Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS reporting on america north koreas debate over pyongyangs nuclear crisis a critical discourse analysis

Rationale of the research

Critical Discourse Analysis, which sets the basis for this paper, is discourse analysis ‗with an attitude‘ (Van Dijk, 2001: 96) It has remained attractive to both linguists and social analysts However, it cannot be denied that, it takes much time and devotion to understand it thoroughly; especially in Vietnam where focus has been mainly on linguistic and discourse features of different types of discourse rather an on functional ones

In addition, it is also necessary to supply an explanation for my choice, which stems from several reasons, to analyze media discourse To begin with, media texts are ready and accessible sources for research, studying and teaching Next, speech communities‘ use of language and their attitudes towards language are not only represented in but also influenced by media discourses Besides, the formation and expression of culture, politics, ideological benefits and social life are not only reflected in the media but also influenced and created by them And finally, media discourses, in my point of view, can help us understand a lot about social meanings and stereotypes embedded in, produced and reproduced through discourse and communication

Over the last several decades, there have appeared in the mass media stories about North Korea‘s nuclear programme and American‘s reaction over this issue This has caught much attention of the whole world because up to six powers are involved; namely Russia, China, Japan, Korea, America and North Korea It is considered ―a game‖ mastered by Pyongyang and up to now, despite of efforts, no solution has appeared practical; even a third world war is not exclusive

All the above mentioned reasons serve to explain my choice of the research topic and my decision to conduct the research entitled “Reporting on America-North Korea’s debate over Pyongyang’s nuclear crisis: A critical discourse analysis”

Aims and Objectives of the research

The general goal of this research is to investigate the ideological function of language in representing the world The main objective is to probe into the ways in which language is employed by two media institutes to produce discourse over the nuclear issue

Some media critics such as Chomsky (1989), and Karim (2000) (reviewed in Sheyholislami, 2001:1), put forward an argument that the mainstream media do not merely reflect the truth Rather, there are certain constraints that prevent the media from representing problems in an objective way, hence leading to a mediated view of issues such as the economy of the media, institutional constraints, news production practices, etc.

Significance of the research

This paper is to supply those interested a deeper insight into the relations between language and society, more significantly between language use on the one hand and power and ideology embedded into discourse by language on the other hand.

Scope of the research

Evidentially, it is impossible to cover such a large topic of the America and North Korea debate with lots of news reports It seems to be more realistic to do a general content analysis, but not a detailed CDA analysis of such a broad amount of news

My quick survey of related news threads in QDND shows that the Vietnamese media has conveyed an overall proposition of the public sympathy towards the North Korea and criticism of the US‘s hostile attitude to Pyongyang We have so far witnessed ups and downs between North Korea and America basing on the reaction of each side concerning the North Korea‘s debatable nuclear programme which up to now has not been proved to exist

Because the story has a long history of over five decades with countless news articles and because of the limited scope of the paper, I decided to restrict the data to news stories a short period (from 30/5/2009 to 5/9/2009) when American said that they had indications for Pyongyang‘s missile test which led the tension between the two countries.

Organization of the research

The study is divided into three chapters:

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The introduction presents the justification for the research, the goal, significance and scope of the research, research questions, methodology of the research and supplies some background information on the US-North Korea‘s conflict

Chapter 1 states a brief account of the traditions of media studies, the theoretical background for the thesis, a description of the role of Systemic Functional Linguistics in CDA, and a literature review of studies on media discourse

Chapter 2 is the study which describes the source of data as well as the procedures of data collection and data analysis It also discusses the analytical tools used for analyzing data It analyzes the data and discusses the findings of the analysis as well

The conclusion summarizes the findings, draws out implications and makes suggestions for further research

6 The US and North Korea relations – Some background information

It is necessary to give a brief account of the relationship between North Korea and America because I believe that background will provide the contextual basis for a better understanding and a more thorough analysis

North Korea‘s occupation by Japanese ended when the Second World War terminated in 1945 However, the country was divided to the two sides of the 38th parallel; the North was occupied by USSR and the South by America Yet the two dominants developed opposite opinions about ruling cooperation on Korea peninsula

Then, a 3-year war exploded ending by declaring authority over the island of both sides

Then the leaders of the North and the South wanted to unify the country but the domination of the two powers were so strong that there was little to be done over unification Later on, Russia withdrew their troops out of North Korea and was not concerned much about Pyongyang but the domination of America seemed to remain more and more intense From then on, the relationship between North Korea and South Korea and between North Korea and South Korea have witnessed ups and downs yet America has always exercised hostile attitude towards Pyongyang

The conflict started in 1987 when North Korea opened its first 5 KW nuclear pile

America immediately called for the United Nations‘ inspections for fearing about the development of its nuclear programme North Korea agreed under conditions that America and the West supported them financially and helped them built two light water reactors serving for peace activities and economic developments Yet, America broke the promise because the reasoned that North Korea had secretly restarted their nuclear programme Each side had their own claims but the main reason was that they did not believe each other Since then the two sides have experienced warm and cold periods in their relationships This is regarded as the gamed ‗hide – and - seek‘ played by America and North Korea However, what should be noticed here is that up until now, there is no clear evidence that North Korea does have their own nuclear programme; yet American media keep asserting that they have and they contribute largely in forming a negative attitude towards North Korea

This chapter presents brief information of the related theoretical background

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a term used to denote the theory formerly known as Critical Linguistics (CL) CDA is defined by van Dijk as ‗a shared perspective on doing linguistic, semiotic or discourse analysis‘ (1993b: 131) Later he further elaborates that CDA is a field that is primarily concerned with studying and analyzing written and spoken texts to reveal the discursive sources of power abuse, dominance and inequality It is also concerned with examining how these discursive sources are initiated, maintained and reproduced within specific social, political and historical contexts (van Dijk, 1998s:1)

Fairclough (1993: 135) states a similar definition of CDA; that is, discourse analysis which aims to systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power; and to explore how the opacity of these relationships between discourse and society is itself a factor securing power and hegemony

CDA sees ‗discourse – language in use in speech and writing – as a form of social practice‘ and considers the context of language use to be crucial (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997: 285) CDA starts from the perception of discourse (language and other forms of semiotics) as an element of social practices, which constitutes other elements as well as being shaped by them (Chouliaraki & Faiclough, 1999: vii) CDA sees discourse as

‗always involves power and ideologies‘ (Wodak & Ludwig, 1999:12)

Recently, van Dijk (2001: 96) gives a definition of CDA in slightly different words He states that CDA is a – critical – perspective on doing scholarship: it is, so to speak, discourse analysis ‗with an attitude‘ It focuses on social problems, and especially on the role of discourse in the production and reproduction of power abuse and domination

CDA is primarily concerned with ―investigating language in relation to power and ideology‖ (Wodak, 2001: 6) It tries to illuminate ways in which the dominant forces in a society construct versions of reality that favor their interest (van Dijk, 1998) Unlike other paradigms in discourse analysis and text linguistics, whose main focus is only on text, in CDA a fully ‗critical‘ account of discourse requires ‗a theorization and description of both the production of a text, and of the social structures and processes within which individuals or social groups as social historical subjects, create meanings in their interaction with texts‘ (Wodak, 2001: 3) Therefore, the following concepts figure

For Wodak (2001: 9), ‗critical‘ means ‗having distance to the data, embedding the data in the social, taking a political stance explicitly‘ The notion history also occupies a significant position in CDA According to Wodak (2001: 3), ‗every discourse is historically produced and interpreted, that is, it is situated in time and space‘ There are specific historical reasons that drive people to feel, reason, desire and imagine the way they do The importance of the historical contexts of discourse therefore should be highlighted in the processes of interpretation and explanation of discourses

‗Ideology‘ in CDA is viewed as ‗an important aspect of establishing and maintaining unequal power relations‘ (Wodak, 2001: 10) Language mediates ideology in a variety of social institutions For van Dijk (1995: 18), ‗ideologies… are the overall, abstract mental systems that organize such socially shared attitudes‘ Thompson (quoted in Wodak, 2001: 10) the study of ideology is the study of ‗the ways in which meaning is constructed and conveyed by symbolic forms of various kinds‘ Eagleton (1994), in studying ideology one has to take into consideration the variety of theories and theorists that have examined the relation between thought and social reality (quoted in Wodak, 2001: 10)

‗Power‘, according to Wodak (2001: 11) is about ‗relations of difference,… particularly about the effects of differences in social structures‘ Surely language itself is not powerful, but gains power by the use powerful people make of it Faiclough (1989:

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a term used to denote the theory formerly known as Critical Linguistics (CL) CDA is defined by van Dijk as ‗a shared perspective on doing linguistic, semiotic or discourse analysis‘ (1993b: 131) Later he further elaborates that CDA is a field that is primarily concerned with studying and analyzing written and spoken texts to reveal the discursive sources of power abuse, dominance and inequality It is also concerned with examining how these discursive sources are initiated, maintained and reproduced within specific social, political and historical contexts (van Dijk, 1998s:1)

Fairclough (1993: 135) states a similar definition of CDA; that is, discourse analysis which aims to systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power; and to explore how the opacity of these relationships between discourse and society is itself a factor securing power and hegemony

CDA sees ‗discourse – language in use in speech and writing – as a form of social practice‘ and considers the context of language use to be crucial (Fairclough & Wodak, 1997: 285) CDA starts from the perception of discourse (language and other forms of semiotics) as an element of social practices, which constitutes other elements as well as being shaped by them (Chouliaraki & Faiclough, 1999: vii) CDA sees discourse as

‗always involves power and ideologies‘ (Wodak & Ludwig, 1999:12)

Recently, van Dijk (2001: 96) gives a definition of CDA in slightly different words He states that CDA is a – critical – perspective on doing scholarship: it is, so to speak, discourse analysis ‗with an attitude‘ It focuses on social problems, and especially on the role of discourse in the production and reproduction of power abuse and domination.

Key notions of CDA

CDA is primarily concerned with ―investigating language in relation to power and ideology‖ (Wodak, 2001: 6) It tries to illuminate ways in which the dominant forces in a society construct versions of reality that favor their interest (van Dijk, 1998) Unlike other paradigms in discourse analysis and text linguistics, whose main focus is only on text, in CDA a fully ‗critical‘ account of discourse requires ‗a theorization and description of both the production of a text, and of the social structures and processes within which individuals or social groups as social historical subjects, create meanings in their interaction with texts‘ (Wodak, 2001: 3) Therefore, the following concepts figure

For Wodak (2001: 9), ‗critical‘ means ‗having distance to the data, embedding the data in the social, taking a political stance explicitly‘ The notion history also occupies a significant position in CDA According to Wodak (2001: 3), ‗every discourse is historically produced and interpreted, that is, it is situated in time and space‘ There are specific historical reasons that drive people to feel, reason, desire and imagine the way they do The importance of the historical contexts of discourse therefore should be highlighted in the processes of interpretation and explanation of discourses

‗Ideology‘ in CDA is viewed as ‗an important aspect of establishing and maintaining unequal power relations‘ (Wodak, 2001: 10) Language mediates ideology in a variety of social institutions For van Dijk (1995: 18), ‗ideologies… are the overall, abstract mental systems that organize such socially shared attitudes‘ Thompson (quoted in Wodak, 2001: 10) the study of ideology is the study of ‗the ways in which meaning is constructed and conveyed by symbolic forms of various kinds‘ Eagleton (1994), in studying ideology one has to take into consideration the variety of theories and theorists that have examined the relation between thought and social reality (quoted in Wodak, 2001: 10)

‗Power‘, according to Wodak (2001: 11) is about ‗relations of difference,… particularly about the effects of differences in social structures‘ Surely language itself is not powerful, but gains power by the use powerful people make of it Faiclough (1989:

28) elaborates, ‗there are power relations between social groupings in institutions, and… between women and men, between ethnic groupings, between young and old‘ He asserts that the power relations are always the relations of struggle, the term he uses in a technical sense to refer to ‗the process whereby social groupings with different interests engage with each other‘.

Methodology of CDA

CDA, according to ban Dijk (1998s: 3), is not a specific direction of research

Therefore, it does not have a unitary theoretical framework He asserts that there are many types of CDA (e.g critical analysis of conversation, of lessons and teaching at school, news reports in the press, etc.), and they can be theoretically and analytically diverse, Mayer (2001: 17-23) states that various forms of CDA adopt various methods based on a variety of theories, ranging from general social theories to linguistic theories

For example, Siegfried Jager (1995: 43) mainly to general social theories; van Dijk is more interested in the socio – psychological aspect of CDA field, etc Among CDA contributions, Norman Faiclough takes a specific middle – range theory position He understands CDA as the analysis of the dialectical relationship between semiosis (including language) and other elements of social practices

According to Wodak (2001: 3), methodologies in CDA vary greatly There can be found in CDA small qualitative case studies as well as studies on large data corpora from fieldwork and ethnography Each method focuses on different levels of analysis

Siegfried Jager distinguishes two steps of analysis: firstly a more content oriented step of structure analysis, and secondly a more language oriented step of fine analysis within which he focuses on context, text surface and rhetorical means (Meyer, 2001: 25) Ruth Wodak and Martin Reisigl work out a four-step strategy of analyzing racist and discriminatory discourse: establishing the specific contents or topics of s specific discourse, investigating the discursive strategies, studying the linguistic means, and then examining the specific, context-dependent linguistic realizations of the discriminatory stereotypes (Meyer, 2001: 26-27) Van Dijk emphasizes on various levels in the analysis of ideologies in news discourse: social analysis, cognitive analysis and discourse analysis (van Dijk, 1995s: 20) Fairclough develops a three-dimensional framework for critical analysis of news discourse: text, discourse practice and sociocultural practice (Fairclough, 1995b: 59)

Meyer (2001: 23-25) maintains that in CDA ‗‘there is no typical way of collecting data, and that no clear-cut boundary between data collection and data analysis can be made Data collection is not regarded as ‗a specific phase that must be completed before analysis begins‘ and ‗is never completely excluded‘ It can be spelt out that researchers may begin to analyze data right after the first collection in order to find indicators for particular concepts and expand them into categories, then collect further data In the analyzing process, new questions may arise, and the answer to these questions can only be found on the basis of analysis of new data or re-examination of earlier data The linguistic character of CDA becomes evident in the analysis of data since ‗CDA strongly relies on linguistic categories‘ Meyer also ascertains that it is impossible to present a definitive list of the linguistic devices relevant to CDA, though the core

LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com operationalizations depend on linguistic concepts such as actors, mode, time, tense, and argument In reality, different discourse analysts adopting different CDA approaches employ various lists of analytical categories, For example, Jager takes into account many linguistic aspects such as certain argumentation strategies, metaphorism, vocabulary and styles, actors, references, etc.; van Dijk concentrates on a great deal of linguistic markers, some among which are stress and intonation, word order, lexical style, topic choice, schematic organization, etc.

A CDA framework for analysis of Communicative events

This section aims at explaining a framework for analyzing communicative events developed by Fairclough The aim of Fairclough‘s approach of CDA is stated in Fairclough (1995s: 132) as ‗to systematically explore often opaque relationship of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggles over power; and to explore how the opacity of these relationships between discourse and society is itself a factor ensuring power and hegemony‘

In order to explore such linkages, Fairclough (1995a, b), use a three-dimensional framework of analysis that examines three facets of each discursive event: text (e.g a news report), discourse practice (e.g production and consumption processes), and social practice (e.g social and cultural structures which give rise to the communicative event)

According to Fairclough (1995b: 57), critical discourse analysis of any communicative event is the analysis of relationships between these three dimensions of that event Discourse practice plays the mediating role between text and sociocultural practice The relationship between the sociocultural and textual facets is an indirect one and made by way of discourse practice That is, properties of sociocultural practice shape texts, but indirectly through shaping the nature of discourse practice, which is realized in features of texts Below is a brief account of these three analytical focuses, which are summarized in Figure 1

According to Fairclough (1995a: 133), the analysis of text is ‗form – and –meaning analysis‘, that is, ‗the analysis of… interwoven meanings in texts necessarily comes down to the analysis of the forms of texts‘ He argues that ‗form is part of content‘ and content cannot be properly analyzed without form simultaneously being analyzed because

‗contents are always necessarily realized in forms, and different contents entail different forms and vice versa‘ (1995a: 188) Linguistics forms under analysis, for Fairclough (1995b: 57), should include vocabulary, grammar, semantics, the sound system, and cohesion – organization above the sentence level Text is viewed from a multifunctional perspective in Fairclough‘s framework as in SFL He believes that any sentence in a text can be analyzed in terms of the articulation of these functions, which are labeled representations, relations and identities:

- Particular representations and recontextualizations of social practice (ideational function) – perhaps carrying particular ideologies

- Particular constructions of writer and reader identities (for example, in terms of what is highlighted – whether status and role aspects of identity, or individual and personality aspects of identity)

- A particular construction of the relationship between writer and reader (as, for instance, formal and informal, close or distant) (Fairclough, 1995b: 58)

The analysis of discourse practice involves sociocognitive aspects of text production and consumption Fairclough (1995b: 57-58) clarifies two facets of this dimension: institutional process and discourse processes

For Fairclough (1995b: 48), institutional process in media discourse can be understood as a set of institutional routines such as news gathering, news selection, writing and editing Discourse processes can be best explained through discussing intertextuality – a core concept in Fairclough‘s approach Fairclough (1995s: 134) states that the concept of intertextuality ‗highlights a historical view of texts as transforming the past – existing conventions, or prior texts – into the present‘ He observes, ‗for any particular text or type of text, this is a set of other texts… which are potentially relevant, and potentially incorporated into the text‘ (Fairclough, 2003: 47)

Figure 1: A framework for critical discourse analysis of a communicative event

For Fairclough (1995a: 188), there are two complementary types of textual analysis: linguistic analysis (at the test level) and intertextual analysis (at the discourse practice level) Linguistic analysis shows how texts ‗selectively draw upon linguistic systems‘ Intertextual analysis, on the other hand, reveals how texts ‗selectively draw upon orders of discourse‘ Fairclough (1995b: 61) points out that while linguistic analysis is ‗descriptive in nature‘, intertextual analysis is ‗more interpretative‘ According to him, the focus of intertextual analysis is ‗on the borderline between text and discourse practice in the analytical framework Intertextual analysis is looking at text form the perspective of discourse practice, looking at the traces of the discourse practice in the text‘

For Fairclough (1995a: 134), social practice may involve ‗different levels of social organization‘ such as ‗the context of situation‘, ‗the institutional context‘, and ‗the wider societal context‘ or ‗context of culture‘ Fairclough (1995b: 62) outlines more specifically three aspects of the sociocultural context of a communicative event: economic, political and cultural According to him, when considering a communicative event, the analyst should take into consideration not necessarily all levels but any level that might be relevant to understanding that particular event

1.5 Fairclough’s framework for analyzing media discourse

Fairclough (1992, 1995b) examines the language of the mass media ‗as a site of power, of struggle and also a site where language I apparently transparent‘ (Wodak, 2001: 6) In addition, Fairclough also shows the fallacy of the assumption that media institutions provide space for public discourse, that they reflect states of affairs

TEXT disinterestedly, and that they give the perceptions and arguments of the newsmakers

According to him, the media has the mediating and constructing role (Wodak, 2001: 6-7)

For Fairclough (1995b), a number of aspects and properties of mass media need to be taken into account in a critical analysis of media discourse The most important among those aspects and properties are the access to the media, the economies of the media, the politics of the media, and practices of media text production and consumption For the interest of this thesis, the later two will be reviewed below

The politics of the media

Fairclough (1995b: 36) also discusses another important property of media, the politics According to him, ‗an account of communication in the mass media must consider the politics of the mass media‘, which is their relationship to the state Many media critics such as Fairclough (1995b), van Dijk (1991, 1993) share the same assertion that the mainstream media work ideologically, and they work in favour of the powerful, the elite and the state The mainstream media are ‗agents of hegemony‘ (Hackett, 1991)

These ‗agents of hegemony‘ have the power of manufacturing consent, upon which dominant elite groups base to exercise their domination over other social groups

Hegemony is defined by Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999: 24) as ‗the relation of domination based upon consent rather than coercion, involving the naturalization of practices and their social relations as well as relations between practices, as matters of common sense – hence the concept of hegemony emphasizes the importance of ideology in achieving and maintaining relations of domination‘

Practices of media text production and consumption

These practices are vital properties of media texts, which should be counted for in analyzing media texts According to Fairclough (1995b: 48), the media text production process goes through institutional routine activities such as newsgathering, news selection, writing and editing News selection is a vital practice in media text production

In the case of the press, for instance, events are abundant but the space for them is limited They all therefore go under a selecting process before they can be published and become news Earman comes to a conclusion that ‗events become news when transformed by the news perspective and not because of their objective characteristics… news is consciously created to serve the interest of the ruling class‘ The consequence of

LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com this, according to Fowler (1991: 11) is that ‗the world of the Press is not the real world‘ because what is presented in the Press is ‗skewed and judged‘ Another feature worth noting in the production of media text is the quotation pattern and voice According to many media critics including Fairclough (1995b), while there is a heavy reliance of journalists on officials as source of information, ordinary people rarely have opportunities to be heard This leads to ‗a predominantly establishment view of the world‘ (Fairclough, 1995b: 49)

Principles of CDA

Even though CDA applies a multidisciplinary approach of various schools and theories, discourse analysts share the common perspective and the general aims of CDA often based on some common principles when doing a CDA Fairclough (1995b) states that ‗language as a social practice through which the world is presented‘ and that

‗discourse use as a form of social practice in itself not only represents and signifies other social practices but also constitutes other social practices such as the exercise of power, prejudice, resistance and so forth‘ Meanwhile, Kress (1991) argues that ‗power relations are produced, exercised, and reproduced through discourse‘ In addition, as Van Dijk (1998a) puts it, ‗CDA does not solely interpret texts, but also explain them‘

1.7 Systematic Functional Linguistics in Critical Discourse Analysis

Systematic Functional Linguistics (SFL) has been used Fairclough and other researchers as their analytical framework SFL is a linguistic theory which is particularly associated with Micheal Halliday (1978, 1994) In the words of Halliday (1970: 142), this theory of language can help researchers make transparent the relationship between the grammatical system and the social and personal needs that language is required to serve

It has been the foundation for Fairclough‘s analytical framework of CDA since there is a

‗complementary relationship‘ between SFL and CDA To quote Fairclough (2003: 5)

‗SFL is profoundly concerned with the relationship between language and other elements and aspects of social life, and its approach to the linguistic analysis of texts is always oriented to the social character of test… This makes it a valuable source for critical discourse analysis, and indeed major contributions to critical discourse analysis have developed out of SFL‘ For Fairclough and Chouliaraki (1999: 139), language in SFL theory is regarded as ‗a semiotic system which is structured in term of strata Language connects meanings (the semantic stratum) with their spoken and written expressions (the stratum of phonology and graphology) Both meanings and expressions interface with the extra-linguistic‘ It is that semiotic system that mediates the link between stratum of meaning and the stratum of expression They state that in SFL lexicogrammar is

‗functionally grounded, shaped by the social functions it serves, and… built around the intersection of the ‗macrofunctions‘ of language‘ (1990: 140) The ‗macrofunctions‘ of language include the ideational function (language in the construction and representation of expression in the world), the interpersonal function (language in the enactment of social relations and the construction of social identities), and the textual function (language in the specifically semiotic – textual – form of productive practice)

Corresponding to these three macrofunctions of language are three major ‗networks‘ of grammatical system (transitivity, mood and modality, and information) (p.140)

Since CDA‘s subject of study is discourse – language in use, which is ‗always simultaneously constitutive of (i) social identities, (ii) social relations and (iii) system of knowledge and beliefs‘ (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999: 131), here is where SFL can make contributions to CDA They claim that CDA analysts ‗need a theory of language such as Halliday‘s (1997, 1985), which stresses its mulfunctionality and sees any text as simultaneously enacting… the ‗ideational‘‘, ‗interpersonal‘, and ‗textual‘ functions of

LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com language Besides, since discourses are ideological and there is no arbitrariness of signs (Kress, 1993), SFL can therefore be considered to be the most important for the text analysis in order to uncover the ideological meanings hidden within texts

All in all, this section serves to provide proof for the claims made by Fairclough

& Chouliaraki (1999: 139) that SFL ‗has most in common with CDA and most to offer CDA‘, and that it ‗theorizes language in a way which harmonizes far more with the perspective of critical social science than other theories of language‘ As well, this chapter is to supply the theoretical foundation for the paper by reviewing CDA history, its key concepts, methodologies, and principles This chapter has also provided a review of some studies with special focus on isolating ideologies in media discourse as well as the role of SFL in CDA

Recently, CDA has witnesses a lot of attempt of researchers to broaden its scope to many parts of social life as well as to develop further analytical tools

Chouliaraki & Fairclough (1999: vii) have it that CDA has attracted a great interest among specialists in linguistics and language studies as well as in other social science disciplines, one among which is media study During 1980s and 1990s many studies on media discourse were conducted Consequently, CDA became the standard framework for studying media discourse Yet, this paper is much related to exploring ideologies embedded in media discourse, then I have chosen to review some of the studies, which focus on ideological analysis of media representations of actors and events

One of the earliest works that aimed at making explicit ideology in media discourse is Trew‘s study (1979) The author examined the representation of the disturbances that tool place during the London‘s Notting Hill Carnival in 1977 in two British newspapers, the Morning Star and the Sun, using various analytical tools such as the grammar of transitivity, passivization, nominalization and over-lexicalization For Trew, transitivity analysis is related to causality as it helps identify types of processes, the role of participants in the processes, and the circumstances; passivization is the linguistic feature that can hide the agent of an action; nominalization, that is a verb turned into a noun, can hide both the agent of an action and the time of the action Trew‘s linguistic analysis shows that different ideologies of the two newspapers are embedded in the different ways they represent the same event Trew (1979: 155) finds out that ‗ideology and ideological processes are manifested as systems of linguistic characteristics and processes‘, and that transformations in the ideological meanings of texts are resulted from linguistic transformations in those texts

Van Dijk is a discourse analyst who has devoted a lot of his works to ideological study in media discourse He took a particular interest in media discourse and started to integrate his discourse analysis theory in studying media texts as early as the 1980s A point if crucial importance in van Dijk‘s approach for analyzing ideologies is the Us-Them dichotomy According to him, mental representations ‗are often articulated‘ along this ‗us versus them dimension, in which speakers of one group will generally tend to present themselves or their own group in positive terms, and other groups in negative terms‘ (1995b: 22) In order to reveal this contrastive dimension embedded in discourse, a discourse analyst needs to go through the following steps (van Dijk, 1998b: 61-63):

Firstly, examine the context of the discourse, historical, political or social background of a conflict and its participants Then, analyze groups, power relations and conflicts involved Next, identify positive and negative opinions about Us versus Them After that, make explicit the presupposed and the implied And finally, examine all formal structures as lexical choice and syntactic structure, in a way that helps to (de)emphasize polarized group opinions

Van Dijk (1991) examines the issue of racism in the press He finds that there are consistent patterns in reporting on ethnic in the Western media, in which members of the minority group are quoted less often and less extensively than those of the majority group (1991: 174) As a result of this, the ethnic minorities become marginalized and the white majority becomes the definers of the affairs, even of the issues closely related to the minority groups Also as for him, the Western media clearly demonstrates a Them versus Us dichotomy, not just by quoting but also through other discursive strategies, for example, the choice of topics To illustrate, when reporting on ethnic groups only issues such as crimes, violence and unacceptable cultural differences are addresses Van Dijk (1991: 20) argues that the press is ‗a representative of the white power structure‘ It could be suggested that the portrayal of the ethnic minorities in the Western press is in accordance with the dominant ideology in those Western countries What is most

LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com important in van Dijk‘s theory is his perception of discourse analysis as ideology analysis This theory is firmly based on the theoretical premise that ‗ideologies are typically, though not exclusively, expressed and reproduced in discourse and communication‘ (van Dijk, 1995a: 17) He also asserts that mental representations ‗are often articulated‘ along this ‘us versus them dimension, in which speakers of one group will generally tend to present themselves or their own group in positive terms, and other groups in negative terms’ Van Dijk (1995b) aims at ideological study of editorials and opinion articles in the U.S quality press As for him, ideologies of a group generate influences on the personal cognitions of the members of that particular group He uses the term ‗models‘ for these personal mental representations when they experience such social practices These models, according to van Dijk, ‗control how people act, speak, write or how they understand the social practices of others‘ (1995b: 20) He conducted a study on

23 articles on ‗terrorism‘ in the New York Times and the Washington Post He finds that there is a selection of discursive structures and strategies involved in ideologically based description of Them such as negative lexicalization, negative comparison, generalization, concretization, warning, norm and value violation, presupposition, etc He then concludes that one of the most striking ideologies manifested in all articles in the two above mentioned newspapers is ‗nationalism and ethnocentrism‘ He also observes that Us- Them polarization characterizes not just the opposition between Us (American, westerners) and Them (terrorists, Arabs, Muslim fundamentalists)

Review of previous studies