Tài liệu A pragmatic analysis of person deixis in john kerry’s remarks on climate change

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ********************* NGUYỄN KIỀU LƢƠNG A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF PERSON DEIXIS IN JOHN KERRY’S REMARKS ON CLIMATE CHANGE Một phân tích ngữ dụng về chỉ xuất về ngôi trong bài phát biểu của John Kerry về biến đổi khí hậu M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code:60220201 HANOI - 2016 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ********************* NGUYỄN KIỀU LƢƠNG A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF PERSON DEIXIS IN JOHN KERRY’S REMARKS ON CLIMATE CHANGE Một phân tích ngữ dụng về chỉ xuất về ngôi trong bài phát biểu của John Kerry về biến đổi khí hậu M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code:60220201 Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ngô Hữu Hoàng HANOI - 2016 DECLARATION I hereby certify that the thesis entitled “A pragmatic analysis of person deixis in John Kerry’s remarks on climate” is the result of my own research for the Degree of Master of Arts at the University of Languages and International Studies, Viet Nam National University, and that this thesis has not been submitted for any other degrees. Hanoi, March 2016 Nguyễn Kiề u Lƣơng i ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my supervisor, Associate Professor Dr. Ngô Hữu Hoàng for helping me complete this study. This paper would not have been accomplished without his expert, constant and valuable guidance and encouragement. His patience and helpful criticism helped me confidently express my ideas into this paper. I also wish to express my sincere thanks to all my lecturers at the Faculty of Graduate and Postgraduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies for their valuable lectures which have helped me a great deal in gaining a lot of theoretical as well as practical knowledge. My special thanks also go to my colleagues at Bill Gates International Secondary and High Schools for their enthusiastic help and support with my teaching schedule at school which gave me precious time to deal with my thesis. Finally, I would also like to express my deep gratitude and love to my devoted parents and my sister who gave me time and encouraged me to overcome all obstacles during the accomplishment of this study. ii ABSTRACT This study is conducted to identify the person deixis used in John Kerry‟s Remarks on Climate Change and the purposes of its usage seen from political angle. Qualitative research methodology is applied to analyze the data. From the point of view of several theoretical concepts in the field of pragmatics namely person deixis, referents, the role of context, person deixis in the speech is investigated according to its subdivisions. The results reveal that “I” and “we” are dominantly employed by the speaker. “We” functions to involve himself as participant while “I” functions as self positioning. Following the evaluation of the results, a discussion of the person deixis usage and its role on political goals is presented which shows that “we” is employed to preserve friendship between John Kerry and the audience. The last pages of this study are devoted for the implications for teaching and learning pragmatics as well as suggestions for further research. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration ………………………………………………………………………..………..….....i Acknowledgements …………………………………………………………...…………………ii Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………....iii PART 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study ............................................................................................................ 1 2. Aim and scope of the study ..................................................................................................... 2 2.1. Aim of the study…………………………………………………………………............2 2.2. Research questions………………………………………………………………............2 2.3. Scope of the study………………………………………………………………………..2 3. Design of the study .................................................................................................................. 2 PART 2 DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I A BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY ..................................................................... 4 1. Political discourse.................................................................................................................... 4 2. Person deixis............................................................................................................................ 5 2.1. Deixis…………………………………………..…………………………………….…..5 2.2. Person deixis……………………………………………...……………………………...6 2.3. The Role of Person deixis in Political Communication………………………………....8 3. The Role of Context in Using Deixis .................................................................................... 10 3.1. The Situational Context/ Exophoric Reference .............................................................. 11 3.2. The Background Knowledge Context............................................................................. 11 3.3. Co-textual Context…….………………………………………...……………………...13 4. Political Discourse Propaganda ............................................................................................. 14 5. Related Study ........................................................................................................................ 15 CHAPTER II METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................ 16 1. Research methods and instruments ....................................................................................... 16 2. Data of the study.................................................................................................................... 16 3. Data analysis .......................................................................................................................... 17 CHAPTER III FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION .......................................................................... 18 1. Kinds of Person deixis used in John Kerry‟s Remarks on Climate Change ......................... 18 2. Referents and Political Purposes of Person deixis used in John Kerry‟s Remarks on Climate Change ....................................................................................................................................... 19 iv 2.1. First Person deixis........................................................................................................... 19 2.1.1. First Person Singular .................................................................................................... 19 2.1.2. First Person Plural ........................................................................................................ 23 2.2. Second Person Deixis ..................................................................................................... 31 2.2.1. Second Person Singular ............................................................................................... 32 2.2.2. Second Person Plural ................................................................................................... 32 2.3. Third Person deixis ......................................................................................................... 33 2.3.1. Third Person Singular .................................................................................................. 33 2.3.2. Third Person Plural ...................................................................................................... 36 PART 3: CONCLUSION 1. Recapitulation ........................................................................................................................ 40 2. Implications of the study ....................................................................................................... 41 2.1. Implication for teaching pragmatics…………………………………………...……….41 2.2. Implication on learning pragmatics…………………………………………………….41 3. Limitations of the study ......................................................................................................... 42 4. Suggestions for further research ............................................................................................ 42 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………….43 APPENDIX……………………………………………………………………………………….I v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 1. US : United States 2. L2 : Second Language vi LIST OF FIGURES Figures Page Figure 1: Subdivision of singular person deixis 7 Figure 2: Subdivision of plural person deixis 7 Figure 3: References of context 13 Figure 4: Kinds of person deixis used in John Kerry‟s Remarks on Climate Change 18-19 Figure 5: Occurrence of first person singular 20 Figure 6: Occurrence of first person plural 23 Figure 7: Occurrence of second person deixis 31 Figure 8: Occurrence of third person singular 33 Figure 9: Occurrence of third person plural 36 vii PART 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study There is a close relationship between language and politics. According to Adetunji (2006:1), the former is the medium which the society used for the purposes of communication and cohabitation while the latter is considered the ideas and activities used for gaining and exercising power in society. In addition, Wodak and de Cillia (2006:709) claim that there is no clear-cut distinction between language and politics, and they are two overlapping subjects. As a result, when investigating one of these subjects, the other also needs to be concerned. Wind et al. (1989:26) highlights that deixis is a universal element of languages. It is a linguistic phenomenon attracting much concern from linguists. Deixis is used widely by people from all over the world, regardless of personality, the culture and country they come from. However, the way people employ deictic expressions in their communication differs from one person to another owing to their distinctive characteristics, education level, social class, communicative purposes and so forth. Among the five common types of deixis in languages: person, time, place, discourse and social deixis, person deixisis is perhaps the worthiest considering as it deals with the roles participating in a speech event. This study is aimed to investigate how person deixis is employed by John Kerry as a speaker with great power and potential influence on the audiences. It is worth mentioning that in politics speaker normally adjust what they say to suit the social-political reaction they anticipate from the audience (Joseph, 2006:43). The forms of adjustment itself vary from metonymy to the use of person deixis (Beard, 2000:24-36). Person deixis, within its simplicity, contains broad interpretation since it is interpreted based on its context, not dictionary meaning. 1 The existence of significant meaning of deixis in a political speech leads to the belief that the deictic expressions in John Kerry‟s speech also have significant interpretation beyond their dictionary meanings. That is why this speech is chosen to be analyzed. 2. Aim and scope of the study 2.1. Aim of the study The aim of this study is to enrich the knowledge of deixis in use, especially to investigate person deixis in political speech. Consequently, communication can be enhanced. This study is expected to give significant knowledge to the students about political communication; hence, they can be more aware of statements coming from politicians. In terms of English teaching, this study is expected contribute to the understanding of deixis and its use in an English utterance, especially when it is spoken by a native speaker. 2.2. Research questions To achieve the aim of this research, the following questions are set:  What kinds of person deixis are used in John Kerry‟s remarks on climate change?  What are the referents of person deixis used in John Kerry‟s remarks on climate change?  What are the political communication purpose(s) achieved by using the person deixis in the speech? 2.3. Scope of the study This small piece of work is not expected to cover all the aspects relating to deixis. Owing to the time constraint and knowledge of the writer, this study is limited to the use of person deixis in only one speech. Other types of deixis namely spatial, temporal, social, and discourse deixis are beyond the scope of the study. 3. Design of the study The study is presented as follows. 2 Part 1 – Introduction mentions some suggestions and fundamental ideas to lead in the main part of the thesis. Chapter I includes “the rationale of the study”, “the aim of the study”, “the research questions”, “the method of the study”, “the scope of the study”, and “the design of the study”, respectively. Part 2 – Development contains of three chapters. Chapter I – A background to the study deals with the theoretical background that inspires the thesis and the related literature review of person deixis in political communication. Chapter II – Methodology presents the methodology and procedure in data collection and analysis applied in this study. The writer describes her research design and the way she collected, classified and analyzed the data. Chapter III - Findings and Discussion analyzes the collected data then withdraws the final conclusions of the thesis. Further discussion on findings will be presented with examples that emerge from the data analysis as well as the personal interpretations and comments from the author. Part 3 - Conclusion gives the summary of the thesis by providing answers to the research questions presented. Implications for teaching and learning pragmatics derived from the thesis are also revealed in this chapter. Finally, the writer will review the limitations of this study and make suggestions for further research. 3 PART 2 DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I A BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY 1. Political discourse Discourse is such a broad term with many definitions, ranging from linguistics through other disciplines. Teun A van Dijk generally considered discourse as text in context (Horváth, 2009: 45). From this, it can be concluded that the term “discourse” is wider than “text” as “discourse” refers to the whole process of social interaction of which a text is just a part” (Fairclough, 1989: 24). According to Schaffner (1996), political discourse, as a sub-category of discourse in general, can be based on two criteria: functional and thematic. Political discourse is a result of politics and it is historically and culturally determined. It fulfills different functions due to different political activities. It is thematic because its topics are primarily related to politics such as political activities, political ideas and political relations. Van Dijk (2009: 1) emphasized that a discourse cannot be fully understood without understanding its context. Therefore, in order to achieve a comprehensive analysis, the context of the John Kerry‟s remarks on climate change was explained. The writer focused on information about the speaker, John Kerry and the situation when the text was delivered. On February 1, 2013, John Forbes Kerry was sworn in as the 68th Secretary of State of the United States, becoming the first sitting Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman to become Secretary in over a century. Secretary Kerry joined the State Department after 28 years in the United States Senate, the last four as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As Secretary of State, all his speeches received much attention from the public. Among those speeches, the writer chose his Remarks on Climate Change as the data for analysis. John Kerry‟s remarks on climate change were 4 delivered to a group of students and government officials at on February 16, 2014 at an American cultural center in Jakarta, Indonesia. The speech was delivered a day after the U.S and China issued a joint agreement saying that they had agreed on steps to carry out commitments to cooperate closely in reducing the effects of climate change. U.S. officials were hoping that other nations, particularly those in the developing world, will follow suit. John Kerry chose Indonesia for the first of what is to be a series of speeches on the topic partly because as he said in his speech, this country, as an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, was “on the front lines of climate change” and some of the most vulnerable to the effects of global warming. In his speech, John Kerry highlighted that climate change is real and call Indonesian people and authorities to step up effort to combat it. 2. Person deixis It is believed that language does not only possess a specific structure but also a variety of functions. These language functions belong to the field of pragmatics which concerns with the study of meaning as communicated by speaker (or writer) and interpreted by listener (or reader). Pragmatics is closely related with the context or setting of an utterance instead of the structure of the utterance itself. An utterance is interpreted not only based on its words‟ meaning, but also based on its context or factors outside of the denotative meaning itself. Such scope of Pragmatics would include the study of deixis. 2.1. Deixis According to Yule (1996: 9), deixis is the technical term for one of the most basic things we do with utterances. The term deixis is gained from the Greek word meaning pointing or indicating (Levinson 1983: 54). It signifies different things to different people (Cruse 2000: 319). “Deixis introduces subjective, attentional, intentional and of course contextdependent properties into natural languages” (Levinson in Horn/Ward 2006: 97). In addition, Levinson makes up his mind that “the single most obvious way in which the 5 relationship between language and context is reflected in the structures of language themselves, is through the phenomenon of deixis” (1983: 54). The importance of deictic information in interpreting utterances is best demonstrated by what happens when such information is missing (Fillmore 1975: 38-39 in Levinson 1983: 54). Deixis is traditionally divided into three categories: person, time, and place deixis. In Yule (1996) and Cruse (2000), the term „temporal deixis‟ is used instead of „time deixis‟ and the term „place deixis‟ is replaced by „spatial deixis‟. Following Lyons (1986, 1977a) and Fillmore (1972b, 1975), Levinson adds to the traditional categories two more deixis types: discourse (or text) deixis and social deixis (1983: 62). As the purpose of this study is analyzing person deixis, the writer only reviews theoretical background about person deixis. 2.2. Person deixis The different roles that individuals play in the speech event (speaker, addressee, and other) are directly reflected by the grammatical category of person (Levinson in Horn/Ward 2006: 112). The two semantic features of speaker inclusion (S) and addressee inclusion (A) capture the traditional person paradigm: first person (+S), second person (+A, -S), and third person (-S, -A). Additionally, Levinson emphasizes that “although person deixis is reflected directly in the grammatical categories of person, it may be argued that we need to develop an independent pragmatic framework of possible participant roles, so that we can see how and to what extent these roles are applied in different languages” (1983: 68). Yule (1996: 11) suggests that in deictic terms, third person is not a direct participant in basic (I-you) interaction (outsider) which results distant. Thus, third person pronouns are consequently distal forms in the term of person deixis. She also mentioned that for pronoun “we” there is potential ambiguity which is possibly cause misinterpretation. There is exclusive” we” (speaker plus other(s), excluding addressee) and an inclusive “we” (speaker and addressee include). Furthermore, Levinson (1983: 69) mentions that “we” does not always mean plural: the inclusive-exclusive distinction also 6 appear in “let‟s go” (inclusive-to some friends) and “let us go” (exclusive-to someone who has captured the speaker and friends). The summary of person deixis kinds is tabulated as follow: Figure 1: Subdivision of singular person deixis SINGULAR Subject Object Reflexive Possessive First person I Me Myself My mine Second person You You Yourself your yours Masculine He Him Himself His his Feminine She Her Herself Her hers Neuter It It Itself Its its Third person Figure 2: Subdivision of plural person deixis PLURAL Subject Object Reflexive Possessive First person We Us Ourselves our ours Second person You You Yourself your yours Third person They Them Themselves their theirs (Source: Cornelius Puschmann: Thank you for thinking we could: Use and function of interpersonal pronouns in corporate web logs [12/28/09]) 7 2.3. The Role of Person deixis in Political Communication It has been mentioned that deixis, within its simplicity, contained broad meaning of interpretation, especially when it comes to political field. It is based on the idea that in order to gain voice from the society, the way of communicating with the society must be arranged as interesting as possible to make a lasting impression to the recipient. Therefore, when deixis is applied in a speech, it is believed to give significant contribution to the overall impact of the speech. Beard (2000: 24) claims that pronoun preference is always important for the use of political persuasion. For example, pronoun „your‟ can mean given an immediate sense that the reader (s) is being addressed personally and the use of pronoun „we‟ for inclusion and exclusion. Furthermore, Beard (2000: 44-45) points out essentially five ways politicians can introduce a measure that they intend to apply, they are:  First person singular pronoun “I‟ as in “Today I intend to reduce taxes by 20 percents”.  First person plural pronoun „we‟ as in “Today we intend to raise the taxes by a mere 5 percent”.  Referring to position, like “The Chancellor must raise taxes for the long-term good of the nation‟s economy” or the role as part of the government: “The government must raise taxes . . .”  No agentive pronoun at all and only use agentless passive without direct responsibility for action given, as in “Today it has been found necessary to raise taxes by 20 percent.”  Using metonymy: “This budget will help all those on low incomes.” Referring to number one and two, it means that when politicians make a speech, they have two sets of first pronouns. They can use first person singular (I, me, myself, or mine) or first person plural (we, us, ourselves, and ours). According to Beard (2000: 45), the first person plural forms can have a range of references:  They can refer to „I‟ plus one other; i.e. we = the leader+ vise 8  They can refer to „I‟ plus a group; i.e. we = the leader + government and/ or political party  They can refer to „I‟ plus the whole country; i.e. we = the leader + society  They can refer to „I‟ plus the rest of humanity; i.e. we = the leader + people everywhere. Not only does Bread mention two sets of first pronouns but he also clarifies the advantage and disadvantage when using them:  Singular pronouns (I/me/myself/mine) Advantage: - show a clear sense of personal involvement on the part of the speaker, which is especially useful when good news is delivered. Disadvantages: - show all too clearly where blame lies if something goes wrong. - can be seen as too self- important, with the individual speakers placing themselves above or outside the collective responsibility of their colleagues.  Plural pronouns (we/us/ourselves/ours) Advantages: - help share the responsibility, especially when the decisions made are thought to be rejected by the society. - show the politician in touch with all of the country, even all of the world. Disadvantage: - individual does not gain so much credit when things go well. 9 The various objectives of the use of pronoun above make politicians and their speech writers have some difficulties in making decision of right time to use pronouns that will keep appearing in their speeches including:  How much responsibility are prepared to take on themselves?  How much responsibility for success are they wiling to share with other colleagues?  How confident are they that the whole groups of people share their views?  How much responsibility for failure are they prepared to accept as their own? (Bread 2000: 45-46) Finally, if we summarize all the explanation above, we can find an easy way to see how those points give significant effects to the overall speech content. 3. The Role of Context in Using Deixis Hymes (1964) in Brown and Yule (1983: 38) specifies the features of context which may be relevant to the identification of a type of speech event. They are addressor and addressee. “The addressor is the speaker or writer who produced an utterance and the addressee is the hearer or the reader who is the recipient of the utterance” (Brown and Yule 1983: 38). Knowing who are the speaker and the hearer makes it possible for analysts to predict and interpret his/her utterance by extra linguistic factors of both the speaker and the hearer, thus the more analysts know about the features of context, the more likely he is to be able to predict what is likely to be said (Brown and Yule 1983: 3840). Context covers the identities of participants, the temporal and spatial parameters of the speech event, the beliefs, knowledge and intention of the participants in the speech event (Levinson 1983: 6). There are three kinds of context that influence the interpretation of an utterance; they are the situational context, the background knowledge of context, and the co-textual context. 10 3.1. The Situational Context/ Exophoric Reference Situational context means that the surroundings or the situation can provide the meaning to a word, so the words do not have to be explicitly stated (Cutting 2002: 57). The example of situational context is as follow: There is a conversation between A and B who are sitting with the curtains drawn. A: God it‟s hot here B: Is it? C: Yeah, really. Are you shutting out this lovely sunshine? (Cutting 2002: 55) A‟s “God it‟s hot here” has place deixis “here” pointing to the room that they are in. B and C know that A means the room, not the whole building or the whole city. The sentence “are you shutting out this lovely sunshine?” contains spatial deixis pointing to the sunshine shining through the curtains (Cutting 2002: 56). In those examples, A does not say “it‟s hot here in this lecturer room” and C does not say “Are you shutting out this lovely sunshine that is coming through the curtains at the window behind you?” because the hearer have known the place they refer to. 3.2. The Background Knowledge Context Background knowledge context means that speakers assume a common knowledge of the course, knowledge that is only known by the members of the speakers. There are two kinds of background knowledge context; they are cultural general knowledge and interpersonal knowledge. 3.2.1. Cultural general knowledge According to Cutting, cultural general knowledge is a common knowledge that most people carry with them in their minds, about areas of life (2002: 5). For example: 11