Vietnam National University university of languages and international studies Faculty of Post- graduate studies -*** NGUYỄN THỊ THANH HUYỀN A study on RACE DISCRIMINATION EMBEDDED IN THE SHORT STORY "CHRISTINA ROSENTHAL (BY JEFFREY ARCHER) FROM A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (Nghiên cứu phân biệt chủng tộc truyện ngắn "Christina Rosenthal" (Jeffrey Archer) góc độ phân tích diễn ngơn phê phán) Minor thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Hanoi, 2010 Vietnam National University -2- university of languages and international studies Faculty of Post- graduate studies -*** NGUYỄN THỊ THANH HUYỀN A study on RACE DISCRIMINATION EMBEDDED IN THE SHORT STORY "CHRISTINA ROSENTHAL (BY JEFFREY ARCHER) FROM A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS (Nghiên cứu phân biệt chủng tộc truyện ngắn "Christina Rosenthal" (Jeffrey Archer) góc độ phân tích diễn ngơn phê phán) Minor thesis Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Prof Nguyễn Hòa Hanoi, 2010 DECLARATION -6- TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ABSTRACT TABLE OF CONTENT LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES, AND CHARTS Part A: Introduction Rationale 2.Significance of the study Aims of the study and research questions Scope of the study Methodology of the study Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Background to Critical Discourse Analysis 1.1.1 CDA‟s definitions 1.1.2 Key concepts of CDA 1.2 CDA theories and Practice 1.2.1 Overview of the approaches to CDA 1.2.2 Three main schools of CDA 1.2.2.1 Van Dijk‟s school – Socio-cognitive approach 1.2.2.2 Ruth Wodak‟s school – The discourse – historical approach 1.2.2.3 Fairclough‟s school – Systemic Functional Grammar 1.2.3 Fairclough‟s framework of CDA 1.3 Systemic functional grammar in CDA 1.4 Summary CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY AND ANALYSIS PROCEDURES 2.1 About the object of the enquiry 2.2 Some brief information about the story 2.2.1 The story itself 2.2.2 Context of the story 2.3 Data analysis procedure 2.2 Analysis of discourse macrostructures of the story 2.3 Analysis of discourse microstructures of the story 2.3.1 The title: Christina Rosenthal 2.3.2 Lexicalization 2.3.2.1 Christina Rosenthal - who teased Benjamin and taunted him 2.3.2.2 Christina Rosenthal - who teased Benjamin and taunted him 2.3.2.3 Christina Rosenthal sacrificed her life for love 2.3.2.4 Christina's death left a regret to her parents and the rabbi 2.3.3 Conversation structure 2.3.3.1 Conversation between Benjamin and Christina 2.3.3.2 Conversation between Benjamin and Christina‟s father 2.3.3.3 Conversation between Benjamin and Christina‟s mother 2.3.4 Transitivity i ii iii iv vii viii 1 2 2 4 4 5 5 6 11 13 14 14 15 15 15 16 17 19 19 21 21 22 24 24 26 27 30 31 31 -7- 2.3.4.1 Christina as a participant 2.3.4.2 Benjamin as a participant 2.3.4.3 The rabbi as a participant 2.3.4.4.Christina's parents as participants 2.4 Summary PART C: CONCLUSION Summary of the findings Conclusions Suggestions for further study REFERENCES APPENDIX APPENDIX APPENDIX 32 34 35 36 36 37 37 38 39 40 I II IV -8- ABBREVIATIONS CDA Crtical Discourse Analysis CL Critical Linguistics SFG Systemic Functional Grammar SFL Systemic Functional Linguistics MR Member's Resource sM sub-Macroproposition Dir Directive Ex Expressive Com Commissive Rep Representative Dec Declarative B Benjamin C Christina -9- FIGURES, TABLES AND CHARTS Line FIGURE Interpretation FIGURE Explanation 11 Summary of process typ.es 12 FIGURE The macrostructure of the text 18 TABLE TABLE Examples of the use of "Christina" in the story 19 TABLE The number of words spoken by Christina and Benjamin 27 CHART Chart 1: The number of words spoken by Christina and Benjamin in 28 their conversations TABLE Summary of speech acts in the conversation between Christina and 28 Benjamin CHART Summary of speech acts in the conversation between Rosemary and 28 the girl FIGURE Structural analysis of the assertive "She will never marry a 31 Jew" TABLE Participant types of the characters in the story 32 TABLE Summary of the processes in which Benjamin is a participant 32 TABLE Material and Mental processes that Benjamin is engaged in 33 TABLE Summary of the processes in which Christina is a participant 34 TABLE Summary of the processes in which the rabbi is a participant 35 - 10 - PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), as it was, is a relatively new research area in Vietnam, which were introduced just about five years now Interest in CDA is growing and appealing to many Thus, this study is another attempt aimed at enhancing the consciousness of how power and ideology are embedded in language in particular, and the relations between language and society in general It then somehow brings the contribution to applying CDA to doing linguistic research CDA has been drawing the attention of many researchers, both linguists and social analysts since its introduction Its applicability is considered in every context and every discipline Not only CDA is applied within disciplines such as humanities and sciences but also in professional areas like medicine, environmental studies, engineering, social policy, education, law, etc CDA subsumes a variety of approaches towards the social analysis of discourse which differ in theory, methodology, and the type of research issues to which they tend to give prominence In contrast to other paradigms in discourse analysis and text linguistics, CDA focuses not only on texts, spoken or written, as objects of inquiry but also on the social processes and structures, which give rise to the production of a text, and of the social structures and processes within which individuals or groups as social-historical subjects, create meanings in their interaction with texts (Fairclough, 1993) This is particularly the case for literature – one of the prominent types of discourse in which the values, beliefs and ideologies of particular nations, social classes and social groups could be represented through language However, as it happens, literary discourse has not been the object of CDA investigation, to the best of my knowledge I have decided to the study on the short story: "Christina Rosenthal" by Jeffrey Archer from a CDA perspective The short story is so moving, so meaningful and comprehensive in terms of race discrimination In the thesis, I hope to be able to discover and analyse critically the race discrimination hidden in the Canadian society of the time from such a story - 11 - All of the above reasons have encouraged me to conduct the research entitled "A study on race discrimination embedded in "Christina Rosenthal" by Jeffrey Archer from a critical discourse analysis perspective." Significance of the study In fact, as CDA is quite a new research area in Vietnam, this study is aimed at enhancing the consciousness of how power and ideology are embedded in language in particular, and the relation between language and society in general It can make some significant contribution to applying CDA to doing linguistic research Aims of the study and research questions 3.1 To provide a CDA analysis of the short story: “Christina Rosenthal” from a new perspective of discourse analysis Through this study, readers can access how race discrimination are represented lexically, grammatically and macro-structurally as well 3.2 The research questions: a What kinds of power and social relations are expressed in the story? b How are these relations expressed? c How can they be explained and interpreted? Scope of the study - The CDA analysis of the short story “Christina Rosenthal” is confined to some linguistic aspects and some features of context - Among some social issues, race discrimination is mainly dealt with in the study - The study is oriented to discover the linguistic aspects, not literary ones Methodology "Language as a form of social practice" (Fairclough, 2001) is always being adhered strictly throughout the study "Christina Rosenthal", a literature work, is not going to be taken into pieces but to be considered a system which is created by sub-systems When analyzing a - 12 - particular lexical item, the writer will always put it in relation with other elements of its sub-system and the whole system as well, with its macrostructures and its context The study bases itself on the common sense assumptions that there are “implicit conventions according to which people interact linguistically” (Fairclough 2001) Regarding the short story, there exists some aspects influencing the lexical and grammatical choice of the writer It then follows the inductive, that is all underlying patterns and principles are drawn from description of data and generalization of findings The study is inclined to follow the integrated approaches; I try to conduct it through a combination of some popular approaches in CDA (approaches of van Dijk, Fairclough, Ruth Wodak) However, the greatest linguist I had influence when carrying out this thesis is Halliday's systemic functional grammar In carrying out this study, I follow these procedures: At first, several approaches to CDA are reviewed so that an appropriate theoretical framework suited to the aims and subject of the study could be mapped out The study is not based on a particular approach, rather, it is drawn upon a combination of two most outstanding approaches proposed by two CDA practitioners, Fairclough and van Dijk Secondly, the discourse I chose is a short story “Christina Rosenthal”, the analysis is done in two phases: General textual description of the story is made in terms of lexis and syntax towards the underlying ideology in the story The story is analyzed in terms of lexical and grammatical choice, conversation structure, transitivity, and implicatures is to find out how ideology is linguistically realized Later on, this serves as the underpinning for the interpretation and explanation of the findings Design of the study The study includes three main parts: Part 1: Introduction discusses the rationale, significance, scope, aims, methodology and design of the study Part 2: Development This part is divided into two chapters - 13 - Chapter 1: Theoretical background and Literature review presents a brief theoretical background of Critical Discourse Analysis, Systemic Functional Grammar Chapter 2: Methodology and analysis procedures describes the data collection and the procedure of analyzing data to detect the race discrimination embedded in the story and discusses the findings of the analysis Part 3: Conclusion summarizes the major findings, provides concluding remarks and make suggestions for further studies ... the data collection and the procedure of analyzing data to detect the race discrimination embedded in the story and discusses the findings of the analysis Part 3: Conclusion summarizes the major... discrimination hidden in the Canadian society of the time from such a story - 11 - All of the above reasons have encouraged me to conduct the research entitled "A study on race discrimination. .. discrimination embedded in "Christina Rosenthal" by Jeffrey Archer from a critical discourse analysis perspective." Significance of the study In fact, as CDA is quite a new research area in Vietnam, this study