# Overall Reflection #

# Reflection on Third Graded Assignment #

# Graded Assignment 3#

# Reflection on Second Graded Assignment #

# Graded Assignment 2 [Part II] #

    I.            Purpose of Study

The main objectives of this study are to investigate (i) the manipulation of language usage via Facebook corpus discourses (ii) the relation of power, hegemony and ideology that established within the Facebook corpus discourses in accordance to critical discourse analysis.

    II.            Description of Corpus

The corpus is chosen from the notes via Facebook specifically from Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad page. We chose Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad page in relation to our group subject matter in this study which is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with regards to the framework of power, hegemony and ideology in CDA and corpus discourses. The corpus discourses is three pages with eighteen headings. Mainly, Mahathir discusses the Malaysia’s financial issues as nowadays; money involves us with almost anything. He also highlights the financial crisis especially on Malaysia’s financial crisis on 1997-1998. 

                                                     i.            Introduction to Mahathir’s speech

In this speech, Mahathir was acknowledging the prevailing economic crisis. As the economic issue is number one in the minds of most nations,  he is wise enough to raise this issue in his speech. He is quite candid in acknowledging that Greece is in the midst of serious crisis. He does not promise instant solutions. However, he shows his great self-confidence that his Administration will be able to offer the best service to all Malaysians alike to meet those challenges in his powerful promise.

Tun Mahathir Mohamad  main contents of his speech are regarding his plans in spending money wisely that leads Malaysia into no debt and went through the financial crisis without any debt from International Monetary Fund (IMF). On the other hand he emphasize on the opposition who was giving false hope where they will fulfill the demand from the people. He used his power as elite to implement the laws, rules, norms and ideology to make people listen and follow. His speech is very direct and straight to the focal point. This is due to his leadership which he leads Malaysia into mass development and to be recognized internationally. 

     III.            Framework & Background of Critical Discourse Analysis

“CDA systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events, and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes” (Fairclough, 1995)

            Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of discourse that views language as a form of social practice and focuses on the ways social and political domination are visible either in spoken or written. CDA does not limit its analysis to specific structures of text or talk, but systematically relates these to structures of the socio-political context.CDA looks at the language by determining the relationship between these three central tenets which are social structure, culture and discourse. The discourses itself reflect the societal norms and belief in the society

According to Van Dijk, CDA is concern with the studying and analysing written and spoken text to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality and bias. It also examines how these discursive sources are maintained and reproduced within specific social, political and historical contexts. Furthermore, Fairclough claimed that CDA is a discourse analysis which aims to systematically explore often opaque relationship of causality and determination between discursive practices, events and texts and also wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes. 

      IV.            Findings of Analysis

        i.    Ideology, Hegemony and Power in CDA & Facebook Corpus Discourse

Briefly, ideology is a property of structures and also a property of events. It is located in structures which comprises of past events and the conditions for current events. Meanings are produced through interpretations of texts and texts are open to diverse interpretations therefore it is not possible to ‘read off’ ideologies from texts. Material form of ideology is language, so language is invested by ideology. There are three interrelated dimensions of discourse; social practice, discoursal practice and text. Ideology enters in the ideological elements of producing and interpreting a text as well as it is reflected on both the ‘content’ and ‘form’.

Fairclough (1995) states that the concept of hegemony originates in Lenin but Gramsci elaborated it further, “is leadership as well as domination across the economic, political, cultural and ideological domains of a society”. In order to win consent of alliances, hegemony constructs and integrates them through concessions or ideological means. Even though hegemony is a process at the societal level while discourse has a more local character, hegemonic struggle can be analyzed in terms of the view of discourse.

To maintain hegemony, people revive their ideologies. The key idea to understand the nature of political power is the struggle to attain hegemony. One view which power emphasizes on is how successful the use of power by dominant people will be determined by the active consent they receive by the dominated ones. Second, ideology is crucial to sustain power relations.

All of these features are implemented in Facebook corpus discourses & the analysis of his text will be analyzed according to several categories and put in tables as follows: 

Figure 1: Negative connotation

Text	But the most important thing about money which everyone of us knows without need to be an economist or financial expert is that if you spend more money than you have you will be in trouble.
Text	Simply put, if you have one hundred Ringgit but you spend one hundred and ten Ringgit, you will be in debt to the amount of ten Ringgit.
Text	But if you have 100 RM and spend 90 RM you will not face trouble.
Text	But when you have a million or a billion, your 10% overspending will put you in debt to a level which you may not be able to pay and the person you owe money to may not be so ready to forgive.
Text	Greece is now bankrupt.
Text	The reason is simple enough, Greece overspent.
Text	The private sector had to follow the Government, which results in raising the cost of production until the products of their labour are no longer competitive and either they earn less profits or became unsaleable altogether.
Text	Loans unfortunately have to be paid when matured.
Text	When the loans amounting to hundreds of billions cannot be paid, the Greek Government, the borrower, must be made bankrupt.
Text	When you spend more than the money you have, you will become a debtor.
Text	And when you cannot pay your debt you will become bankrupt.
Text	Roughly I knew I had to make provision for operation, for debt servicing and for development.
Text	Despite allegedly being profligate, I managed not to Overspend.
Text	In fact the reason why we did not go down during the financial crisis was because we had no big debts to pay.
Text	We may announce a big development budget but there will simply be not enough money to implement them.
Text	When you borrow the debt servicing charges will increase.
Text	A point will be reached when we will not be able to service debts or pay the lender when the loans become mature.
Text	Demands for pay increases, for higher non-taxable pensions, for abolition of tolls (the Government has to make up for the loss of revenue by toll concessionairs), more holidays, more subsidies etc will continue to be made.
Text	Not having to be responsible for the overspending and the possible bankruptcy of the nation, it is easy for them to support.
Text	I hope the people will see through their lack of a sense of responsibility to the nation.
Text	The incumbent Governments cannot be irresponsible and try to be popular always.

He uses a lot of strong and negative words and some remain unfriendly. Ideological words, phrases and sentences are injected with hidden messages that highly depend on the background knowledge on this particular event happened in the Europe world. The word bankrupt, debt and debtor has been repeatedly to show how awful the situation was. 

Figure 2: Modal

Text	So it must live by the standards of the European Union.
Text	It must practice the welfare state principles of the European countries.
Text	When the loans amounting to hundreds of billions cannot be paid, the Greek Government, the borrower, must be made bankrupt.
Text	A point will be reached when we will not be able to service debts or pay the lender when the loans become mature.
Text	We may announce a big development budget but there will simply be not enough money to implement them.
Text	So we will not become like Greece.
Text	I hope the people will see through their lack of a sense of responsibility to the nation.
Text	When a demand is made the Government has to examine the implication not only to the Government in terms of its capacity to meet the demand, it must also consider the effect on the whole nation.
Text	If the Government cannot approve the demand it must be because it does not want to bankrupt the nation.

The frequency of occurrence of the modal auxiliaries in the speech shows that strong modality expressed by must and will not indicating a high commitment to the institutional ideology and the implication of a sufficient power and consent to support it as well as the speaker authority. For example, So we will not become like Greece. While the frequency of use of have to and may indicating obligation and compulsion imposed by external forces is, however, considerably lower than the frequency of must, which establishes the speaker and the institutional ideology they represent. Compared with other verbs, modal verbs are more easily identified and understood and then accepted for the reason that at the time of listening to the speeches, there is no time for the audience to reflect.

Figure 3: Meronymy

Text	So the Government borrowed money to cover the high salaries, short working hours and days, early pensions, unemployment benefits and other perks that European Governments offered their workers.
Text	Debt servicing and operations (salaries, pensions and other statutory expenditure must be paid on time if we are not going to default).

Referring to the above texts, we can examine the usage of meronymy throughout his corpus discourses. He highlights the value by further explanation of 'offers' and 'operations' so that the issue leaves impact to the audience. He emphasizes the use of vocabulary in order to clearly show the people how they must be grateful for the Government effort and contribution especially during his era. 

Figure 4: Pronoun

Text	But the most important thing about money which everyone of us knows without need to be an economist or financial expert is that if you spend more money than you have you will be in trouble.
Text	In fact the reason why we did not go down during the financial crisis was because we had no big debts to pay.
Text	Debt servicing and operations (salaries, pensions and other statutory expenditure must be paid on time if we are not going to default.)
Text	If we increase salaries too much, and we have more than a million Government employees, there is a likelihood that we will not have enough for even minimal development.
Text	We may announce a big development budget but there will simply be not enough money to implement them.
Text	We may borrow
Text	A point will be reached when we will not be able to service debts or pay the lender when the loans become mature.
Text	So we will not become like Greece

We can see that from those entire three tables, the pronoun we in the text it clearly shows where the usage of first person is the most frequently applied in the speeches. For example; the use of the first person pronoun we and us to shorten the distance between the speaker and the audience, regardless of their difference social status and professions. The speaker tried to include that both the listeners and him are  into the same arena, and thus create the atmosphere where the audience feel close to the speaker and his points other than to reflect their continuous effort to build up an image of togetherness and to promote each of their policy. This approach probably can arouse the Malaysian’s confidence toward them and their government. Besides, it is clearly marked depending on how much responsibility the speaker wants to claim and the Minister’s membership in this process of transformation. Indeded that kind of form of address can be perceived as more inclusive, including all nationalities and ethnicities, applying a more citizen-centered attitude. 

Figure 5: Repetition words of ‘the government’, ‘people’ and ‘nation’

Text	So the Government borrowed money to cover the high salaries, short working hours and days, early pensions, unemployment benefits and other perks that European Governments offered their workers.
Text	The private sector had to follow the Government, which results in raising the cost of production until the products of their labour are no longer competitive and either they earn less profits or became unsaleable altogether.
Text	When the loans amounting to hundreds of billions cannot be paid, the Greek Government, the borrower, must be made bankrupt.
Text	Of the three elements of the Government budget, only development spending can be reduced.
Text	If we increase salaries too much, and we have more than a million Government employees, there is a likelihood that we will not have enough for even minimal development.
Text	All these elementary things must be known to the Government
Text	Demands for pay increases, for higher non-taxable pensions, for abolition of tolls ( the Government has to make up for the loss of revenue by toll concessionairs), more holidays, more subsidies etc will continue to be made.
Text	Not having to be responsible for the overspending and the possible bankruptcy of the nation, it is easy for them to support.
Text	The incumbent Governments cannot be irresponsible and try to be popular always.
Text	When a demand is made the Government has to examine the implication not only to the Government in terms of its capacity to meet the demand, it must also consider the effect on the whole nation.
Text	If the Government cannot approve the demand it must be because it does not want to bankrupt the nation.

The word the Government and the nation itself have been used frequently in the text. Mahathir gives an excerpt of the government’s successes narration, which is a standard procedure of this kind of discourse by giving examples of the government sacrifices. Therefore, Mahathir’s speech can be seen as a small step towards mending this relationship or at least an attempt.

ii.   Critical Discourse Analysis in relation towards Facebook Corpus discourses in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)

“Language is no longer seen as reflecting our reality, but as central to create reality”

                                                                                    (Fairclough, 1995)

Language is imbricates in social relations. Language is a material form of ideology, and language is invested by ideology. Discourses have three interrelated dimensions: social practice, discoursal practice and text. Ideology enters in the ideological elements of producing and interpreting a text and in the ways in which these elements are articulated together and orders of discourse rearticulated in discoursal events. Ideology is reflected on the ‘content’ but also on the ‘form’.Thus, Computer Mediated Communication has become one of the essential key mechanisms for ideology.

In general, Critical Discourse Analysis tries to make transparent connection between the three central tenets consist of discourse practices, social practices and social structure to limits the opaque message of it to be understood by the layperson. Moving to Facebook corpus discourses in CMC, some questions arise towards its relation in CDA and roles in implementing ideology to create or sustain power, hegemony and dominance. In this discussion, we interpret corpus discourses and examine their transparent functions from the Facebook corpus discourses in CMCtowards the Malaysia’s financial issue, as this paper discusses the excerpts from the texts and try to discover the corpus hidden messages and agenda.

Firstly, Facebook corpus discourses in CMCplay its own roles in maintaining hegemony, power and ideology by creating emotive vocabulary, rhetorical, and graphical devices to make an impact towards readers. These effects can be seen though the corpus headlines, corpus discourses, features etc. For instance, we can identify this elements though the headline which is MONEY. Tun choses this specifies title to directly deliver a crucial message in relation to Malaysia’s financial issue. It also gives us an instantaneous impact of ‘money’ as influential power in governing our daily life because nowadays, almost everything needs money for survival.

Next, Facebook corpus discourses in CMC plays its own unique function to neutralize the ideology as alliances which has been recognised as one of the dominant blocs in order to help maintain hegemony and power though their implementation of ideology. This is shown throughout the uses of Facebook as one of the evolving CMC by the politicians. They deliver their messages and interact with the people as CMC is well known as one of the most effective medium of written communication. Each of them have their own implicit ideology that needed to be support at all costs and that is why they organises discourses so that it appears to be universal and commonsensical to win other’s consent.

Thus, their linguistic manipulation upon delivered Facebook messages can various from those openly statements until such close secrecy statements. Nevertheless, words are never neutral. No Facebook corpus discourses in CMCare ideologically neutral, transparent or ‘innocent’. It may or may not carry hidden meaning or truth to be recognized by the readers themselves. With that, CMC especially Facebook as one of the most influential social network has taken part and wisely play they own role in regards of any issue so that the ideology is well-maintained and at the same time can win the other’s consent.

                      V.          V      Conclusion

In short, Facebook corpus discourses in CMC have to play their own role by either using linguistic manipulation or other non-linguistic aspects in order to deliver targeted messages and manipulate power, hegemony and ideology. Then, CDA comes to interpret the opaque message and find out the real transparent meaning or truth behind the manipulation of the discourses. There are hegemony and power relation within the media because media have the influence and can constitute one ideological empire on its own. Within political institutions, they have to maintain their hegemony and power by utilizing the ideology in their discourse in order to survive in the current and future social structure.

Bibliography

Dijk, V.T. (Ed.). (2000). Discourse & society. London: Routledge.

Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman

Mahathir Mohamad.(2012). MONEY.retrieved 04 April 2012 via https://www.facebook.com/TunDrMahathir#!/note.php?note_id=10150672215522529

Wikipedia.(2012). 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Retrieved 06 April 2012 viahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis