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
interesting analysis.
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