Header Page of 27 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ********************* NGUYỄN KIỀU LƯƠNG A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF PERSON DEIXIS IN JOHN KERRY’S REMARKS ON CLIMATE CHANGE Một phân tích ngữ dụng xuất phát biểu John Kerry biến đổi khí hậu M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code:60220201 HANOI - 2016 Footer Page of 27 Header Page of 27 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES ********************* NGUYỄN KIỀU LƯƠNG A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF PERSON DEIXIS IN JOHN KERRY’S REMARKS ON CLIMATE CHANGE Một phân tích ngữ dụng xuất ngơi phát biểu John Kerry biến đổi khí hậu M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code:60220201 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Ngơ Hữu Hồng HANOI - 2016 Footer Page of 27 Header Page of 27 TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration ……………………………………………………………………… ……… … i Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………… …………………ii Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………… iii PART INTRODUCTION Rationale for the study Aim and scope of the study 2.1 Aim of the study………………………………………………………………… 2.2 Research questions……………………………………………………………… 2.3 Scope of the study……………………………………………………………………… Design of the study PART DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I A BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY Political discourse Person deixis 2.1 Deixis………………………………………… …………………………………….… 2.2 Person deixis…………………………………………… …………………………… 2.3 The Role of Person deixis in Political Communication……………………………… 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 Political Discourse Propaganda 14 Related Study 15 CHAPTER II METHODOLOGY 16 Research methods and instruments 16 Data of the study 16 Data analysis 17 CHAPTER III FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 18 Footer Page of 27 i Header Page of 27 Kinds of Person deixis used in John Kerry‟s Remarks on Climate Change 18 Referents and Political Purposes of Person deixis used in John Kerry‟s Remarks on Climate Change 19 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 Recapitulation 40 Implications of the study 41 2.1 Implication for teaching pragmatics………………………………………… ……….41 2.2 Implication on learning pragmatics…………………………………………………….41 Limitations of the study 42 Suggestions for further research 42 REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………….43 APPENDIX……………………………………………………………………………………….I Footer Page of 27 ii Header Page of 27 PART INTRODUCTION 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 Footer Page of 27 Header Page of 27 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 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 Design of the study The study is presented as follows Footer Page of 27 Header Page of 27 Part – 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 – 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 - 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 Footer Page of 27 Header Page of 27 PART DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I A BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY 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 Footer Page of 27 Header Page of 27 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 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 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 Footer Page of 27 Header Page 10 of 27 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 Footer Page 10 of 27 Header Page 11 of 27 REFERENCES Books and Articles Adetunji, A 2006 Inclusion and Exclusion in Political Discourse: Deixis in Olusegun Obasanjo's Speeches Journal of Language and Linguistics, 5, 2 Beard, A 2000 The Language of Politics New York: Routledge Brown, G./Yule, G 1983 Discourse Analysis Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Cruse, A 2002 Meaning in Language: An introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics Oxford: Oxford University Press Cutting, J 2002 Pragmatics and Discourse London and New York: Routledge Fairclough, N 1989 Language and Power London: Longman Horn, L.R./Ward, G (eds) 2006 The Handbook of Pragmatics Oxford: Blackwell Horváth, J 2009 Critical discourse analysis of Obama‟s political discourse In: Milan Ferencík and Juraj Horváth (eds.) Language, literature and culture in a changing transatlantic world, International Conference Proceedings, Prešovská University of Prešov, 45-56 Joseph, J E 2006 Language and Politics Scotland: Edinburg University Press 10 Kuo, S 2002 From solidarity to antagonism: The uses of the second-person singular pronoun in Chinese political discourse Text 22 (1), 29-55 11 Lasswell, H D 1927 The American Political Science Review.21, 627-631 Retrieved from the World Wide Web, http://ics- www.leeds.ac.uk/papers/pmt/exhibits/2941/Lasswell.pdf 12 Levinson, S 1983 Pragmatics Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 13 Lichtman, M 2009 Qualitative Research in Education: A User’s Guide 2nd ed 14 Merriam, S B 2009 Qualitative Research: A guide to Design and Implementation CA: Jossey-Bass 15 Pinkerton, M K 2006 U.S Public Image: A Study of the Perceptions of International Students from Predominantly Muslim Nations Unpublished MA thesis, University of Texas Footer Page 11 of 27 Header Page 12 of 27 16 Puschmann, C 2009 Thank you for thinking we could: Use and function of interpersonal pronouns in corporate web logs [12/28/09] Retrieved from the World Wide Web, http://ynada.com/pubs/thankyou.pdf 17 Schaffner, C 1996 Editorial: political speeches and discourse analysis: Current Issues in Language & Society, 3, (3), 201-204 18 Sproule, J M 2001 Authorship and Origins of the Seven Propaganda Devices: A Research Note Rhetoric & Public Affairs 4, 1, 135-143 19 Van Dijk, T A 2009 Society and Discourse, How Social Contexts Influence Text and Talk Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 20 Wilson, J M 2000 Group Identity and Political Participation in the American Public Retrived from the World Wide Web, http://faculty.smu.edu/jmwilson/ 21 Wind, J./Pulleyblank, E G./.de Grolier, E./Bichakjian, B H (eds.) 1989 Studies in Language Origins: Origin, language and languages Volume John Benjamins Publishing Company 22 Wodak, R./ de Cillia, R (2006) Politics and Language: Overview In: Keith Brown, (Editor-in-Chief) Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics, Second Edition, 9, 707719 Oxford: Elsevier 23 Yule, G 1996 Pragmatics Oxford: Oxford University Press Websites Remarks on Climate Change Retrieved from the World Wide Web, Footer Page 12 of 27 ... LƯƠNG A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF PERSON DEIXIS IN JOHN KERRY S REMARKS ON CLIMATE CHANGE Một phân tích ngữ dụng xuất phát biểu John Kerry biến đổi khí hậu M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English... 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. .. 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