INTERPERSONAL MEANING IN GROUP COMMUNICATION IN THE MOVIE “13 DAYS” A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS ANALYSIS

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

ACULTY OF LINGUISTICS & CULTURES OF ENGLISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES

GRADUATION PAPER

INTERPERSONAL MEANING IN

ROUP COMMUNICATION IN THE MOVIE “13 DAYS”

A SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS ANALYSIS

HA NOI - 2021

ĐẠI HỌC QUOC GIA HÀ NOT

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ_”

-KHOA NGÔN NGỮ VÀ VAN HÓA CÁC NƯỚC NÓI TIENG ANH

KHÓA LUẬN TÓT NGHIỆP

Giang viên hướng dẫn: Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm (Ph.D)

Sinh viên: Đồ Tâm Nguyên

Khóa: QH2017.F1.E2

HÀ NỘI - NĂM 2021

Thereby state that I: Do Tam Nguyen — Class QH2017.F1.E2, being a

candidate for the degree of Bachelor of Arts (B.A Honours Programme) accept therequirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Bachelor’s

Graduation Paper deposited in the library.

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in thelibrary should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with

the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of

the paper.

Date

In the first place, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Mrs Nguyen ThiMinh Tam for her immense support to the completion of this paper As my lecturer in

the ‘Functional Grammar’ course, she helped build a strong foundation and evoked my

inspiration for conducting this study As my supervisor, she provided me withenlightening consultation, which guides me through each step of the researchingprocedure Without her wholehearted and intellectual stimulation, it would beimpossible for me to overcome the heavy workload and complete this thesis.

Moreover, I am also immensely grateful to other peers of QH2017.F1.E2 for their

valuable assistance during the process of doing this research Specifically, they were

willing to offer helpful explanation and great encouragement, which motivated me tofinish this study.

Finally, I greatly appreciate my family’s love and mental support, which gave mestrength to push forward with my thesis paper.

With sincere gratitude,

and objective orientation are rather favored The analysis also shows that plural firstperson and third person are the most frequently used as subjects compared to otherpronouns With regard to communication efficiency, it can be included that theprotagonist can wisely manage his employment of interpersonal resources tosuccessfully communicate in his groups Accordingly, he is able to closely cooperatewith other members, and maintain his influence on them in distinctive contexts, whilestill welcome their participation and strengthen group identity Concerning certainlimitations of this paper, further studies are reccommended to investigate theinterpersonal meaning more comprehensively and discuss how it is used by differentcharacters in the same situations.

Key words: Interpersonal meaning, group communication, the movie ’13 days’.

ii

6 Structure of the Study - c1 12 111 S SH TH ng ket 4CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE

¡404101 51.1 Interpersonal meaning in Systemic functional linguistics - 5

1.2 Group communicafÏ0I - - c5 2321183332111 3 113 135551155211 13

1.3 Review of previous sfudÌes - c SH HH HH He 16CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Ghi, 202.1 Description of the data SOUFC€ - - - Q1 HH kg, 202.2 Analytical framework (the Hallidayan interpersonal meaning

FAME WOK) 00000 ccccceeeesssseceecceceeesesaeeececeeeesesseeeeeeeseeeesssaeeeeeeeseeees 21

2.3 Data Analysis Procedure - - - - c1 1111221111111 1111181111181 1 1kg y 23

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Q- nhe 253.1 The protagonist’s employment of mood - - s5 5< xe 25

iii

3.1.1 The distribution of mood patterns and realized speech functions 25

3.1.2 The distribution of pronouns as subjects .- «c2 <2 29

3.1.3 Discussion LH HH HH HH HH HH 30

3.2 The distribution and realization of modality - - 55552 <c<++<<s 33

3.2.1 The distribution of modality cccccccececeeesseeeeeesteeeesensesenenaes 33

3.2.2 DisCussion HH TH HH HH kh 353.3 The contribution of interpersonal resources in the protagonist’s success

IN øroup communiCafiÏ0In - - - - - c1 HH net 363.3.1 Successful co-operation with others to achieve shared goals 36

3.3.2 A good sense of group participation and belonging - 403.3.3 Representation of group identity ccceeccceeesseeeesesseeeseaes 433.3.4 Maintenance of mutual influence in group - - <5+ 5: 45

CONCLUSION000157 491 Recapitulafion - - LH nH nH HHHH n nHệp 492 Timpllicationss a e 513 Limitations and Suggestions for Further Studies -.-‹‹ + -<<+ 52

LISTS OF TABLES, FIGURESLISTS OF TABLES

Table 1.1.1: Three Metafunctions of Language ssss + kssssee 5Table 1.1.2: The Structure of Mood Patterns cccccceeeeecceccceeesseeeeeeeceeseeanees 9Table 1.1.3: The Association of Mood Patterns, Grammar Structures

and Speech FunCtIOIS - - 5 111999311 1993 11 ng 10Table 1.1.4: The Classification of Modality -cs + +skssseeesvee IITable 3.2.1: Distribution and realization of modality in group 2 34Table 3.2.2: Distribution and realization of modality in group 3 35

LISTS OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1.1: Metafunctions in Relation to Register and Genre (Martin, 2002) 7Figure 2.2.1: The Realization of Speech Functions via Mood Patterns 22Figure 2.2.2: Modality types and vaÏu€s - << + vn ng 22Figure 3.1.1: Distribution of Mood pattern in Group Ì -‹«-++ <+ 25Figure 3.1.2: Distribution of Mood pattern in Group 2 - - «««<++<<+ 25Figure 3.1.3: Distribution of Mood pattern in Group 3 -. « «<< + 26Figure 3.1.4: Mood Pattern and Speech Function Association in Group 1 27Figure 3.1.5: Mood Pattern and Speech Function Association in Group 2 28Figure 3.1.6: Mood Pattern and Speech Function Association in Group3 29Figure 3.1.7: The Distribution of Pronouns as Subjects ::c:cceeesceeeeeeeeeeees 30Figure 3.2.1: Distribution and realization of modality in group 2 33Figure 3.2.2: Distribution and realization of modality in group 3 34

INTRODUCTION1 Rationale of the study

Communication has been the subject of numerous studies in various fields, suchas linguistics, psychology, education, technology and culture, owing to its significantroles in many aspects of life Researchers have made enormous attempts not only toidentify its nature but more importantly to develop practical strategies to enhance

communicative efficiency, especially in a group in which there are a number of

participants It can be seen that language serves as a vital tool for human interaction andtherefore, motivates linguists to make a crucial contribution to the body of literature.

In a broad view, linguistics has claimed its basic importance as the science for

‘the interpretation of human conduct in general’ (Sapir, 1929) It is, therefore, a crucial

tool for the study of the society, which inevitably evades other fields such asanthropology, culture, psychology and philosophy In our modern world, it is not thenature of language but the strategies to use language effectively that matters most in thegoal of this science (Tomic & Shuy, 1987) From this perspective, systemic functionallinguistics is considered to be one of the most important approaches toward language

studies as it focuses on the functional aspect of language (Matthiessen, 2012) With

regard to the interactive nature of communication and group, it is essential that theInterpersonal line of meaning might play an indispensable part in a successfulconversation.

Considering the discourses in the political area, it is hardly possible to gather realdata due to its confidential content An alternative to an authentic conversation wouldprobably be a mediated version with professional approval In this research, the script

of the movie ‘13 days’ was chosen as the target data source, and thus, the researcher

aims at discovering the influence of Interpersonal resources on communicationefficiency in a political communicative discourse.

2 Significance

Theoretically, this analysis can make a positive contribution to the body ofliterature, which can be helpful for future research of the same topic Specifically, it canbe seen that there are only a few studies conducted to apply the framework of systemic

functional linguistics in mediated discourses in the political area This may not be an

ideal sample for actual politicians; however, it can still be useful for general

conversation in which the communicators may face serious topics or complexrelationships among themselves From a more practical perspective, in order to measurethe value of this paper, it is essential to look back at its data source — the movie ‘13

days’ Regarding the film’s primary inspiration, the Cuban Missile Crisis is considered

one of the most critical events in the second half of the Cold War, and thus, proved itssignificance as a noticeable subject for studies in various fields including politics,military and international relationship (Allison, 1969) The movie, in its turn, was prizedfor its success in depicting the contemporary situation of the U.S., and the White Housespecifically, as a great attempt was made to eradicate the possibility of warfare (Doherty,2001) Interestingly, it also received attention from course designers as a resource forteaching and learning In 2020, the movie was included in the course ‘Teamwork Skills:

Communicating Effectively in Groups' by University of Colorado Boulder, which raised

researcher’s interest in how the language in the movie can be a sample for learning

effective communication skills.

After this study, the researcher expects to systematically describe the realization,contribution and possible effects of interpersonal meaning in group communication,concerning the specific case of Kenneth P O'Donnell (played by Kevin Costner) Toacademics, this can serve as a helpful reference for their future comparative discussionamong different findings on similar data in the literature To educators and students, itis anticipated to make certain implications of the employment of the interpersonalresources as reliable support for enhancing communication efficiency.

3 Research aims and research question

The thesis aims at exploring how interpersonal resources are employed by the

protagonist in group communication in the movie “13 days” To fulfill this aim, the

thesis writer sets out two research objectives, which are

1 To investigate the use of interpersonal meaning of the protagonist’sutterances when communicating in groups;

2 To analyze the effect of interpersonal meaning in group communication.

In accordance with the two objective above, the research question is formulatedas follows:

- How are interpersonal resources used by the protagonist when communicatingin groups?

4 Scope of the study

In this study, it is essential to notice that the analysis exclusively targeted themood and modality resources used by the protagonist in group communication Firstly,

only what is said can be included in the raw data, which means that other factors of aconversation such as meaningful silence and body language were not analyzed despitetheir significance in the communication process Secondly, the specific type of discourseto be investigated was limited to group communication, excluding other genres, namely,

monologues and two-sided dialogue Moreover, the researcher also scoped the range of

raw data down to the utterances made by the main character Kenneth P O’Donnell of

the movie only Finally, regarding different aspects of interpersonal meaning, theresearch solely concentrated on mood and modality as the key resources of interpersonalmeaning.

5 Methods of the study

The researcher followed a mixed design which combines both qualitative andquantitative analysis Accordingly, the script extracts were investigated and processedinto concrete statistics These numbers were then generalized to specific conclusions.

Simultaneously, the Hallidayan framework is also applied to work on the interpersonal

resources, specifically mood and modality, in the collected data.6 Structure of the study

The study is divided into the parts as follows:

Introduction presents general information about the research problems andrationale for the research, together with the research aims, the research question, the

significance and the scope.

Chapter 1: Theoretical Background and Literature Review provides an

overview of the theories and previous studies related to the research topic.

Chapter 2: Research Methodology specifies the research methods, the data

corpus, the analytical framework, data collection and data analysis procedure.

Chapter 3: Findings and Discussion is concerned with the findings and

discussion in accordance with the research question.

Conclusion summarizes the main findings, clarifies the limitations of the studyand provides suggestions for further research.

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATUREREVIEW

1.1 Interpersonal meaning in Systemic functional linguistics

Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is a linguistic theory primarily developedby Michael Halliday in the 1960s (Halliday, 1978, 1984; Halliday & Matthiessen, 2004).

SFL considers the relationship between the two aspects of “systemic” and “functional”

of language in the meaning-making process Specifically, speakers/writers can makechoices of their language, each of which would have different functions based on the

context From this perspective, Halliday’s framework enables analysts to interpret the

meaning of a text by providing the tools to recognize which options are made and toexplore their functions in contexts.

Overall, language serves three metafunctions or meanings including ideational,interpersonal and textual, respectively considering language as a representation, as an

exchange and as a message Ideational metafunction deals with the expression of

‘content’ or the speaker’s/ writer’s experience of the world Additionally, interpersonal

metafunction reflects the relationship between the speaker and the hearer, as well ashis/her assessment, opinion or attitude to the proposition Finally, textual metafunction

concerns how the message fits in with the prior and following text and relates language

to the context in which it is used A better insight into these metafunctions can be gained

through a simple analysis of the utterance ‘Who’s taken her calculator?’ as follow

(Thompson, 1996, pp 29-32)

Table 1.1.1: Three Metafunctions of Language

Metafunction | Who ` Taken her calculator?

Ideational Actor Process Goal

Interpersonal | Subject Finite Predicator Complement

Textual Theme Rheme

From Ideational perspective, the main concern is about the event that happened,which is the fact that someone has ‘taken’ ‘her calculator’ In other words, the analysisdealt with the question of who did what to whom and in what circumstances Therefore,

‘who’ is labelled as Actor, or the ‘doer’ of the action mentioned in the Process However,

another approach is the Interpersonal one, in which the main focus is on the

communicators’ negotiation for meaning In this case, the speaker wants to address theperson who has done the action and thus, ‘who’ is regarded as Subject Additionally,that ‘Who’ is also Theme indicates that the person mentioned above is also the starting

point of the speaker This way of analysis employs the Textual aspect of language,specifically implying that an attempt is being made to find out the one who has done theaction.

Accordingly, SFL provides three abstract categories: field, tenor and mode tospecify language — context interdependence Field refers to the ideational resources, thatis the topic or content being spoken/written about (ideational meaning) Tenor indicates

the aspect of speaker-listener relationship as well as the speaker’s attitude (interpersonal

meaning) Mode presents the interdependence between language and context (textualmeaning) (as illustrated in Figure 1.1.1) Tenor, specifically, determines the participants(speaker/writer and hearer/reader) in a discourse, their relationships as close or distance(via, for instance, language style and formality), their purpose (such as to offer, tocommand, to accept or to refuse) and their assumed validity of the proposition made(whether positive or negative) These features are implicated from both linguistic andcontextual elements.

Figure 1.1.1: Metafunctions in Relation to Register and Genre (Martin, 2002)

register/ > metaredundancy(realisation)

Coming back to the example in Table 1.1.1, it is impossible to completely

comprehend the utterance ‘Who’s taken her calculator’ with only one of the categories

mentioned First, it is necessary to have a look at the specific context of the sentence.As proposed by Thompson (1996, p.29), a student complains to her teacher that someone

has taken her calculator while she is not looking In this circumstance, the teacher would

try to identify the (unknown) child and make him/her return the calculator Then, byanalyzing his language choice, it is possible to implicate the embedded meaning he tendsto negotiate Firstly, owing to the structure of the utterance — Actor (X)/ Process (hastaken)/ Goal (the calculator) — it can be seen that the teacher applies a rather direct stance

towards the situation as he explicitly refers to the action of taking the calculator.

Accordingly, this is the ideational resources (Field) which expresses the primarycontent/event being spoken about Besides, an analysis on Tenor reveals other important

details embedded in the utterance Specifically, the purpose of the teacher is to gain the

missing information (the person who has taken the calculator) as implicated by theimperative form, particularly a W-H question with ‘Who’ From this, it can also be

inferred that the relationship between the speakers and the listeners are quite close andthe former seems to have more power over the latter (which is true in this case of teacher

and students) Finally, regarding Mode, there is little to conclude about this utterance;however, it is expected that what the teacher says afterward must be related to either theperson who does the action or the action itself For example, he may tell the students

“Give it back to her’ A relation between the two sentences lies in the use of the pronoun

‘her’ to refer to the girl who has lost her calculator and that the addressee of the second

must be the unknown ‘Who’ in the preceding one.

In order to attain better understanding of the Interpersonal meaning, it is

necessary to look at the roles of the speaker and the listener In any communication

exchange, the participants have to engage themselves in a particular purpose(Thompson, 1996), of either giving (and taking) or demanding (and being given) a kindof commodity Halliday (1994) proposes two commodities of information and goods-&-services Together with the four communicating purposes, they mark four basic

speech functions: statement (giving information), question (demanding information),

offer (giving goods-&-services) and command (demanding goods-&-services) Thesefunctions relate closely to the Mood pattern, with each of them (except for offer) beingassociated with a specific grammatical structure: statements are most naturally realizedby declarative clauses, questions by interrogative clauses and command by imperative

clauses By identifying the two components of Mood - Subject as the entity responsible

for the validity of the proposition and Finite as the representation of validity degree and its pattern, the grammar structure can be determined (Table 1.1.2)

-Table 1.1.2: The Structure of Mood Patterns

RESIDUESubject Finite

She didn’t tell the truth.MOOD

she tell the truth?

MOOD RESIDUE

Don’t tell lie to me!

Regarding the declarative mood, Subject is placed before the Finite in the mood

pattern For example, in the sentence She didn’t tell the truth, Subject She is followed

by Finite didn’t, which gives information about the past action tell the truth (Residue)to not be conducted by a specific female person Accordingly, a statement is performed

by a declarative mood as its natural associated grammar structure Similarly, Did she

tell the truth? is a question realized by an interrogative clause and Don’t tell lies to me

is a command realized by an imperative clause The only speech function with no

associated structure is offer, as illustrated in Table 1.1.3 For instance, a will to help canbe expressed via any of the three utterances: I will help you (Declarative), Shall I helpyou? (Interrogative) or Let me help you (Imperative).

Table 1.1.3: The Association of Mood Patterns, Grammar Structures and Speech

G Declarative Interrogative Imperativestructure

The speech functionPs Statement Question Command Offer

Nevertheless, there are situations in which a clause belongs to none of theaforementioned mood pattern Accordingly, the term ninor mood or minor clausewould be used to describe such irregular cases It is also crucial to note that the naturalmatch between the grammar structure and the speech function does not apply to allcircumstances On the contrary, the mismatch, which is referred to as Indirect speechacts, even poses the problem of mutual understanding in communication (Searle, 1975).Accordingly, the speaker may use a declarative structure ‘I want you to do it’, but

actually means to request, or ‘command’, the listener More seriously, some utterances

are originally made indirectly, which requires the communicators to do a moredemanding task of identifying the illocutionary forces (Holtgraves, 1999) Suchincongruence between the speech function and the mood option is called the moodmetaphor (Devrim, 2015) The use of indirect speech acts, however, may have certaineffects on the interpersonal relationship between the communicators (Sbisa, 2000;Ferris, 2007) Therefore, the analysis of Mood and Speech Functions would be of benefitto improve the effectiveness of communication.

Another important Interpersonal resource is Modality Basically, it is the degree

of validity that is given to the proposition by the speaker (Thompson, 1996) This

concept, however, can be broken down into smaller components following threeparticular criteria Firstly, considering the exchanged commodities, modality can be

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divided into Modalization (for information) and Modulation (for goods-&-services).Modalization assesses the validity of information in terms of Probability (how likelyit is to be true) and Usuality (How frequently it is true) On the other hand, Modulation

evaluates the degree of Obligation on the listener to give the demanded

goods-&-services; or it concerns the degree of Inclination, or willingness of the speaker to givethe offered goods-&-services Second, the Modality commitment, which locates theproposition in the space between the two extreme points of positive and negative,includes 3 values of high, median and low Finally, the Modality orientation also

provides another way to classify Modality into subjective and objective (whether the

speakers regard the validity degree as his own opinion or as the quality of the describedevent itself) or implicit and explicit (how openly the speaker accepts his responsibilityfor validity evaluation) Additionally, modality can be realized explicitly in the sameclause as the proposition via finite modal operators, mood adjuncts, passive verbpredicators and adjective predicators (Halliday, 1994) or implicitly in a separate clause.The classification of modality can be summarized in Table 1.1.4 below

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These categories of modality are hardly independent but rather in a complex

manner To be specific, the examples below contain different types, value andorientation of modality:

(1) She may be telling the truth.

(2) I’m sure that she is telling the truth.

(3) It is possible that she is telling the truth.(4) She always tells the truth.

(5) She must tell the truth.

In (1), (2) and (3), Probability is used to express the speaker’s level of certaintytowards the information exchanged, however, Usuality and Obligation respective appearin (4) and (5) to indicate the frequency of the information and the pressure on theaddressee to perform the desired goods-&-services Concerning the value of modality,it can be seen that a high degree of commitment is indicated in (2), (4), and (5) whilethe low one appears in (1) and (3) Additionally, with regard to the orientation,

subjective modality is only used in (2) in which the speaker refers to the evaluation ashis own opinion Nonetheless, both (2) and (3) employ implicit modality in dependent

clauses, rather than explicit modality in the same clause with the proposition in others.

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Other crucial types of Interpersonal resources are appraisal language andInterpersonal theme The latter is a mingle between the Interpersonal and the Textualmeaning While a theme concerns the main focus of a clause, an Interpersonal themegoes further by indicating that main focus to be the evaluation of the speaker It can berealized by a vocative (an item to address), a modal adjunct or a finite verbal operator(Halliday, 1994) With regard to appraisal language, unlike modality, it does not onlyrefer to the speakers’ level of approval, certainty and commitment toward the content (aperson, thing, behavior, event, situation or idea) presented in the discourse Furthermore,

it also expresses the evaluative stances in which the speakers position themselves andthe actual or potential respondents in mutual interaction (Martin & White, 2005) Thereis no formula for the analysis of this evaluation due to its subjectivity and unlimitedrealization tools (Thompson, 1996) The same content might receive different or evenopposite appraisal from separate speakers, mostly depending on their purposes and thecontext; and different speakers might opt for different ways to express their evaluation.

However, as stated in the scope of the study, neither interpersonal theme nor appraisal

language would be included in the focus of this study.

Communication, thus, can be understood as a process of interaction andinfluencing among individuals (Craig & Muller, 2008) The three most widespreadmodels of communication include Linear, Interactional and Transactional (Pierce &

Corey, 2009) Firstly, the Linear Model (Shannon & Weaver, 1949) considers

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communication as a linear process in which the sender (the source of information),through a channel (the pathway of communication), sends a message (sounds, wordsand behaviors) to the receiver (the target of the message) Besides, any obstacles to this

process are considered noise The second model, the Interactional Model (Schramm,

1954), though basically deploys all the components of the Linear Model, proposes amore dynamic view of communication by providing the element of feedback (a responsefrom the receiver to the sender, either verbal or nonverbal) and thus, regardingcommunication as a bidirectional and ongoing process Then, the Transactional Model(Barnlund, 1970) even moves further by firstly merging the sender and the receiver intocommunicators, which implies that a person can be both the speaker and the hearer, andunderstanding is achieved via cooperation Additionally, the role of context (specificallythe field of experience), as well as the interdependence of messages, is also emphasizedregarding the act of making and negotiating for meaning.

It can be seen that these models are similar in the sense that they all considercommunication as the transmission of information, which is criticized by Koschmann

in his course ‘Teamwork Skills: Communicating Effectively in Groups’ (n.d.) asmechanical and insufficient He also proposed the Social Construction Model, in which

communication is the process of individuals building their social world and producingmeaning together This is supported by Pierce (2007) in his book ‘Making SocialWorlds: A Communication Perspective’ Accordingly, communication is established in

two levels: The Content level (What we say) and the Relationship level (How we sayit), with the latter being even more crucial to communicate successfully From this

perspective, analysis into communication should focus on the context in which the

utterances are delivered as well as the specific selection of words or expressions in orderto clarify the real message hidden behind the semantic resources As a result, the roles

of tenor and interpersonal meaning (which are concerned about the speaker-listenerrelationship and personal attitudes towards the content of the conversation) are moreemphasized Accordingly, the choice of a certain mood pattern or modality operators to

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transfer the message might have vital effects on the fulfillment of the originalcommunicating purposes.

Regarding the concept of group, it is important to distinguish between a groupand a general collection of individuals Specifically, the latter can only be considered agroup if it can satisfy three conditions, in which its members (1) work together to achievea shared goal, (2) develop a sense of group participation and belonging, (3) create

group’s collective and selective identities, and (4) enacting a mechanism for mutual

influence and develop group maintenance (Hirokawa, Cathcart, Samovar & Henman,2003).

Group communication, therefore, basically refers to the communication betweenmembers of a group To be specific, this study employs the definition proposed by Feng

(2017) as follows: “Group communication is the interaction of three or more

interdependent people working to achieve a common goal” (p.1608).

It is essential to clearly differentiate group communication from those of group interaction in order to clarify its significance in the body of literature.Accordingly, the distinction in communicators’ relationships would primarily decidehow they communicate with each other or in other words, affect their choice of

non-interpersonal resources Despite a shared group identity, each member is most likely toobtain distinctive personal identities (Charman, 2017), which would lead to differentrelationships between different members and among the whole group as well It is,nonetheless, noted that a consistent attitude and the sense of group belonging must stillbe maintained as stated in the definition aforementioned These dynamic buthomogeneous changes in tenor cannot be seen in non-group communication such as thatbetween two individuals or another among a collection of random people.

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1.3 Review of previous studies

The analysis on functional grammar, particularly Interpersonal meaning, hasreceived considerable attention from researchers, regarding the topic of politics (Li,2002; Ye, 2010; Jin & Lu, 2013; Yang, 2017; Kuang & Liu, 2017; Chen 2017; Bustam,2020) Accordingly, the interpersonal resources, mostly Mood and Modality, have been

investigated throughout the discourse to identify their potential effects, as well as their

contribution to the effectiveness of the speakers in negotiating their meanings.

One of the primary findings about interpersonal metafunction is the distributionof Mood structures and their matching with the embedded speech functions A commonresult found in these studies is the domination of declarative mood in frequency over the

others This is, as explained by the researchers, the consequence of the compatibilitybetween the nature of the declarative pattern and the characteristics of a political speech

(Ye, 2010) Accordingly, declarative clauses functioning as statements are preferablyemployed to deliver factual information, personal viewpoints as well as the speakers’messages (Kuang & Liu, 2017; Bustam 2020) Another benefit of declarative mood is

its positive contribution to the objectiveness of the whole speech, which is especially

important for political purposes (Chen, 2017) Regarding the use of Imperative mood,

it is claimed that this mood pattern can help the speaker to grasp the audiences’ attentionand motivate them to follow his/her message (Kuang & Liu, 2017) Additionally, in

order to avoid unnecessary pressure on the listeners, “Let’s’ imperative is recommendedas it can decrease the level of imposition and hence, shorten the distance between theaddresser and the addressee(s) (Yang, 2017; Chen, 2017) On the other hand,interrogative mood is the least favored due to its low efficiency in convincing others

(Ye, 2010) However, there are still some benefits of this mood pattern in a politicalspeech; specifically, it helps improve the audiences’ concentration on the delivered

message and create an intimate dialogic style to bring them closer to the speaker (Ye,2010; Kuang & Liu, 2017) As a consequence, it can be inferred that in this genre,

16

interrogative clauses are likely to perform certain functions other than questions as theyare not used to require information from the listeners.

Considering the two elements of a mood pattern, it can be concluded that differentpronouns would have distinct interpersonal functions when used as subjects (Li, 2002).Accordingly, the use of a certain pronoun in the speech can create a specific effect on

its efficiency and success The plural first person ‘we’ is reported to dominate over the

others (Yang, 2017; Bustam, 2020) This might be because of its advantage in buildinga close relationship among the speaker and the listeners, especially when the former aimto require actions from the latter (Li, 2002; Jin & Lu, 2013, Kuang & Liu, 2017).

Meanwhile, the singular first person ‘I’ is not regularly employed as it is criticized to

lower the objectivity of the information and messages given (Jin & Lu, 2013) However,under circumstances in which there is a need to impose will power on the audiences, ‘I’would be more effective in showing a sense of strong authority (Li, 2002; Bustam,

2020)) With regard to the use of the second person ‘you’, the speaker can establish a

more interactive speech and draw attention to what he/she says (Li, 2002; Ye, 2010; Jin& Lu, 2013) Finally, it is also recommended in the previous studies that people/publicspeakers should use third person pronouns to deliver the message in a more objectiveand persuasive manner (Jin & Lu, 2013; Kuang & Liu, 2017).

In addition to the mood pattern, modality is also of great consideration as another

crucial resource of interpersonal meaning Accordingly, Probability and Obligation arereported to appear the most frequently, followed by Inclination and Usuality (Ye, 2010;Yang, 2017; Chen, 2017; Bustam, 2020) This finding is compatible with the expectedpurposes of a political speech, which is to give information and demand services (Ye,2010) Specifically, while delivering their messages, politicians are reported to have atendency to refer to the future, to require actions from the audiences as well as to expresstheir strong wishes and commitment (Yang, 2017; Bustam, 2020) Therefore,Probability, Obligation and Inclination would be the optimum options for the speakers

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to convey essential shades of meaning through their speeches Regarding the modalityvalue, it is reported that median operators are the most favored owing to their advantagesover the others (Yang, 2017; Kuang & Liu, 2017; Bustam, 2020) Accordingly, it isclaimed to be less aggressive but still convincible enough to persuade the listeners, andthus, can help avoid either uncertainty or excessive imposition in comparison with lowand high value respectively (Jin & Lu, 2013; Yang, 2017) Lastly, it can also be seenthat modal auxiliaries are the most common realization of modality (Jin & Lu, 2013;Yang, 2017; Chen, 2017; Bustam, 2020) In other words, it has been found that the

speakers have a tendency to employ explicit operators, which is suitable with the masspublic audiences.

Besides the monologue speeches, previous studies have also analyzed moreinteractive discourses, which is, in this case, movies script or subtitles Accordingly,

different studies on 3 movies ‘Up’, “Toy story 3’ and ‘Freedom Writers’ have been

reviewed by Ridha & Sortha (2012), Viana (2013) and Mughibbah (2017) Theinvestigation in the mood pattern reveals that Declarative clauses appear the most

frequently in the characters’ utterances (61.2%), followed by Imperative (23.7%) and

Interrogative (15.1%) (Viana, 2013) Additionally, in terms of the speech functions,Statement also ranks first in frequency (approximately 56%) compared to others whileOffer (16.11%), Question (14.49%), and Command (13.35%) respectively take the nextpositions but without a big difference in their statistics It, thus, can be inferred that inconversation, the act of giving information, viewpoints or feelings is the most desiredwhile goods-and-services turn to be the minor type of commodities Moreover, moodmetaphor is rather favored as can be seen in the incompatibility between the distributionof mood patterns and speech functions A research on the interpersonal meaning in themovie ‘Up’ provides quite a similar result with Statement as the most common (55.7%)

(Ridha & Sortha, 2013) Nevertheless, while Command (22.6%) and Question (20%)still have considerable frequency, Offer only accounts for an insignificant percentage(under 2%) of all the clauses In the movie “Freedom Writers”, a crucial finding is the

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appearance of minor clauses which do not follow any certain mood patterns(Mughibbah, 2017) One conclusion is that the modality resources in these discourses

are either of minor importance or missing from the researcher’s consideration.

Generally, it can be seen that, despite the differences in the discourses beinganalyzed and the researchers’ purposes, previous studies conducted by different scholarshave confirmed that the realization of interpersonal meaning does have certain influenceon the success of the speakers, whether in comparison to their counterparts/ competitorsor not However, there is still a gap in the literature that is concerned about variousgenres of discourse related to politics, rather than speeches These monologues, despitetheir interaction with the audience in real situations, are investigated separately fromtheir potential respondents, and thus, become rather linear from an interpersonalperspective.

Regarding the interactive nature of communication, and group communication inparticular, as mentioned above, it would be beneficial to analyze the possible effects of

language, specifically interpersonal meaning, being used on the effectiveness ofinteraction among group members Another new aspect of this study is about the data

source - the movie “Thirteen days’ - which was not thoroughly researched linguisticallyas a discourse rather than as a movie in genre analysis.

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CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY2.1 Description of the data source

The movie ‘Thirteen days’ is a 145-minute drama, history and thriller movie

released in 2000 It is directed by Roger Donaldson, written by David Self based on thebook ‘The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis’by Ernest R May and Philip D Zelikow, and starring Kevin Costner as top White Houseassistant Kenneth P O'Donnell (the protagonist), Bruce Greenwood as President JohnF Kennedy, Steven Culp as Attorney General Robert F Kennedy, and Dylan Baker as

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

The movie, as well as its former written version, depicted the real event of CubanMissile Crisis in 1962 from the perspective of the US political leadership The plotbegins with photos of Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missiles with nuclear weaponsbeing placed in Cuba, resulting in threat of military conflicts between the Soviet Unionand the US In the end, this threat was eliminated peacefully with an agreement on bothsides removing their nuclear missiles from Cuba and Turkey.

The focus of this research is the protagonist’ use of the interpersonal resources ingroup communication with others people in the movie Kenneth O’Donnell, as the actual

special assistant and appointments secretary to the president, was praised to be a fair andobjective politician who had considerable influence on important decisions of the WhiteHouse in his serving times under president John F Kennedy (Salinger, 1966) However,his role in the government and in the missile crisis particularly is still a controversy withthose who regard him as a true influencer as in the movie and others who claim it asmere exaggeration (Allison, 1969) Generally, it can be concluded that his on-screenportrayal is highly appreciated as the protagonist as well as an influential politician Inthis study, the sole target subject of the analysis is the transcript collected fromhttps://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/13_days.html and synthesized with the screenplayfollowing the movie scenes The target transcript extracts would be selected by assessing

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their equivalent scenes that include the protagonist and satisfy the criteria of a groupcommunication as specified above in 1.2 Group communication Besides theutterances of the protagonist, those of other characters would also be considered as partof the context of communication so as to analyze the language more thoroughly Thepurpose of the analysis is to identify the interpersonal resources, by analyzing the moodpattern and the use of modality, as well as their efficiency in satisfying the aims of thecharacters It is noted that, the evaluation of the interpersonal meaning would be based

on the level of success that O’Donnell makes of his objectives in each scene selected.

Specifically, the protagonist belongs to three major groups including his family(as a husband and a father), the US government (as an official in the White House) andthe Kennedys — advocates of the president (as the top White House assistant) Basically,these three different groups are different from each other in not only the content of theircommunication, but also, and more importantly, the roles of the members as well astheir relationships This would inevitably lead to discrepancies in the use of language to

achieve a specific communication goal, which would be examined in the study.

2.2 Analytical framework (the Hallidayan interpersonal meaning framework)A qualitative approach assisted by quantitative statistical analysis was selectedin this study because it could be applied to a large data source (the movie transcript inthis case) to give general judgement on the use of Interpersonal meaning as well as itsinfluences on the analyzed group communication This was achieved by identifying thepattern of Mood, the distribution, value and operators of Modality and inferring the

effects of these elements on the discourse and the communicators regarding the specific

context of the movie.

This research takes Systemic Functional Linguistics theory proposed by Halliday

in the 1960s as the theoretical framework Specifically, Interpersonal meaning is the sole

concentration of the analysis This line of meaning includes two smaller components ofMood and Modality (Halliday 1984) Accordingly, Mood covers the complete patterns

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of Declarative, Interrogative, Imperative and Minor ones to present the exchange ofinformation in relation to different speech functions (Statement, Question, Demand and

Offer) as illustrated in Figure 2.2.1 Moreover, Modality, which indicates the validityof the speaker’s proposition, is divided into Modalization (Probability or Usuality) and

Modulation (Obligation or Inclination) and realized by a variety of modality operators

such as modals and mood adjuncts at three separate values as in Figure 2.2.2.

Figure 2.2.1: The Realization of Speech Functions via Mood Patterns

Question ; Command

InterrogativeF^S

2.3 Data Analysis Procedure

The first stage was concerned with the first research aim as to investigate the useof interpersonal meaning of the protagonist’s utterances when communicating in groups.Accordingly, a quantitative analysis was carried out to collect information about theprotagonist’s use of Interpersonal meaning in his communication with other memberswithin the three aforementioned groups: His family (G1), the US government (G2) andthe Kennedys (G3) Regarding the nature of the data source as the interaction in a group,it is noted that the utterances between two individuals for personal purposes or interestswere excluded from the analyzing process even though they might appear in the groupcontext In addition, one-way speech such as the public broadcast of the presidential

address, though involving other officials of the White House, also lied outside the scopeof this research.

Initially, the target transcript extracts collected were compiled and organizedaccording to their equivalent scenes Specifically, the chosen extracts were numberedfrom 1 to 14 according to the chronological order of their equivalent scenes Forexample, the script of the first scene was labeled as Scene 1 Additionally, a similar rule

was applied to the numbering of the protagonist’s utterances in these scenes, with each

sentence being considered as a separate utterance Nonetheless, consecutive clauses ofthe same grammar structure and the same speech function were combined as oneutterance Accordingly, the label of the target utterances followed the format (n.x), inwhich n stands for the numbering of the scene they belong to and x presents theirappearing order After that, each scene was analyzed separately in detail using theanalytical framework before the results were combined in an overall report Thenumbers were then coded into percentages using the following formula:

X = F/S *100 X: the percentage of each type

F: the frequency of occurrence of each typeS: the total number

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To represent the general use of Interpersonal resources, the statistics were alsotransferred to the form of pie and bar chart.

The second stage concentrated on the second aim of the study, which is to analyzethe effect of interpersonal meaning in group communication Specifically, a qualitativeanalysis was conducted on the typical (and exceptional) cases from the generaltrends/patterns, based on the statistics from the first stage, to work out the effects (both

positive and negative) of the use of Interpersonal meaning From this, the researcher

came to particular conclusions about the influences of interpersonal meaning oncommunication efficiency (in comparison with related findings from the literature body)

with regard to the movie's overall context and the role of the protagonist Moreover,

further implication on how to make use of it to enhance communication was alsoprovided.

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CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION3.1 The protagonist’s employment of mood

3.1.1 The distribution of mood patterns and realized speech functions

Initially, the number of the utterances made by O’Donnell in G1, G2 and G3 isrespectively 16, 26 and 27 Additionally, from the collected statistics, it can be seen that

there is an uneven distribution of the four mood patterns in each group as well as amongthree of them This can be seen in the pie charts below.

Figure 3.1.1: Distribution of Mood pattern in Group 1

DeclarativeMi Imperative

WM InterrogativeTM Minor

As can be observed Figure 3.1.1, Minor mood is the most frequently used with 7

out of 16 clauses in Group 1 Declarative pattern ranks second with 5 clauses, followed

by Imperative and Interrogative with 3 and 1 clauses respectively.

Figure 3.1.2: Distribution of Mood pattern in Group 2

DeclarativeMi Imperative

WM InterrogativeTM Minor

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In group 2, Declarative mood shows the widest distribution over the protagonist’sutterances (11 out of 26) Imperative and Interrogative patterns, however, are the least

used, respectively 3 and 4 clauses Minor mood, though being used in 8 utterances (1more than in group 1), stays at the second position only.

Figure 3.1.3: Distribution of Mood pattern in Group 3

Mi DeclarativeMi Imperative

WM Interrogative

TM Minor

In group 3, Declarative accounts for the majority of all the mood patterns (33 out

of 47 utterances) Little difference can be seen between Imperative and Minor mood,

which are used respectively in 5 and 7 clauses Interrogative, nonetheless, appears only

twice as the least frequent.

Regarding the realized speech functions, their detailed association with the four

mood patterns is presented in bar graphs as follows.

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, ẤN l | ll

Statement Command Question Response Aknowledge

= Declarative Imperative Interrogative TM Minor

It can be seen that Statement is the most frequently used speech function by theprotagonist in his family (approximately 35.3%) There is little difference between thefrequency of Command and Question (around 23.5%) Acknowledge Statement andResponse stay in the last place with 11.8% and 5.9% respectively Regarding the Moodpattern, Minor mood appears to be the most active as it performs almost all therecognized speech functions (except for Command) while only one Interrogative clauseis used Declarative and Imperative mood are interchangeably employed to execute

Command, but the former overwhelms in the Statement category.

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Figure 3.1.5:

Mood Pattern and Speech Function Association in Group 27

‘Ads Poa tl

Statement Command Question Response Aknowledge

mDeclaraive Imperative MInterrogative TM Minor

In Group 2, Statement is still the dominant speech function (around 53.8%),followed by Acknowledge Statement (nearly 23.1%) The others only account for theminority with the same proportion as Acknowledge Statement altogether.

Simultaneously, it is shown that Declarative becomes the most prominent, being used

in Statement, Command, Acknowledge Statement and Response The second place

belongs to Minor mood which is mostly used as Statement Interrogative and Imperativestill remain minor despite a slightly increased frequency level of the former.

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Figure 3.1.6:

Mood Pattern and Speech Function Association in Group 325

Statement Command Question Response Aknowledge Acknowledgestatement offer

= Declarative Imperative Interrogative TM Minor

Concerning Group 3, there is a sharp increase in the number of Statements

recognized, together with the first appearance of Acknowledge Offer Besides, there is

a little difference in the overall distribution of other speech functions Accordingly, thedominant is still Statement (approximately 57.4%), but Command _ surpassesAcknowledge Statement to gain the second position, with the percentage of 24.4% and

10.6% respectively In addition, Declarative pattern also observes a significant rise innumber in the categories of Statement and Command.

3.1.2 The distribution of pronouns as subjects

Another important finding is the employment of pronouns, which has thedistinctive features of both general political discourses and those of interactiveconversation As can be observed from the chart below (Figure 3.1.7), the singular firstperson ƒ is the least used (13.8%) and mostly appears in G3 (8.6%) On the other hand,third person pronouns (such as they, it, he and everyone) are reported to be used the most

(approximately 31%), one time more than the plural first person we at the second place.

However, these two pronouns are not recognized in G1 Additionally, it is also noted

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that the second person you accounts for a considerable percentage of the pronounresources (22.4%).

Figure 3.1.7: The Distribution of Pronouns as Subjects

Group 1 Group 2 Group 3

It can be seen from the pie charts above that declarative is the most prominent of

the four mood patterns identified in the protagonist’s utterances during his

communication in all groups, which is similar to the results found in previous studies(Ye, 2010; Viana, 2013; Yang, 2017) However, it is noticeable that there is a differencein its distribution in relation with other moods regarding distinctive genres of discourse.

Specifically, while declarative clauses usually account for around 90% in monologues(Ye, 2010; Yang, 2017; Chen, 2017), the percentage is only over 50% in interactive

communication, particularly approximately 55.6% in ‘13 days’ as illustrated in 3.1.1

and 61.2% in “Toy story 3’ (Viana, 2013) In addition, another shared finding with theavailable literature reveals that declarative pattern is the most common used to perform

Statements (Ye, 2010; Bustam, 2020) It, therefore, can be inferred that this type of

mood dominates others regardless of genres and topics, as the most common way todeliver a message However, unlike in political address, declarative clauses are also

active in serving other functions as well, especially command (30%).

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In terms of Imperative mood, the statistics show that it is employed more indialogues than in one-way speeches, with the proportion of 13.3% and less than 10%respectively (Yang, 2017; Chen, 2017) A possible explanation is the influence of tenor,specifically the role and relationship between those involved in the communicatingprocess While unnecessary imposition would be a disadvantage of politicians in theirpublic speech, the exertion of authority and power can be effective in a conversation

among those of similar position or status Besides, an exclusive result of this researchreveals multiple functions to be realized by Imperative mood such as Statement,

Response and Acknowledge Statement, other than only Command as in the previousstudies This implies that the speakers may also put pressure on others when giving

opinions or feelings to exercise their power It is also noticed that the protagonist’s

Imperative Commands appear to be different from those in public addresses as theymostly require rather than invite actions from the listeners as stated by Ye (2010) and

Yang (2017).

With regard to Interrogative, the analysis shows that it is the least frequently usedamong the four identified moods, which is consistent with the body of literature (Viana,2013; Chen, 2017; Yang, 2017; Bustam, 2020) However, it is noticeable that thefrequency of Interrogative mood in the political genre is still much lower, under 5%

(Yang 2017; Chen, 2017), in comparison with other topics around 15% (Viana 2013).This may suggest the correlation between Interrogative mood and the communicating

topic Specifically, it can be concluded that speakers have the tendency to avoid orminimize revealing uncertainty when dealing with serious or sensitive subjects.

Simultaneously, there is a difference in the functions realized by Interrogative mood

between this study and the previous ones While the available literature reported aboutinterrogative clauses as self-questions to draw attention (Kuang & Liu, 2017) and makeemphasis (Chen, 2017), O’Donnell’s employment of this mood pattern to accomplish apurpose other than simply requiring information is, nonetheless, most avoided.

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Concerning Minor mood, there is a high frequency of O’ Donnell communicatingwithout following a certain grammar structure, which is similar to the report about the

movie ‘Freedom writer’ (Mughibbah, 2017) This is apparently more regular in an

interactional conversation than in a public address, probably because of a little need forformality and the consideration of time efficiency This minor mood, nonetheless, playsthe most active role in the communication process as it can perform almost all speechfunctions realized in the analysis, except for an acknowledge offer in form of declarative(utterance 4.15).

Regarding the level of participation of the protagonist in the communication of

different groups, it can be said that he plays quite separate roles depending on who being

involved in the conversation While being rather an observer who tends to listen morein one group, he appears to be more open to those in close relationships in another group.Based on the number of his utterances, O’Donnell speaks less in the bigger group of theUS government (G2) and communicates more actively and comfortably in his family(G1) and his small group of the same side (G3).

In terms of the pronoun distribution in the position of subject, inconsistency canbe seen within the literature Firstly, while the singular first person only accounts for asmall proportion in presidential address (Ye, 2010; Yang, 2017), the contrasting trendis reported in election speech (Kuang & Liu, 2017) That this study follows the lattermay indicate that the protagonist has a tendency to express his sense of self when givingpersonal opinions, thoughts, arguments and attitude Besides, such a personalizedmanner of communicating is more likely to be observed in his small group Given the

setting of G2, it can also be stated that O’Donnell tries to avoid a subjective

communication style because he is neither in a higher position than others nor therepresentative of his group (who is actually the president) This strategy can help hisarguments and reasons be more accepted and persuasive Accordingly, it is reasonablefor the third person and the plural first person to be the most frequently used thanks to

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