Verbal process and its realization in the u s president barrack obamas victory speeches

What I would like to do is to limit myself to a sub-area of functional grammar, the transitivity system, of which the study focuses on one of the processes in the transitivity system of

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

POST – GRADUATE DEPARTMENT

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60 22 15

Hanoi, July, 2010

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

POST – GRADUATE DEPARTMENT

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Linguistics

Code: 60 22 15

Supervisor : Dr Hà Cẩm Tâm

Hanoi, July, 2010

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Pages Declaration

2 Aims of the study

3 Scopes of the study

4 Method of study

5 Data collection

6 Design of the study

CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

3 The grammar of Experiental meaning: Transitivity

3.1 Process, Participant and Circumstance

4.1 Structure of a Verbal process

4.2 Components of the Verbal process

4.1 The verb “Say”

4.2 The verb “Tell”

4.3 The verb “Ask”

4.4 The verb “Promise”

4.5 The verb “Speak”

4.6 The verb “Call”

4.7 The verb “Respond”

4.8 The verb “Question”

4.9 The verb “Wonder”

4.10 The verb “Agree, Disagree”

4.11 The verb “Offer”

4.12 The verb “Answer”

4.13 The verb “Declare”

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Human‘s language has developed through thousands of years From the very first

time, although in very difficult living conditions, man tried to ―invent‖ his own language to

communicate, to live and survive Besides, man has always wanted to understand more

about the nature of language

In their book, Thomas Bloor and Meriel Bloor (1995) once mentioned that linguists

and grammarians ―have struggled to understand more about how human language is

structured and how communication takes place‖ Grammar, among other branches of

linguistics, therefore, can be seen as the most beautiful tool to satisfy this desire

With the other three grammatical paradigm such as traditional grammar, structural grammar, and transformational generative grammar,

functional grammar has had a significant impact on language teaching over the years

Systemic functional grammar (SFG) or systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is a model of

grammar that was developed by Michael Halliday in the 1960s It is part of a broad social

semiotic approach to language called systemic linguistics The term "systemic" refers to

the view of language as "a network of systems, or interrelated sets of options for making

meaning"; The term "functional" indicates that the approach is concerned with meaning, as

opposed to formal grammar, which focuses on word classes such as nouns and verbs,

typically without reference beyond the individual clause

Systemic functional grammar is concerned primarily with the choices that the

grammar makes available to speakers and writers These choices relate speakers' and

writers' intentions to the concrete forms of a language Traditionally the "choices" are

viewed in terms of either the content or the structure of the language used In SFG,

language is analyzed in three different ways, or strata: phonology, lexico grammar and

semantics SFG presents a view of language in terms of both structure (grammar) and

words (lexis) The term "lexico grammar" describes this combined approach

Trying to incorporate meaning, function, context and grammatical categories,

functional grammar has provided the learners of language with an analytic tool of looking

at the whole text and the grammatical features which are characteristics of that kind of text

Functional grammar has been studied by many functional grammarians like Halliday

(1985, 1994), Bloor (1994), Eggins (1994), Thompson (1996), Morley (1985), etc In Vietnamese, the first functional grammar studies that should be counted as Cao Xuân Hạo‘s (1991) Tiếng Việt: Sơ thảo ng’ pháp chức năng; Hoàng Văn Vân‘s (2002), Ng’ pháp Tiếng Việt – Vị từ hành động These studies are the first attempts to bring the diagram which has not yet been highlighted in Vietnamese schools closer to the Vietnamese learners With the same purpose, I choose functional grammar as the area of study for my M.A thesis

However, because of the limitation of time and resources, I am not able to cover all aspects of functional grammar What I would like to do is to limit myself to a sub-area of functional grammar, the transitivity system, of which the study focuses on one of the processes in the transitivity system of English verbal process My thesis would like to touch upon how verbal process operates and the its applications in spoken text – speeches and how it helps speakers persuade the listeners The study will use Halliday‘s functional grammar as the theoretical framework

2 Aims of the Study

Within the framework of an M.A thesis, the study is aimed at:

 examining some of the most important issues related to verbal process

 analyzing the use of verbal process in some victory speeches of the U.S President

 offering some suggestions for learning and teaching

3 Scopes of the Study

As stated in 2., the study does not cover all aspects of functional grammar but limits itself to a sub-area of functional grammar In particular, the study focuses on examining verbal process in two victory speeches delivered by U.S President Barrack Obama

To narrow the topic down to these two focuses, it is firstly essential to identify the linguistic space in which verbal process in located In this belief, the study examines in depth the functional systemic theory and the primary concepts of systemic theory, such as context, metafunctions, the grammar of experience and its representations in the transitivity system The transitivity system consists of six processes, one of which is, according to functional linguists, verbal process This is the first focus of the study

The second focus of the study is to take a deep look on verbal process in English and explore its usage and efficiency in persuading listeners

4 Method of the Study

This study is primarily concerned with analyzing verbal processes in a particular text In order to fulfill this aim, it uses two main methods: (i) the quantitative, which is concerned with the description of verbal process in English, and (ii) the qualitative, which

is concerned with the realization of the process in victory speeches Special attention will also be paid to those which are not only formally but also semantically similar Through the analysis, the writer hopes to find anything different in the way the U.S President made speeches and how he could win the election to become the very first colored man to hold the power

6 Design of the Study

This study is organized around four chapters:

The first chapter – The Introduction – presents the rationale of the study, the aims

of the study, scopes of the study, methods of the study, data collection and the research

design

Chapter two – Theoretical Background- is concerned with the theoretical

orientations of the study, systemic-functional theory, the notions of language and context, the metafunctions of the language, the grammar of experience: transitivity, and the different process types in the transitivity system

Chapter three – The Study – focuses on the application of this process in a real life

text

Chapter four – The Conclusion – provides the major findings of the thesis and

offers some implications of the study and some suggestions for further study

CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL BACKGROUNDS

This chapter will provide theoretical orientations for the study It attempts to explore the notions of the language and context, the functions of language, the different types of the process, and the different types of circumstances available in a language which are expresses in the system of transitivity

1 Functional Grammar

Functional Grammar (FG) is a general theory of the organization of natural language as ever developed by Simon C Dik, M.A.K Halliday and others In the theory functional notions play essential and fundamental roles at different levels of grammatical organization The theory is based on data and descriptions of many languages, and therefore has a high degree of typological adequacy FG offers a platform for both theoretical linguists interested in representation and formalism and descriptive linguists interested in data and analysis

Halliday developed a theory of the fundamental functions of language, in which he analyzed lexicogrammar into three broad metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal and textual Each of the three metafunctions is about a different aspect of the world, and is concerned with a different mode of meaning of clauses The ideational metafunction is about the natural world in the broadest sense, including our own consciousness, and is

concerned with clauses as representations The interpersonal metafunction is about the

social world, especially the relationship between speaker and hearer, and is concerned with

clauses as exchanges The textual metafunction is about the verbal world, especially the flow of information in a text, and is concerned with clauses as messages

In each metafunction an analysis of a clause gives a different kind of structure composed from a different set of elements In the ideational metafunction, a clause is

analyzed into Process, Participants and Circumstances, with different participant types for

different process types (as in Case Grammar) In the interpersonal metafunction, a clause is

analyzed into Mood and Residue, with the mood element further analyzed into Subject and Finite In the textual metafunction, a clause is analyzed into Theme and Rheme

Systemic functional linguistics is one of several functional theories in the current disciplines of linguistics which conceives of text as social interaction It is thus suited not only for increasing the interpreter‘s understanding of the language of texts to be

interpreted, but also for relating those texts to theirs context Systemic functional linguists view language as systems of meaning potential in human interaction that are realized by various structures The organizing concept is not a structure described by rules, but as communicative behavior, as meaning making in a context of a culture, the behavior matrix within which all social interactions take place The choice to engage in a culturally

recognized social process is made at the level of genre plane Martin (1992: 505) defines

genre as ‗a staged, goal-oriented social process‘

In addition to context of culture ( the general context that gives meaning to culturally recognized activities), a text is produced in the specific context of situation (the instantial situation) Choices made on the level of genre are realized by the configurations

of context-of-situation variables In systemic theory, these variables are used to talk about the aspects of the immediate context that are embedded in a text These variables, or aspects of the context of situation embedded in a text, are referred to in systemic functional

linguistics as the register plane According to Halliday (1978), a register is a functional

variety of language It is characterized by three functional variables field, tenor, and mode, each of which can be specialized as follows:

+ Field of discourse: what is going on in the context, or the kind of activity (as recognized

by the culture) in which language is playing in some parts Eggins (1994: 52) defines field

of discourse as ―what the language is being used to talk about‖ This variable includes not only the specific topic of discourse, but also the degree of technicality or speciality on the one hand and everyday quality on the other

+ Tenor of discourse: negotiation of social relationships among participants in social action, or who is taking part in the exchange, and the interacting roles of those involved in the exchange of which the text is part

+ Mode of discourse: the role played by language in realizing social action, including the channel (written, spoken, written to be read aloud, etc.) and the degree to which language constructs what is going on in the context or merely accompanies it

In systemic function linguistics, these three variables are deemed to be the only aspects of the context of situation of a text that are linguistically relevant It is clear that they are relevant to the cultural context and therefore to the question of genre, insofar as a

genre might be describe in part as the limits a culture places on the field, tenor and mode of

a text that is used to accomplish a particular social goal Systemic theory predicts that these

aspects of context – field, tenor and mode – will be embedded in the text by being realized

in the semantic and grammatical structures of the text

2 Metafunctions

According to Halliday, the three metafunctions are ideational, sometimes, treated

as separate experiential and logical components, interpersonal, and textual These

metafunctions illustrate the polysystemic nature of language; each metafunction can be described independently of the others as a system of choices that relate to certain aspect of context and are realized by certain structures Halliday (1994) sets the following correspondences as the working hypothesis: field-ideational; tenor-interpersonal; and mode-textual The structural (grammatical) realizations of the multiple system are simultaneous; i.e., independent choices made in each of the metafunctions must be realized

in overlapping grammatical structures In other words, a single clause can be analyzed in terms of different structures which reflect the realizations of the various kinds of meaning simultaneously in that clause

Newcomers to functional grammar are sometimes confused by metafunctions because they expect them to operate independently and discretely This is a mistaken expectation As Bloor stated in his book (1995: 9) that in almost any instance of language use, all three metafunctions operate simultaneously in the expression of meaning This is because certain aspects of the grammar realize the ideational function, the other aspects realize the interpersonal function, and yet others realize the textual function

2.1 Ideational Metafunction

The ideational component on the semantic plane consists of experiential meanings and logical meanings Experiential meanings at the grammatical rank of the clause are those functions that reflect or represent processes, participants, and circumstances In Halliday‘s analysis of English (Halliday, 1994: 106-161), experiential meanings are accounted for in clauses by the transitivity system The transitivity system includes choices of process type and the configuration of possible participants, process and circumstances which are associated with a particular process type

Logical meanings are realized by relationship of coordination (or parataxis) and subordination ( or hypotaxis) between clauses and other structural units, often through the use of conjunctions, relative pronouns, ellipsis and so on The way of analyzing the clause

in terms of process, participants and circumstances produces constituency structures whereas logical meanings are associated with interdependency structures

2.2 Interpersonal Metafunction

The second metafunction, the interpersonal component of the semantic level, has to

do with the exchange that takes place between speaker and listener or writer and reader The functions within this component include giving or demanding information, expressing intention, assessing degree of probability, expressing attitude, and so on These functions have more to do with social interaction than with ―content‖ In Halliday‘s analysis of English (1994), the interpersonal component is associated with mood, modality and person These functions are realized in various ways, from the use of vocatives and the use of first and second person form of identification to the use of distinctions between imperative and indicative moods and the use of modals and negatives

Since interpersonal meanings have to do with interaction or exchange between people, they are most conspicuous in conversation or dialogue and least conspicuous in formal written for a general audience Nevertheless, language is a social behavior, and by its very nature text is exchanged Language can be used to exchange information or

―services‖ Information is generally exchanged verbally, whereas services can conclude material objects or actions that are given or demanded in the exchange in addition to verbal responses, and thus a positive response in goods-and-services exchange may be non-verbal

The grammar of interpersonal meanings puts the focus on the clause as a unit of exchange structured as Subject, Predicator, Complement and Adjuncts When these element are used in the exchange of goods and services, the resulting structure is a

proposal

2.3 Textual Metafunction

The textual component consists of the enabling or text-forming functions These include some aspects of the cohesion, information and theme, all of which give texture to a text Since they are enabling functions, textual meanings are not independent of ideational and interpersonal meanings (as well as interpersonal and textual ones) will be shaped by textual meanings, including information structure and theme The system of theme is realized through a structure in which the clause falls into just two main constituents: a Theme and a Rheme Theme is basically what comes first in the clause and it is what is

being talked about, it is the point of departure for the clause as a message According to Halliday (1994), in spite of the fact that they are often conflated, Theme and Rheme are not the same as Given and News in information structure Whereas information structure is listener-oriented, thematic structure is speaker-oriented The following example shows the analysis of the textual perspective The relationship of these three functions, which are in the discourse-semantic stratum is called ‗metafunction resonance‘ by Halliday (1994) (for more detail, see Hasan, 1993; Hoµng V¨n V©n, 2002)

In his book (1994:34), Halliday summarizes what we have discussed the three different ways of looking at the clause as follows:

+ The Actor functions in the structure of the clause as a representation A clause has meaning as a representation, a construal of some process in ongoing human experience; the Actor is the active participant in that process It is the element the speaker portrays as the one that does the deed

+ The Subject functions in the structure of the clause as an exchange, a transaction between speaker and listener; the subject is the warranty of the exchange It is the element the speaker makers responsible for the validity of what he is saying

+ The Theme functions in the structure of the clause as a message A clause has meaning

as a message, a quantum of information; the Theme is the point of departure for the message It is the element the speaker selects for ‗grounding‘ what he is going on to say

3 The Grammar of Experiential Meaning: Transitivity

In the previous sections, the three ways in which human beings use language have been carefully touched upon Since the study focuses on the clause as representation, in this section, I shall be more concerned with the clause in its experiential function, its guise

as a way of representing patterns of experience The clause, here again, plays a central role, because it embodies a general principal for modeling experience

3.1 Process, Participant and Circumstance

Language is used to talk about the world, either the external world, things, events, qualities, etc or our internal world, thoughts, beliefs, feelings, etc Our language builds up pictures of reality, consisting of goings-on (verbs), involving things (nouns), which may have attributes (adjectives) and which go on against background details of place, time, manner, etc.(adverbials) These categories form the landscape of our human experience

and occur together in clauses with the essential element of the clause being the expression

of event, or process According to Halliday (1994), a process consists of three components: the process itself, participants in the process, and the circumstances

associated with the process These provide the frame of reference for interpreting our experience of what goes on The table below gives an illustration of some typical functions

of groups and phrases classes

TYPICAL FUNCTIONS OF GROUPS AND PHRASE CLASSES

The circumstances Abverbial group or prepositional phrase

The following example provides the analysis of a process in a clause:

- What are you looking for?

- My mother is taking care of my boy while I am away from home

- I cannot give up smoking

The clause concludes at least one Participant, which is normally realized by nominal group although sometimes the participant is not explicitly mentioned in the clause but understood as part of the experiential meaning The most popular examples are in the imperative clauses as follows:

- Go away!

- Run!

Circumstances are typical realized by adverbial groups or preposition phrase For example:

- Yesterday, Joe went to the cinema

- They hurriedly rushed out of the house

Different from the Process and the Participant, whose presence in the clause is

obligatory, the Circumstances are often optional in the clause However, in some cases it may be more or less obligatory to include a circumstance in the clause:

- The second great discovery took place at about the same time

- She put the lamp down on the floor

Although the concepts of process, participant, and circumstance are semantic categories which explain in the most general way how phenomena of the real world are, they are not used to interpret the grammar of the clause because they are too general to explain very much The Process/ Participant/ Circumstance model is only a start We shall need to recognize functions which are more specific than these and which may differ according to the type of process being presented In the following section, the different types of process that are built into the grammar of English, and the particular kinds of participant role that are systemically associated with each are explored

3.2 Process Types

According to Halliday (1994), the transitivity system of English, six processes types are recognized as material, mental, verbal, behavioural, relational, and existential The table below illustrates this relation clearly:

System of Transitivity (process type)

 Doing

a Material (encode experience in the real, material world)

b Behavioral (encode physiological or psychological behavior)

 Projecting

a Mental (encode experiences in the inner world of consciousness)

b Verbal (encode experiences of bringing the inner world outside by speaking)

 Being

a Existential (set up the existence of a sole participant)

b Relational (encodes relations of being and having between two participants)

In the subsections that follow, five are presented As verbal process is the main focus of the thesis, it will be treated in a separate chapter

‗what did x do?‘ where ‗do‘ is a (usually) concrete, tangible action Material processes

have an obligatory participant, the Actor, which is the doer of the action A second participant, the goal of the action, is the participant in some material processes to which the doing is done Traditionally, the term transitive is used for verbs which required a goal

(whether it is made explicit in the clause or not), and intransitive is used for verbs which do not take a goal participant The following example provides an analysis of a clause which reflects the material process:

Actor Process: material Goal Circumstance

Actor Process: material Range/ Range

Two other related participants are Range and Beneficiary Range often looks like a

Goal, but differs in that it restates or extends the process itself Range is often a cognate accusative Beneficiary is semantically what is traditionally called indirect object Let us look at the following examples:

+ Material processes with Beneficiary:

Actor Pr: material Goal Recipient

+ Material Processes with Range

3.2.2 Mental Processes

While ‗material‘ clauses are concerned with our experience of the material world,

‗mental‘ clauses are concerned with our experience of the world of our own consciousness

It may be constructed either as flowing from a person‘s consciousness or as impinging on it; but not as a material act Or in other words, metal processes encode meanings of thinking or feeling

We can recognize that these are different from material processes because it no

longer makes sense to ask ―What did x do to y?‖

e.g.: What did you do to the injections? I hated it

Or what don‘t I do to her behavior? I don‘t understand it

With these clauses, it makes more sense to ask: ―What do you think / feel / know about x?‖

e.g.: What do you think about injections? I hate them

Or What do you think about her letter? I don‘t understand it

Mental processes can be divided into 3 classes

- Cognition: verbs of thinking, knowing, understanding

e.g.: I don‘t know her name

- Affection: verbs of liking, fearing, etc

e.g.: I hate injections

- Perception: verbs of seeing, hearing

e.g.: Simon heard it on the news

3.2.3 Behavioral Process

Behavioral process is recognized at the boundary between material and mental process It is the process of (typically human) physiological and psychological behavior, like breathing, coughing, smiling , dreaming and staring

Among six processes types, behavioral processes are the least distinct because they have no clearly defined characteristics of their own

+ Behavioural processes with a conscious

+ Behaver with personification

The processes discussed up to this point – material, mental, behavioral – have in

some sense all been processes of action The remaining types are processes of being rather than action Existential processes, which will be discussed below, are those in which something is simply stated to exist Relational processes, discussed immediately below, are those in which something is stated to exist in relation to something else

3.2.4 Relational Processes

It‘s third major type of process ―Relational‖ clauses serve to characterize and to identify

The process is realized by the verb be in the simple present or past and they appear

to have two inherent participants

e.g Every fourth African is a Nigerian

The second participant may be a ―non-specific‖ (―indefinite‖) nominal group or it may be a prepositional phrase

―Relational‖ clauses have a distinct grammar of their own They model this experience as ―being‖ rather than as ―doing‖ or ―sensing‖

Relational processes are a rich and varied process type in which a relationship is established between two terms This relationship can be one of two sub-types, attributive

or identifying In the former sub-type, an attribute is assigned to a carrier, specifying a

quality, classification, or description of the carrier In the latter, the emphasis is not describing or classifying, but defining The participants in identifying processes are called

Token and Value In addition to the distinction between attributive and identifying

sub-types, relational processes, whether attributive or identifying, can also be differentiated into intensive, circumstantial, and possessive relational processes

3.2.5 Existential Process

Existential processes, in contrast to relational processes, have only one participant (not counting circumstantial elements), namely the Existent, or that participant which is said to exist Existential process clauses can be frequently be translated by English existential process dummy subject ‗there‘

3.2.6 The Circumstance

In addition to the participants, all the processes in the transitivity system may also

be accompanied by circumstantial elements, typically realized by adverbial groups prepositional phrases and even by nominal groups Figure 2.3 represents the range of choices available to the speaker or writer once the choices has been made to include a circumstantial element

The Circumstances are identified by considering what the questions are used to explicit them Following are the questions that are helpful in identifying circumstances

together with an example of each of the nine terms of the system: Extent HOW LONG? (duration); HOW FAR? (spatial distance),

To sum up, this chapter has mentioned some fundamental and theoretical concepts relevant to the purposes of the study In the chapter, the relationship between grammar and context based on Halliday‘s model has been represented Language can be functionally described in terms of three metafunctions: (i) the ideational with which language is used to represent our experience of the world, (ii) the interpersonal expressing the meaning in which language is used to create and maintain different kinds of roles and relationships, and (iii) the textual with which language is explored to create coherent and cohesive texts, both spoken and written

The chapter has also concentrated on giving an overview of the grammar of experience: the transitivity Every clause can be seen in the experiential function to be made up of combinations of Participant(s) and Circumstance(s) revolving around the obligatory process The types of the processes in the transitivity system are also discussed

in the following chapter

Summary of process types

Process type Category meaning Participants Participants

relational: ‗being‘ Carrier, Attribute Attributor,

4 Verbal process in English

In this part, based on Halliday‘s systemic functional grammar (Halliday, 1994), an attempt is made to look at verbal processes in English It focuses on examining (i) the structure of the process and (ii) the different components of the process

4.1 Structure of a Verbal Process

As mentioned in the preceding chapter, besides the three major processes which

are labeled as material, mental, and relational, there are three other types which can be

distinguished on the basis of the usual combination of semantic and grammatical criteria

The most important of them is the verbal process which is located on the boundary of mental and relational process Let us consider the following examples:

- They said that you were a fool

- She asked, ―Where are you going?‖

- Isabella told the secret to her best friend

- Marcus Antonius praised Julius Caesar

It is obviously seen from the above examples, although speaking is certainly a

kind of action, the verbs say, ask, tell, praise do not construe the material process They do

not describe the world of psychological and behavior On the other hand, they have some features of mental process, especially if we assume that verbalization of thoughts is a kind

of inner speech These verbs can be cases made for postulating a process named verbal process As a results, a verbal process can be defined as a process of saying The typical

participants in the process are the Sayer, the Receiver, the Target, and the Verbiage

A typical verbal process can be structured as follows:

Sayer + Process: verbal + (-) Target + (-) Receiver + (-) Verbiage

It must be noticed that unlike the mental process, the verbal processes do not require

conscious participants The Sayer can be anything which puts out the signal, like the notice

or my watch in the following examples:

- My watch says it‘s half past ten

- The notice tells you to keep quiet

For this reason, verbal processes can be called ‗symbolic‘ processes

4.2 Components of the Verbal Process

As mentioned in the above section, a verbal process clause can have maximally

four potential participants: the Sayer, the Receiver, the Target, and the Verbiage Before

discussing the details of each participant, it would be helpful to look at the process first

4.2.1 The Process

Again, the verbal process can be defined as the process of saying The typical verb used to encode the process is say, but there are many others, probably the most important of which are ask and tell:

- ‗Hold on a moment‘, said she

- I asked her if she had heard him

- He told me to go to bed early

In fact, there are a large number of verbs that can be exploited to realize the process, each carrying some extra element of meaning Sometimes this meaning can relate

to the speech act realized: just as we can ask to indicate a question or tell to indicate a command, so we can use such verbs as urge, explain, remind, challenge, beg, promise, congratulate, grumble, agree, report to convey other subtleties of what speech act theorists call illocutionary force:

- She begged him not to drive so fast

- It promised to come to class

Another kind of meaning that can be conveyed by the choice of lexical verb is a meaning connected with the nature of the actual delivery of speech: such things as tone,

quality of voice, and volume of voice The verbs used to encode this meaning are sneer, mutter, lisp, growl, snarl, bark, bawl, babble on, and gasp… For example:

- ‗Fifty of us to stand off that crummy force!‘ she sneered

- …muttering nervously: ‗Hurry up, boys…‘

Another way of adding such extra information is by an Adjunct, as in the example muttering nervously, where the writer conveys more than a plain use of saying could achieve not only by choosing a non-neutral, muttering, but also by adding a Circumstantial Adjunct nervously

4.2.2 The Sayer

The Sayer is the one who does the verbalization Unlike the Senser in the mental process, the Sayer does not have to be a conscious participant but anything that can

put out a signal In other words, the Sayer can be human or non-human like our report or the notice in the following examples:

- Our report says a man was seen running from the house soon after the

shooting

- The notice forbids the children to use the lift alone

The Sayer needs not to be explicitly mentioned in the cause, especially in the passive voice:

- I was reproached for not noticing anything

The absence of the Sayer can also be found in the quoted verbal clause of imperative mood:

- He said, ‗Talk to me, please!‘

However, we can always in principle ask for the identification of the Sayer (‗who reproached you?‘), indicating that role is inherently present in the meaning

4.2.3 The Receiver

- Another participant that involves in the verbal and is also typical human is the Receiver This is the participant to whom the saying is addressed With some verbs, the Receiver is nearly always mentioned as in the following examples:

Sayer Pr: verbal Receiver Verbiage

- The Receiver is also the one to whom the verbal process is directed, the beneficiary of verbal message Besides, the Receiver may be subject in a clause which is passive:

+ We weren‘t told the truth

4.2.4 The Verbiage:

- The Verbiage is a nominalized statement of the verbal process: a noun expressing some kind of verbal behavior (e.g.: statement, questions, answer, story)

Sayer Pr: verbal Receiver Verbiage

The Arab boyfriend told her a lot of rubbish

- As with all process types, Circumstantials can occur in verbal processes The commonest type is manner Circumstantials:

Circ: manner Sayer Pr: verbal Circ: manner

Although many verbal processes occur with a nominal element, a Verbiage, it is a distinctive feature of verbal processes that they project That is, like mental processes,

verbals form a clause complex, projecting a second clause by either quoting or reporting

But whereas mental processes report or quote ideas, verbal processes quote or report

speech (or ―locutions‖) A relationship of interdependence between the two clauses gives

quoting or direct speech, whereas a relationship of dependency between projected and projecting clause gives indirect or reported speech The projecting clause can occur as

first or second in the sequence

Direct / quoted speech

Indirect / reported speech

In the first sentence, the verb ―said‖ is used to narrate to the listeners what the Sayer directly mention, however in the second sentence, the verb ―asked‖ describes in detail the intention of the Sayer

CHAPTER III: THE STUDY

1 Research questions:

In this chapter, verbal process is explored in details in two victory speeches in order

to answer to the following question:

How is verbal process used in Obama’s victory speeches?

2 Research design:

2.1 Data collection

The speeches were chosen among a lot of speeches made by Barrack Obama – the new president of the United States – during the time he was in the election

On the way to become the President of the United States, Barrack Obama has made

a lot of victory speeches within each state in different time from February 2007 until the day he officially held the power in the early 2009 The two victory speeches which I choose were made and delivered in two states, namely Chicago and Minnesota They somehow satisfy the needs of my thesis because one – third of the sentences in the victory contains verbal process From the very first word, these speeches have left deep impression

on the readers as well as the listeners because of the use of word, phrase, etc The victory speeches describes in brief how America turned from a small country to a giant one, and highly appreciates the ancestor, both politicians and normal people because of their devotion Some hall marks of the history is also repeated From these speeches, Obama has shown his wide knowledge and the ability to persuade others successfully

Over fifty victory speeches have been made on the way Barrack Obama ―fought‖ against John McCain to be President Each speech was delivered in a different state, to different listeners However, the listeners, to some extent, are the same because they are American who are looking for a new look for the U.S, who are tired because of wars, who are looking forward for a new U.S without crisis, terrorism

Barrack Obama is so good at making speeches His victory speeches are not merely for election purposes, they are really the pictures of a complete America They talk about the history of the U.S., its excellent people, its citizen who are working hard to struggle with life There are many simple things of everyday life included in the speech Hardly any president candidates mention those simple things in their speeches, except for Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President

of the United States He is the first African American to hold the office Obama previously

served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008

A native of Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and

Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review He was a

community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004

Obama served three terms in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004 Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S House of Representatives in 2000, he ran for United States Senate in 2004 Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Democratic primary and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004 He won election to the U.S Senate in November 2004 His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination In the 2008 general election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009

As president, Obama signed economic stimulus legislation in the form of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in February 2009 On October 8, 2009, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate In March 2010, he signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law, a piece of major comprehensive health care reform legislation In foreign policy, Obama began a gradual withdrawal of troops from Iraq, increased troop levels in Afghanistan, and signed an arms control treaty with Russia

2.2 Declarative clauses in the data

According to Halliday (1994:69), in any communicative language , there are four basic speech roles: giving information, demanding information, giving goods and services and demanding goods and services The usual labels for these functions are Statement, Questions, Offer and Command Most of these labels in this speech are expressed by verbal process Besides, the subject in any sentence is usually followed by a finite verb This signal shows that most of the clauses in the speech are declarative clauses By statistics, of 108 major clauses in the data, all together 101 clauses are declarative ones, taking up 93.5% of the speech; 5 other clauses are imperative ones and only two are

interrogative clauses The dominant appearances of 101 declarative clauses in Obama‘s victory speech are successful in that they are functioned as statements to give as much as possible information to the audience, with which he succeeded in recalling his presidential election campaign, expressing his gratitude to his supporters, making promises and inspiring the audience to go through the difficulties with the whole nation

Halliday once mentioned in his book that language exists and must be studied in context Particular aspects of given context define the meanings likely to be expressed and the language likely to be used to express those meanings Thus, to arrive at a valid and accurate enterpretation of the given text, first we should understand certain aspects of its context such as the topic, language users, the medium of communication, i.e register Eggins (1994: 26) defined register as ― the immediate situational context in which the text was produced‖ It is seen as a linguistic consequence of the interaction of aspects of context which are called by Halliday ―field, tenor and mode‖ These three items determine the experiential meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning, respectively

Field of discourse refers to what is happening, to the nature of social action that is taking place In terms of field, the text here is a combine of two victory speeches written to inform people, persuade listeners and express the writer‘s attitude to the development of a country in the new age The writer is a politician has enough knowledge, effort and smartness to persuade listeners to approve him on the way to be the most powerful person

of the nation In the text, we can find different process types, mostly material and verbal ones As this is a type of spoken text, their roles are to refer events the writer recounts A significant number of relational processes express the character or assign the attribute

function for entities in the text

Eggins, in his book (1994: 63) defined tenor as ―the social role relationship played

by interactants‖ In functional grammar, tenor is expressed in terms of interpersonal meaning, or the Mood system As for the speech function in the text, we can see the two role relationships, one between the speaker and the listener, and the other between the politician, the – going – to – be – president of the U.S and his citizens The Mood in the text mostly declarative, this is obvious as these speeches belongs to narrative styles Most

of the clauses in the text contain subject and finite verbs, in which the finite elements are combined with the present simple and past simple and there are very few modal elements

Mode, according to Eggins, is ―the role language is playing in a interaction‖ The Mode of a text is concerned with the channel in which communication takes place and the medium of communication In its organic form, this is a written text as it is not a face – to – face communication The channel in this text mostly belongs to visual one There is a high lexical density with a large number of content words Besides, the mode is also concerns with the Thematic structure of the text

It should be noted here that although the speeches might be explored more comprehensively from many perspectives such as Transitivity, Mood and Theme and cohesion, in this paper we just concentrate on the important role of verbal process in implicating and expressing the ideas and opinions of the speaker For this reason, the above analysis only contains sentences or phrases in which verbal process is used The two speeches are long enough to read but short enough to hear Obviously, the six processes are also found in the text, however verbal process is the most important one

Barrack Obama has a lot of advantages which every president candidate desires to own If we take a deep look on these two victory speeches, we can have a first impression that it may be a kind of a story, not a speech at all Here, Obama plays the role of a story teller to introduce different stages of development of the United States, not the role of a candidate to ask for people‘s support He seems to get closer to the listeners, to his future citizens In these prepared remarks provided by his campaign, President-Elect Barack Obama calls himself the unlikeliest presidential candidate He thanks many members of his campaign, along with his enormous army of volunteers, and he warns supporters about what he calls the enormity of the tasks at hand that now face the U.S

It is undeniable that Obama‘s political orientation, relative youth, charisma, and ostensible affability explain his appeal to those in the so-called ―mainstream‖ media, but his race was the decisive feature that made them wax orgasmic That Obama is black changed the dynamics of this election contest dramatically The second victory speech includes 82 sentences, among them, 13 sentences has the appearance of verbal process This is such a long speech, as a complete story of the U.S.,

about its history and famous people Most of the verbs here are ―say‖ and ―tell‖ In this

second paragraph, Obama appeared as a real narrator, who would like to recall a hall mark

of the U.S and call people to stand together and make the country stronger and richer In

his victory speeches, we can see no trace of ―discrimination‖ It is a matter of fact, because

he himself is a black one

It is quite easy to understand the frequent use of these verbs in Obama‘s speeches Firstly, it is not the first speech that he made He has to deliver a number of speeches in each state lying on his way, and each contains a different meaning and purpose This is the very first color person who wants to become the President of the United States He must have had enough conditions such as money, knowledge, support ,and above all, his ability

to persuade the others to vote for him How can a black person persuade the whole country where once race discrimination happened? It is such a hard task However, let‘s take a look

on what Obama has done The way he talks to people is so sweet, so close, and natural It seems to us that he is not making a speech in front of a crowd, he is talking or telling a story for everyone to hear, to relax It is not the voice of a politician, it is the voice of a friend, a father or a colleague Listeners do not have the strange of distance here They seem to listen to a reporter, a friend in their homes about the history of the U.S, about the struggle to become one of the most powerful country in the world within more than 300 years Hardly anyone can do the same as Obama, that‘s why he won the election successfully Media is his tool to deliver his speeches

So far, the use of verbal process in total of over 30 sentences taken from the given victory speeches has been investigated thoroughly It can be said that the aim of the analysis has been achieved: some of the features of the verbal process and the intention of the writer – the speaker has been discovered through the study of verbal process in a randomly chosen text The frequent use of verbal process indicates that the speeches are organized in a spoken style, to persuade, to announce and to give far more information

Undoubtedly, these findings help to confirm the importance of the study of fuctional grammar and of its application in text analysis, as so to discover the semantic and

stylistics features of different texts It can be said without exaggeration that ―systemic linguistics provides a very useful theoretical and analytical framework for exploring and explaining how texts mean‖ (Eggins, 1994: 37)

3 Analytical framework:

In this part, all the items of verbal process are discussed again in brief in order to have a better analysis in the two victory speeches

3.1 Process:

The very first and fore most item in the verbal process is Process It is often realized and defined as process of saying Besides, it is related to speech act and conveyed

by the choice of lexical verb, connected with the nature of actual delivery of speech

There are a number of verbs used in verbal process such as - say, ask, tell, urge, explain, remind, challenge, beg, promise, congratulate, grumble, agree, report, sneer, mutter, lips, growl, snarl, bark, bawl, babble on, gasp, etc

- Example: I will ask you to join in the work of remarking this nation the only way it’s been

done in America for 221 years

(My data)

3.2 Sayer:

The second item is called Sayer which does the verbalization Sayer can be human

or non – human and usually be nouns or noun phrases

Sayer can be realized as our report, the notice, John, That beautiful girl, etc

- Example: The noticed said that you couldn’t sit here

(Bloor, Thomas and Meriel (1995), p 42)

3.3 Receiever:

The third item is named as Receiver, which is the participant to whom the saying is addressed In traditional grammar, it can be refered to the indirect object Besides, similar

to the Sayer, the Receiver can usually be nouns or noun phrases

The Receiver can be realized as me, him, her, them, it as in the following

The Verbiage can be realized as in the following examples:

- Example: + She asked me a question

+He told her a lot of rubbish

(Bloor, Thomas and Meriel (1995), p 43)