A critical discourse analysis of american ideologies embedded in some american online news on the conflicts in the south china sea from 2014 2015

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES QUÁCH HẢI YẾN A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF AMERICAN IDEOLOGIES EMBEDDED IN SOME AMERICAN ONLINE NEWS ON THE CONFLICTS IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA FROM 2014-2015 PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGƠN PHÊ PHÁN VỀ HỆ TƯ TƯỞNG MỸ TRONG CÁC BẢN TIN ĐIỆN TỬ MỸ VỀ CÁC CUỘC XUNG ĐỘT Ở BIỂN ĐÔNG GIAI ĐOẠN 2014-2015 M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201.01 HANOI - 2017 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES QUÁCH HẢI YẾN A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF AMERICAN IDEOLOGIES EMBEDDED IN SOME AMERICAN ONLINE NEWS ON THE CONFLICTS IN THE SOUTH CHINA SEA FROM 2014-2015 PHÂN TÍCH DIỄN NGƠN PHÊ PHÁN VỀ HỆ TƯ TƯỞNG MỸ TRONG CÁC BẢN TIN ĐIỆN TỬ MỸ VỀ CÁC CUỘC XUNG ĐỘT Ở BIỂN ĐÔNG GIAI ĐOẠN 2014-2015 M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201.01 Supervisor: Dr Huỳnh Anh Tuấn HANOI - 2017 DECLARATION I hereby declare that the thesis, entitled “A Critical Discourse Analysis of American ideologies embedded in some American online news on the conflicts in the South China Sea from 2014-2015” has been carried out in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Art at the University of Languages and International Studies This work is original and all the sources that I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by means of complete references Hanoi - 2017 Quách Hải Yến i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Huynh Anh Tuan, for his encouragement and support throughout the process of studying I have especially appreciated his gentle manner of giving feedback and the wealth of ideas I have been introduced to over these years I would like to give my very special thanks to my friends and the members of my family who have been supporting me in various ways ii ABSTRACT This is a qualitative study that presents the findings of a linguistic analysis on American online news on the conflicts of the South China Sea from 2014-2015 The research has applied Fairclough‟s three-dimension framework and Halliday‟s Systemic functional grammar to identify and explain how American ideologies are portrayed and represented through language used in the American online news written by the American reporters In this research the writer used the descriptive method to study the problem There were ten newspapers collected from some wellknown online websites such as CNN, Los Angeles Times, NBC News, New York Times and Center for Strategic and International Studies The use of transitivity, metaphors and negative sentences are analyzed to see how ideologies of the journalists are embedded in the news The findings reveal clearly the ideologies of the American that they are in approval of law-based, equal and anti-hegemonic policy towards the South China Sea conflicts iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviation Meaning CDA Critical Discourse Analysis CL Critical Linguistics DA Discourse Analysis SFG Systematic Functional Grammar iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF ABBREVIATION…………………………………….….………….iv TABLE OF CONTENTS v PART A INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale of the study Aim and objectives of the study 3 Research question Scope of the study Method of the study Structure of the study PART B.…… ………………………………………………………… …….5 DEVELOPMENT…………………… ……………………………… CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Discourse analysis 1.2 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 1.2.1 The origin of Critical Discourse Analysis 1.2.2 The definition of Critical Discourse Analysis 1.2.3 Critiques to CDA 1.2.4 The relations of CDA to Power and Ideology 10 1.3 Michael Halliday‟s systemic functional grammar .12 1.4 Norman Fairclough and CDA .15 1.5 A review of related studies 22 v CHAPTER .25 METHODOLOGY .25 2.1 Research question 25 2.2 Research approach .25 2.3 Research method 26 2.4 Framework of data analysis 27 CHAPTER .29 FINDINGDS AND DISCUSSIONS 29 3.1 Transitivity analysis 29 3.1.1 Mental process 29 3.1.2 Verbal process 30 3.1.3 Relational process 32 3.2 Metaphors 34 3.3 Negative sentences 35 PART C .36 CONCLUSION 36 A summary of findings 38 Limitations and recommendation for further studies 40 REFERENCES 40 APPENDICES I vi PART A INTRODUCTION This introductory chapter provides a general description of the research work It covers the following: research topic, research purpose, research questions, theoretical background, research strategy, and finally the outline of the thesis Rationale of the study Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), a recent school of discourse analysis, is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse, which views “language as a form of social practice” (Fairclough, 1989) In the modern times, the mass media such as newspapers, magazines, broadcasts, etc are playing a vital role in human life Media discourse, one of the seven fields of CDA, has become the primary source of information, which can standardize and control social life and personal values In recent years, the South China Sea‟s conflicts has been a matter of controversy all around the world, especially in some powerful countries such America, China and other Asian countries There are thousands of online news on this issue produced every day and they can be found in numerous websites This study is based on the analytic paradigm of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) described by Fairclough (1989, 1992, 1995a, 1995b), and Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) to analyse the data to find out the American ideologies through the discourse O‟Halloran (2003, p.1), views the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a branch of linguistics that specifically searches and identifies the traces of cultural and ideological meaning in spoken and written language; while Parker (1992, p.5) looks at discourse in general as a system of statements which constructs an object A lot of work on discourse analysis has been carried out by a number of experts in the field The quest for gaining a clear understanding of the meaning behind some speeches both written and spoken, has given rise to CDA Often times, some speeches and news texts are masked in secrecy and listeners can sometimes struggle to understand the meaning behind the spoken words CDA provides a good platform for explaining spoken and written language Moreover, CDA uses a number of techniques to resolve the meaning of some texts The 21st century society is now immersed with a lot of information coming from the news media and coming from different kinds of people equally serving a variety of purposes In order to understand the true nature of news reports, namely the social and power relationship, the hidden ideologies, and the way they present people and issues, it is necessary to employ CDA Tensions between China and Vietnam over the disputed South China Sea are at their highest levels in years On May 2, 2014, the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) placed its deep sea drilling rig HD-981 in disputed waters south of the Paracel Islands Vietnam objected to the placement, declaring that the rig is located on its continental shelf China has since sent approximately 80 ships, including seven military vessels, along with aircraft to support the rig In response, Hanoi dispatched 29 ships to attempt to disrupt the rig‟s placement and operations The situation escalated dramatically on May 7, when Vietnam accused Chinese vessels of turning high powered water cannons on the Vietnamese ships and eventually ramming several vessels The implications of these developments are significant However, few attempts have so far been made to analyze language use in online news related to this topic Therefore, under the light of CDA the writer will attempt to unravel the American ideologies behind the American online news and what exactly the writers were trying to say about the conflicts on the South China Sea transitivity and negative sentences are scrutinized In terms of lexical choice, metaphors are analyzed 2.4 Framework of data analysis The theoretical framework used for this study is based on Norman Fairclough‟s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework This framework was first conceptualised to study the connection between the use of language and through it, the assertion of power (Fairclough 1989) Later, Fairclough redefined his CDA framework to specifically use it as a tool to analyze media texts The analytical framework is presented as below: American ideologies Qualita tive analysis Mental process Transitivity Verbal process Metaphors Relational process Negative sentences Description Interpretation 27 Explanation In the descriptive stage, the use of transitivity, metaphors and negative sentences are analyzed to see how ideologies of the journalists are embedded in the news In the next stage – interpretation, context is considered For interpreting situational context, questions given by Fairclough (2001) are utilized as useful suggestions: What is going on?, Who is involved?, What relationships are at issue?, What is the role of langue in what is going on? Finally, in the last stage – explanation, the relationship between interaction and social context is mentioned in order to see how the discourse production and interpretation are determined by social structures and what effects the discourse can have on those structures 28 CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS This chapter presents the gathered findings of the present study involving ten American online news 3.1 Transitivity analysis 3.1.1 Mental process Mental processes encode the meanings of feeling or thinking They are internalized processes, in contrast to the externalized processes of doing and speaking Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) observe that, unlike material processes, mental processes always involve at least one human participant who has the mind in which the process occurs They involve the human senses perception, affection, and cognition They entail the processes of encoding meanings of thinking, feeling, perceiving or desiring These are processes of sensing, thinking, feeling and perceiving, having Sensor and Phenomenon Sensor is the person who senses, Phenomenon is the object involved in the process It is the entity which is felt, thought, or perceived by the sensor In analyzing the online news, the researcher has found out that the mental process used really makes the reader knows more about the ideology of American people about the issue of the South China Sea conflicts The verbs “fears”, “concerned” are used mainly to express the real thoughts of the American government when seeing China‟s actions in expanding their power in the South China Sea (1) Obama fears China is bullying South China Sea neighbors (nbcnews.com) Here we can see that Obama is the Senser with his feeling of worried of the countries which involved in the South China Sea dispute are bullied by China The word “bully” here is utilized to express clearly the real situation in the area 29 (2) President Barack Obama said Thursday the United States is concerned China is using its “sheer size and muscle” to push around smaller countries in the South China Sea (nbcnews.com) The sentence above with Mr Obama, who represents the American government, is again the senser, with his thought of concerning that China has used its power to bully other countries, which are actually smaller than China (3)… the United States was concerned about the large-scale nature of China‟s land reclamation (nytimes.com) Here the senser is the government of the United States, who expresses their worried feeling about the reclamation of land of Chinese government in the South China Sea In short, the effects of the mental process are transmitted efficiently for the readers to realize the real situation in the South China Sea and what the American people really think about the expanding actions of China 3.1.2 Verbal process According to Halliday (2004), verbal verbs/clauses construe „saying‟ processes, covering any symbolic exchange of meaning They are important in dialogic passages in narrative texts, and in academic writing where people need to quote and report from various scholars The doer is called the Sayer, and the affected participants are „Receiver‟ or „Verbiage (words)‟ or „Target‟ In the collected online news about the problem of the South China Sea conflicts, the sentences with the verbal process are used numerously as stated below (4) In recent weeks, Vietnam has also complained about several unannounced, state-sponsored Chinese flights through Vietnamese-administered airspace in the South China Sea (nytimes.com) (5) Vietnam asked China to investigate the ramming of a Vietnamese fishing vessel this month by a boat that the captain said was marked with Chinese characters (nytimes.com) (6) Vietnam formally accused China of violating its sovereignty, as well 30 as a recent confidence-building pact, after Beijing landed a plane on an artificial island built by China (nytimes.com) (7) Unlike China, Vietnam called for negotiations under the auspices of the Convention on the Law of the Sea, a position Vietnam has adopted since the start of the recent conflict (nytimes.com) (8) Taiwan declared that it doesn't recognize the proclaimed access rules as valid, and Vietnam called the Beijing power play "illegal and groundless." (latimes.com) With five sentences presented above, Vietnam is described as the Sayer, who objects to China‟s abusive actions in the South China Sea in a strong way Vietnam is also described as a tolerant victim here, with just “complaining, accused or asked” without doing any illegal activities like China (9) The Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton raised the issue of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and the need to resolve the various territorial disputes through mediation (nytimes.com) (10) President Obama called on China on Wednesday to halt its construction on reclaimed islands in the South China Sea (nytimes.com) (11) Mr Obama urged the Chinese to stop military activities… (nytimes.com) (12) The Secretary of State John Kerry urged his Chinese counterpart on Wednesday to halt “problematic actions” in the area to provide an opportunity for diplomacy… (nytimes.com) (13) Mr Kerry expressed hope that the diplomats might make headway in defusing the South China Sea disputes in the coming days (nytimes.com) (14) Describing it as a "mobile manifestation of Chinese sovereignty," Ernest Bower, (a Southeast Asia expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies) said it represents Beijing's plan to assert its claims over as many of the South China Sea's resources as possible (nbcnews.com) 31 (15) On Saturday, top U.S officials including Defense Secretary Ash Carter warned China of the risk of isolating itself internationally (nbcnews.com) (16) U.S Secretary of State John Kerry, meanwhile, urged Beijing not to establish an air defense identification zone over the South China Sea, as it did over the East China Sea in 2013 (nbcnews.com) In the above sentences, the Sayers here are all people come from the American government such as President Obama, The Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, The Secretary of State John Kerry, or a Southeast Asia expert in the Center for Strategic and International Studies The phrases “raised the issue of freedom of navigation”, “called on China to halt its construction”, “urged the Chinese to stop military activities”, “urged Chinese counterpart to halt problematic actions”, “warned China of the risk of isolating itself internationally”, or “urged Beijing not to establish an air defense identification zone over the South China Sea” all clearly express the American people‟s opinions about the Chinese constructions and military activities in the South China Sea, that they not agree with all of China‟s actions 3.1.3 Relational process These are processes of being and becoming These processes have two modes, attributive mode and identifying mode Attributive processes describe the entity and contain two participants, Carrier and Attribute Identifying processes are the kind of processes which identify one entity in terms of another Identifying processes also contain two participants, Token and Value They use verbs such as “be”, “have”, “become”, etc The relational processes involve classifying and identifying one experience with other experiences They relate two or more terms in a variety of ways The relational processes are similar to how the verb „„to be‟‟ is used in English They serve to identify and characterize, and are further subdivided into processes of „being‟ (intensive and circumstantial) and „having‟ (possessive), (Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999) 32 With the sentences stated below, the readers could know more about the ideology of anti-hegemonic of the American people (17) …according to the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), Vietnam has exclusive rights to all mineral and hydrocarbon resources Talking about the Convention of the Law of the Seas of the United Nations, the American journalist used the word “exclusive rights” to confirm the sovereignty of Vietnam in the area of the South China Sea Vietnam here is the possessor, with the category of meaning “having”, here Vietnam is mentioned to have rights to the resources in the South China Sea (18) But that area is clearly in dispute (19) The passing of these restrictions on other countries‟ fishing activities in disputed portions of the South China Sea is a provocative and potentially dangerous act,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington on Thursday (latimes.com) The two sentences mentioned above all expressed category meaning of attributing, in which “that area”/ “the South China Sea” is the problematic issue The action of China in preventing fishing activities of other countries is described as “provocative” and “dangerous”, which really expressed the strict criticism of the American people (20) Mr Yang, (China‟s state councilor), in particular, is known as a fierce proponent of China‟s rights to large parts of the South China Sea (nytimes.com) The China‟s state councilor, Mr Yang, is described with the adjective “fierce”, which illustrates the viewpoints of the reporter that China really has its intention in expanding power in the South China Sea In conclusion, with the process of relational, American reporters have described the image of China in the area of the South China Sea as a fierce country 33 3.2 Metaphors Metaphor is a figure of speech that makes an implicit, implied, or hidden comparison between two things that are unrelated, but share some common characteristics In other words, a resemblance of two contradictory or different objects is made based on a single or some common characteristics When you portray a person, place, thing, or an action as being something else, even though it is not actually that “something else,” you are speaking metaphorically In analyzing the online written texts, the researcher has found out that although the form of little-used metaphor, but the way that journalists use words to make the reader see that Chinese expansion issues in the South China Sea is really very disturbing (21) President Barack Obama said Thursday the United States is concerned China is using its “sheer size and muscle” to push around smaller countries in the South China Sea (nbcnews.com) In the above sentence, the word “muscle” is used to describe the strength of the Chinese government This kind of the reporter‟s expression has achieved a good effect in describing China as an international law violator and regional peace-breaker (22) Starting May 1, naval and coast guard vessels of Vietnam and China have engaged in a high-stakes game of chicken, battling with water cannons and reportedly ramming each other in an area of the South China Sea less than 150 miles from Vietnam's shores where China has inserted a huge, mobile oil-drilling rig The real meaning of the idiom “game of chicken” is any contest with two players where neither one wants to "back down" or let the other win, even though not backing down can be very dangerous In this case, Vietnam is described to involve in the game caused by China with the unbroken image In the last sentence, the phrase “raising eyebrows” is used to express the opinion of the reporter in an effective way (23) China‟s island-building is raising eyebrows 34 In fact, if something causes you to raise an eyebrow or to raise your eyebrows, it causes you to feel surprised or disapproving In this case, we could realize that China‟s military activities in the South China Sea are really shocked the American 3.3 Negative sentences A negative sentence (or statement) states that something is not true or incorrect Negative statements are the opposite of positive statements and are necessary to express an opposing idea Below are sentences which strongly express the disapproval of the American people on the Chinese actions in the area of the South China Sea (24) “China has not offered any explanation or basis under international law for these extensive maritime claims,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington on Thursday (latimes.com) (25) “You really can't have a stable Asia if China doesn't feel comfortable with its energy security” (nbcnews.com) The negative expression “China has not offered any explanation or basis under international law” shows that the American people are in disagreement with the Chinese government‟s activities and claims in the South China Sea Moreover, the words “really can't have a stable Asia” expresses the concerned feeling of the reporter that China really threatens the stability of the region 35 PART C CONCLUSION This part provides a general view of the whole study: summaries and major findings in accordance with the research question The limitations of the study will be acknowledged as well as some suggestions for further studies will also be recommended A summary of findings The aim of this thesis was to perform a critical discourse analysis to the discourse of America political online news The context of the discourse was enclosed by selecting online news written by American reporters that regarded about the conflicts in the South China Sea Objectivity and authenticity are two basic requirements for news report However, driven by various interest based relationships or different ideologies, some news presses always tend to deliberately emphasize some elaboratelyselected “facts” and implicitly convey the prejudicial ideologies in the news texts, aiming to influence the readers‟ thinking or even mislead them in an imperceptible way In recent years, with the changing of the international situations, the dispute on sovereignty of South China Sea between China and some Southeast Asia countries, especially Vietnam, is becoming more and more severe, and the South China Sea issue has become one of the most sensitive and hottest problems in the world that involves most countries With the value of news report prominently increasing, the issue of South China Sea has drawn attention from plenty western media and the public and consequently become a hot topic reported by presses around the globe The theory of Critical Discourse Analysis proved to be relevant to the context of this study, as the aim was to link the linguistic structures of the discourse to the broad political context of the South China Sea conflicts “In 36 political discourse linguistics have always been interested in the linguistic structures used to get politically relevant messages across to the addressees in order to fulfill a specific function, but narrow linguistic analysis of political discourse cannot ignore the broader societal and political framework in which such discourse is embedded” (Schäffner 1996: 201) Besides, CDA considers discourse as socially constructive, which means that the way the politicians talk will influence and lead not only the way simple people talk Indeed the political discourses will also the shape the reality in the Balkans Wodak and Meyer (2009:35) quote Link (1983) when arguing that “discourse is an institutionalized way of talking that regulates and reinforces actions and thereby exerts power.” Through the study, the researcher has found out that a writer‟s words are never neutral but rather are carriers of ideology that reflects and supports the interests of the writers Furthermore, while discourses can be used for assertion of power and control, they can also be used to critique, contest, or subvert the same power relations By using ten American online news to clarify the American ideology hidden in the linguistic expression on the South China Sea conflicts, the researcher has based on Fairclough‟s three-dimension framework and Halliday‟s Systemic functional grammar Transitivity with process of mental, verbal and relational are studied along with the use of metaphors and negative sentences The ideology of the United States of America for the South China Sea disputes are clearly stated through online news as below: Firstly, the American people have realized that China really threatens the stability in the region and they must something to prevent the hegemony of the Government of the People's Republic of China In this case, the antihegemonic of American ideology has been presented Secondly, the American government advocates to resolve the disputes through multilateral negotiations and not accept Chinese sovereignty claimed on the South China Sea, which obviously expresses the ideology of equality of 37 American people In conclusion, through the analysis, it can be stated that language is an effective means to assert power and ideology; thus it can be used to affect readers‟ actions and minds Such power of manipulation can have immense effect if it is used with newspapers Therefore, it is recommended that readers should be aware of how particular uses of language are exploited in news to uncover the ideological representations embedded Limitations and recommendation for further studies This thesis brought the insights of CDA to the political discourse of the South China Sea conflicts from 2014-2015 Such a discourse analytic framework proved to be appropriate to shed light in discovering the real ideologies of American people hidden in the linguistic expressions stated through several online news The limitation of the study is its small-scale database Because the study has just been conducted on ten online news, the findings of the study can, unavoidably, not be generalized as the characteristics of American news coverage on the dispute Besides, due to the researcher‟s limited ability and time, the study has exploited some features of language at textual level Therefore, some indeed further researches should be taken into consideration This study revealed interesting results and may be considered ample to the purposes of a master thesis, but a broader and more inclusive research is advisable to be conducted in the near future Firstly, it would be of great interest to conduct a research comparing two sample texts collected from other countries‟ online news for the aim of discovering other ideologies Such a research could help analysts and scholars understand more about the issues at the same time it would broaden the subjects to which CDA is applied 38 Secondly, further studies can be conducted on the news discourse in some other aspects such as euphemistic expressions, nominalization, other modes of sentences like grammatical question or imperative sentences, logical connectors, coordination and subordination in complex sentences and used means for referring inside and outside the text With massive readership, newspapers have immensive potential power and influence Therefore, there is no doubt that governments are always interested in censoring this kind of media‟s output with the hope of positioning readers to view events in a particular way It is recommended that readers should try to be constantly aware of how particular uses of language in a news text in general, a news articles in particular, attempt to position the target readership into particular sets of values and thereby being able to uncover ideological representations of texts embedded in the ways of using language, which are naturalized and commonsensical for language users, hence, generally implicit rather than explicit 39 REFERENCES Fairclough, N (1989) Language and Power London: Longman Fairclough, N (2001) Language and Power (2nd ed.) 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Critical Discourse Analysis of American ideologies embedded in some American online news on the conflicts in the South China Sea from 2014- 2015? ?? has been carried out in partial fulfillment of the. .. American online news on the conflicts in the South China Sea from 2014- 2015  Raise a critical awareness for the language learners and newspaper readers: to develop the ability of critical thinking... disapproval of the American people on the Chinese actions in the area of the South China Sea (24) ? ?China has not offered any explanation or basis under international law for these extensive maritime