantitative analysis

Critical analysis of the Obama‘s political speech and functional approach of the language especially in context of transitivity and modality has been the point of research work in the present study To ensure the triangulation of the research

techniques, models and theories are used for analysis of text

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter deals with the data analysis of the study The data analysis is presented in the descriptive level and the interpretation and explanation level These entangle in a whole discourse The former will figure out the ideologies of Obama and his identities through those his use of language and his ideas towards Vietnam The latter attempts to explain their occurrences based on the contextual background

of the data with the analysis of transitivity and modality

For the purpose of tracing the example in the speech, the line of the sentence(s) in the speech is indicated on the left-hand side of the cited sentence or paragraph The fuller context can be found in the appendix

4.1 The ideologies of Obama in the speech

The official visit of Obama to Vietnam was an important event, a turning

point of the diplomatic relationship between Vietnam and the US According to

(Truc, 2016), in his speech made at NCC, Obama expresses to the Vietnamese and

to the world his ideas about this relation with some main points as follows

The first, he continuously asserts the independence of Vietnam in the speech Usually, when a leader of a country making a speech in other country, he talks about his country‘s independence However, in this speech, Obama continuously

asserts the independence of Vietnam and he says that “an independent,

sovereign nation, and no other nation can impose its will on you or decide your destiny” This message means so much in the increasing situation of

colonial domination policy

The second, the history of fighting against the invaders and ―unbroken spirit‖

of partiotism is the origin of the power of the Vietnamese This is clearly shown by his referring to the images of Hai Ba Trung, Ly Thuong Kiet with the first independence speech Especially, unlike many other leaders, he does not avoid talking about the past between the two nations In contrast, this sensitive aspect is mentioned to be the motivator for the countries‘s cooperation enhancement

(P4) But like bamboo, the unbroken (Pm) spirit of the Vietnamese people

(G) was captured (Pm) by Ly Thuong Kiet “the Southern emperor rules the

Southern land Our destiny is written in Heaven‟s Book.”

The third, the long cultural tradition and human resource will really power the country Much of the features in the culture of Vietnam are respectedly mentioned in the speech from the water-rice in Red river delta, silk or the Temple of Literature – the first university of Vietnam

(P4) The world (G) came to(Pm) treasure Vietnamese silks and paintings,

and a great Temple of Literature stands (Pr) as a testament to your pursuit of

knowledge

The fourth, he encourages the listening and discussion, not impose their values on other countries Human rights are considered to be a sensitive issue and the barrier to the relation of Vietnam and America He friendly talks to this issue by the assertion that ―no nation is perfect‖ Even America after two decades of constructing the country has been facing that problem This is also expressed through his use of language with many modal verbs, not all absolute sentences

(P14) Think (Pb) of Senator John McCain, who (A) was held (Pme) for

years here as a prisoner of war, meeting (Pme) General Giap, who (Sy) said(Pv) our countries should not be (Pe) enemies but friends

However, he does not impose that idea on Vietnam, and his country believes that the values mentioned is worldwide known, shown in the charter of the United Nations and in the charter of Vietnam as well

Finally, Obama is intentionally showing his support for Vietnam, so we need

to take that oppotunity At the end of the speech, Obama cited the poetry of great artist Nguyen Du:

“Please take from me this token of trust, so we can embark upon our

100-year journey together.”

This citation not only proves the understanding of this president of Vietnam but more importantly it once again asserts the respect of the relation and desire for the cooperation of these countries

4.2 Obama’s identities through this speech

Through the way Obama uses linguistics units, we can somehow understand who he is – the ―being‖ of discourse, or at least what he want us to see him as Some of his identities are revealed as following

Firstly, by the way of using so many I, we, America and the United States,

he enables us to realize that Obama and his government are action leaders who are for the independence and the economic growth of Vietnam

Secondly, the dominant use of material process gives out the impression that

he portrays himself as an active participant He identifies himself as the main actor charged with the responsibility of adding to the legacy of the past government Besides, he employs much of material process to recount the contributions made by distinguished personalities in the country with special references to his government and other non-political figures and to assures the commitment of his government to the issued initiated

Thirdly, he chooses identifications with positive values to create good impression to the Vietnamese and solidifies his image as an expert and strengthen his political morale in the relational state of Vietnam and his country

Last but not least, the much use of modal verbs shows that Obama is so cautious about giving out any statement or commitment If he had not used modal verbs, his words would have become so absolute By this way, he himself makes his words more reliable to the audiences

To convey such ideas successfully, Obama must have been careful with the choice of language, which is investigated and revealed in the following parts

of this chapter

4.3 Transitivity analysis

Transitivity refers to the way meaning is represented in a clause The choice made in the system of transitivity indicates the way the writer sees the world around her This is a system for explaining the whole clause instead of describing the verb and its object (Thompson, 1996:78) According to Halliday, a clause consists of

three components: process, participant and circumstances Halliday divides these processes into 6 types: material process, mental process, relational process, behavioral process, verbal process, and existential process

Table 1: The Emergence of Transitivity Process Types in Obama’s Speech

As the above table, various processes are used in this speech Indeed, out of a

576 of processes, there are 319 material processes, representing 55,4% and 86 relational processes, which stands for 14,5% This statistics show that both material and relational processes are the most frequently used in the text; material processes rank first and relational processes rank second The predominance of these two processes means that the text is basically concerned with concrete and tangible actions, on the one hand, and also with mental reactions relating to thoughts, feelings and perceptions, on the other Relational process also occurs quite often with 72 times, making for 12,5% The other processes are used much less, with 47,

34 and 18 times (less than 10%) of behavioral, verbal and existential

The above statistics and its analysis give a broad picture of transitivity

patterns in the speech As a matter of fact, in order to answer the question: “who does what to whom, under what circumstances?”, we have attempted to carry out a

qualitative analysis of transitivity in the text This consists of focusing on the