(Luận văn thạc sĩ) a critical discourse analysis of president trump speeches in the united nation general assembly

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY TRẦN NGỌC ANH TRÂM A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENT TRUMP’S SPEECHES IN THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY h Field: English Linguistics Code: 8.22.02.01 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Nguyễn Văn Long BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN TRẦN NGỌC ANH TRÂM PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGƠN PHÊ PHÁN TRONG CÁC BÀI PHÁT BIỂU CỦA TỔNG THỐNG TRUMP TẠI ĐẠI HỘI ĐỒNG LIÊN HIỆP QUỐC h Chuyên ngành: Ngôn ngữ Anh Mã số: 8.22.02.01 Người hướng dẫn: PGS TS Nguyễn Văn Long i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Except where reference is made in the text of the thesis, this thesis contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a thesis by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma No other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgements in the thesis This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution Binh Dinh, 2020 Tran Ngoc Anh Tram h ii ABSTRACT This study applied a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective to investigate three political speeches of President Trump’s in the United Nations Assembly General The data for analysis in this thesis was taken from the official website in the US, so the quality of the data is entirely reliable and available The study was based on the theory of Critical Discourse Analysis of Norman Fairclough with three parts: Description, Interpretation, and Explanation It focused on the textual description The research employed qualitative and quantitative approaches The results show that strategies of grammatical structure use to reflect the surrounding world like transitivity with two main processes material and relational; passive/ active structures, positive/ negative sentences, and nominalization was used in political h speeches The findings show that politicians employ linguistic features and persuasive strategies to represent their power and ideology Besides, this thesis can be used as a reference for teachers, learners, or those who are interested in political speeches and can provide them with a better understanding of the different perspectives of critical discourse analysis Hopefully, the results of this thesis may be useful for those who are interested in critical discourse analysis iii TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii LIST OF TABLES vi LIST OF FIGURES vii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Aims & Objectives 1.2.1 Aims h 1.2.2 Objectives 1.3 Research Questions 1.4 Scope of the Study 1.5 Significance of the Study 1.6 Organization of the study CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 Theoretical background 2.2.1 The concept of Discourse analysis 2.2.2 Critical Discourse Analysis 2.2.3 Fairclough’s Analytical framework 10 2.2.4 Systemic Functional Grammar’ role in CDA 16 iv 2.2 Previous studies 17 2.3 Political speech 19 2.4 Summary 20 CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODS 21 3.1 Research methods 21 3.2 Research procedures 21 3.3 Data collection 22 3.4 Data analysis 23 3.5 Reliability and validity 23 3.6 Summary 24 CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 25 h 4.1 Experiential values of grammatical features 25 4.2 Transitivity 25 4.2.1 Material process 26 4.2.2 Mental process 32 4.2.3 Relational process 37 4.2.4 Behavioral process 42 4.2.5 Verbal process 44 4.2.6 Frequency of occurrence of process in the speeches of President Trump in the UNGA 49 4.3 The use of voice 51 4.3.1 Active/Passive sentences 52 4.3.2 Positive/Negative sentences 55 v 4.4 The use of nominalizations 57 4.5 Summary 58 CHAPTER CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATION 60 5.1 Conclusion 60 5.2 Implication 61 5.3 Limitations 62 5.4 Suggestions for further research 63 REFERENCES 64 APPENDIX h vi LIST OF TABLES Table President Trump’s speeches in the United Nation General Assembly 23 Table Material process in three President Trump’s political speeches 26 Table Mental process in three President Trump’s political speeches 32 Table Mental process in three President Trump’s political speeches 37 Table 4 Mental process in three President Trump’s political speeches 42 Table Verbal process in three President Trump’s political speeches 44 Table Transitivity in three President Trump’s political speeches 49 Table Distribution of Active/Passive sentences in three President Trump’s political speeches 52 Table Distribution of Positive/Negative sentences in three President h Trump’s political speeches 55 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Discourse as text, interaction and context (Fairclough, 1989) 11 Figure 2.2 Fairclough’s three-dimensional framework for the analysis of discourse 12 Figure 2.3 Explanation (Fairclough, Language and Power) 15 Figure 4.1 Transitivity in English political speeches 50 Figure 4.2 Distribution of Active/Passive sentences in three President Trump’s political speeches 54 Figure 4.3 Distribution of Positive/Negative sentences in three President Trump’s political speeches 57 h CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale Nowadays, the world is changing rapidly day by day with the development and enhancement of everything Therefore, the interest in the language field has been more and more increase, mastering a language helps people approach with a lots of world news such as politics, society, business, etc The explosion of the mass media, information technology has created conditions and opportunities for people to communicate, link and share Language plays an important role in all aspects of our lives It can be used to verbal or non-verbal communication such as gestures, body language and tone of voice effectively Moreover, language is also said to be a means to convey h inner thoughts and emotions and influence other's minds through ideology and power embedded in language use We can discover the relationship between them when linguists investigate in the immense field of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) During the process of exploring new aspects in the language, we have to confront with lots of obstacles in interpreting language which is not only at such levels as phonology, syntax, lexical but also at the level of discourse CDA was developed by Roger Fowler and Gunther Kress in the late 1970s and the early 1980s It is considered as an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse in the perspective that language is viewed as a form of social practice According to Fairclough (2001), CDA studies and analyses any type of discourse (written text, speech, gesture, symbols, signs posters, electronic and printed advertisement and any type of communication) that systematically communicates with us CDA significantly expresses the