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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES
……………………. ……………………
HOÀNG NGUYỆT ANH

A CDA OF AL GORE’S LECTURE
AT NOBEL PEACE PRIZE AWARD 2007

(PHÂN TÍCH BÀI PHÁT BIỂU CỦA AL GORE TẠI LỄ TRAO GIẢI NOBEL VÌ
HOÀ BÌNH NĂM 2007 DƯỚI GÓC ĐỘ PHÊ PHÁN)

M.A MINOR THESIS Field:
English Linguistics
Code:
60.22.15 HANOI – 2008 2

Page
1.
Figure 1:
Interpretation
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2.
Figure 2:
Explanation
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3
Figure 3:
A Fragment of the Mood System in English
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4.
Table 1:
Process types, their meanings and participants
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5.
Table 2:
Components of a Multiple Theme
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TABLE OF CONTENT
Declaration i
Acknowledgement ii
Abstract iii
Figures and Tables iv
Abbreviations v
PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of the study 2
3. Scope of the study 2
4. Research questions 2
5. Research methods and procedure 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4
CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4
I. Overview of critical analysis (CDA) 4
1. The notion of CDA, Power and Ideology: 4
1.1. Critical Discourse Analysis: 4
1.2. Power in language: 5
1.3. Language and Ideology: 7
2. Main approaches to CDA: 9
II. Halliday‟s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG): 15
1. Transitivity 16

3. Implications and suggestion for further study 59
REFERENCES 61
APPENDIX: Al Gore‟s Lecture at Nobel Peace prize Award 2007 I

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Part A
INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
In the 1970s, linguistics saw the appearance and then the emergence of a new approach
of discourse analysis – critical discourse analysis (CDA) which fundamentally changed
linguists‟ look on encoded massages, texts, and discourses. CDA has been asserted to be
the critical study of language in which language is viewed as a tool of power and the
imposition of speakers‟ or writers‟ ideology on their audience especially in politics and
social affairs. In other words, doing a CDA is much in reference to exploring authors‟
power and ideology hidden in their choice and use of language units rather than the mere
meaning conveyed by words and grammar structures.
By all means, doing a CDA is really always a challenge to learners of language in the
sense that it requires an integrated background knowledge not only linguistically but also
socially. The requirement of applying knowledge of various linguistic fields beside an
understanding of social circumstances surrounding a discourse is obviously the inquiry
of a serious working for a full grasp of a specific discourse and what it conceals. And
that stimulates the writer of this thesis to do a CDA and take it as her graduation paper.
It is said that CDA targets at political and social-matter-related discourses; and the
twenty first century is supposed to be the age of discourses concerning global matters
such as globalization, nuclear weapon, population and anti-terrorism war… since those
best describe the power relation in the modern world. And Albert A. Gore‟s lecture at
the Nobel Peace Prize Award is an illustration. In this speech, Gore again mentioned and
rang the bell warning a global hot issue which is climate changes and their consequences
– a negative effect of globalization. For these reasons, I adopted this discourse as a case
for doing CDA.

investigate linguistic features which carries the speakers‟ ideology and power in a
contrastive comparison to CDA theory.
Hence, the procedure of conducting this study foremost concerns the collecting and
summarizing the CDA theory to create a background for the analysis of the chosen
discourse.

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The analysis of the chosen discourse is carried out by means of Fairclough‟s theory and
method. Hallidayan Systemic Functional Grammar is also an essential tool of analyzing
in combination with Fairclough‟s CDA theory. This combination will help me to
uncover the hidden ideology and power relation in the discourse.
The analyzing of the discourse will be in compliance with analyzing steps suggested by
Fairclough.
matters, interconnections and chains of cause – and – effect may be distorted out of
vision. Hence, “critique” is essentially making visible the interconnectedness of things.”
(Fairclough, 1995:747).

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From another view, Fairclough proposes a definition of CDA which is popularly
accepted and employed among CDA practitioners. He says:
“Discourse analysis which aims to systematically explore often opaque relationships of
causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and tests, and (b)
wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such
practices, events and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of
power and struggles over power; and to explore how the opacity of these relationships
between discourse and society is itself a factor securing power and hegemony.”
(Fairclough, 1995:132)
As per van Dijk (1998), CDA is concerned with studying and analyzing written texts and
spoken words to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality, and bias
and how these sources are initiated, maintained, reproduced, and transformed within
specific social, economic, political, and historical contexts.
In brief, despite different ways of saying, scholars all seem to agree on the point that
CDA is nothing rather than an effective tool to illuminate ways in which the dominant
forces in a society construct versions of reality that favour their interests. Consequently,
it helps the analysts understand the social problems which are mediated by mainstream
ideology and power relationships perpetuated by the use of written texts.
1.2. Power in language:
As an abstract concept, power in its most common sense is understood to be an
attachment to politics; it represents one‟s position in the political hierarchy. However, in
a broader sense, a more powerful person can have some certain influences on others.
Power makes it possible for a person to give another person a command without
affecting the relation, even such a simple command as “Wash your hand”. And power
now therefore concerns many other factors other than politics such as wealth, social and

likely standard language. In the mean time, people of other classes also possessed their
own dialects. Despite, the responsibility of the dominant for articulating and defining the
relationship and the pecking order between languages and social dialects was generally
hidden.
For CDA, language is not powerful on its own; rather, it is a tool of manipulating power;
in other words, it obtains power by the use powerful people make of it. And as per

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Wodak, this explains the fact that CDA often choose the perspective of those who suffer,
and critically analyze the language use of those in power, who in her words are
responsible for the existence of inequality and at the same time have the ability of
improving the conditions.
In CDA, it is also admitted that a text is rarely the work of any individual. In texts,
discursive differences are negotiated; they are governed by the differences in power
which is in part encoded in and determined by discourse and by genre. As a result, texts
are found to be site of struggle in that they show traces of differing discourses and
ideologies which all contend and struggle for the dominance.
Briefly enough, it can be said that language and power exists in an entwined relationship
in which language indexes power, expresses power and also challenge power. It is worth
bearing in mind that power does not root from language but can be challenged by
language. Further, it is realized that in a text power is signaled not only by grammatical
forms but also the genre of a text which a person employs to control a social occasion.
1.3. Language and Ideology:
Along with power, ideology has an important role to play in CDA. Alike power,
ideology obviously sounds social and political, and related to groups and societal
structures. And historically, the ideology of a society is that of the dominant class in that
society. Intuitively, it can be seen that ideologies involve such mental objects as belief,
ideas, thoughts, judgments and values.
Ever since Marx and Engels, ideologies have been defined in sociological and socio –
economic terms, and usually related to groups, group positions, and interests or group

knowledge of language, discourse, communication, persons, groups and events-existing
in the form of "scripts." "Social (group) attitudes" also reside within long-term memory
and provide further decoding guides. Each of these "group attitudes" can represent an
array of ideologies which combine to create one's own personal ideology which
conforms to one's identity, goals, social position, values and resources.
Discussing the relation between ideology and discourse, Fairclough (1995) assumes that
there exists a significant connections between features of texts and ideology which lies
“…in the ideological investment of elements which are drawn upon in producing or
interpreting a text,…, and in the ways in which these elements are articulated together

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and orders of discourse rearticulated in discoursal events.” (Fairclough, 1995:74). In
such a context, meanings (mainly lexical meanings) are supposed to be the feature that is
ideologically invested. Beside lexical meanings, Fairclough however claims that such
factors as presuppositions, implicatures, metaphors, and coherence and all aspects of
meaning are of importance.
So far it could have been seen the connection between language and power, language
and ideology. Similarly, a close relation is found existing between power and ideology.
It is a common claim that power and ideology are tightly tied together in the sense that
ideology helps secure power, and vice versa, power makes ideology dominant and
become “common sense”.
Jones & Peccei (2004) suggest that in the attempt of making people to act in an expected
way, persuasion is a better choice in comparison to physical coercion. Indeed, by
persuading, a person is to “exercise power through the manufacture of consent … or at
least acquiescence towards it” (Fairclough, 1989:4). To put it another way, persuasive
language actually serves as an effective weapon which bring a person power and
obedience, and more importantly, voluntary acts which mean nothing but that the
speaker‟s ideology has been commonly adopted.
2. Main approaches to CDA:
It is confirmed that there are five main approaches to CDA recognized worldwide which

Famous in the Duisburg School of CDA is Jager. And Foucault‟s structuralism and
Leontjev‟s “speech activity theory” are of major reference for analysts of Duisburg
School including Jager.
As per Duisburg CDA, discourses are institutionalized and conventionalized speech
modes. Discourses therefore express societal power relations, which in turns are
impacted by discourses.
To Jager, the analysis of discourse structure is the foremost step in the whole process of
analyzing a discourse. Despite the complexity, he suggests, the discourse structure can
be comprehensible in different discourse strands which are composed of discourse
fragments at different discourse levels (science, politics, media…). Individual discourse
fragments, in his opinion, can be analyzed in five steps: institutional framework, text

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surgace, linguistic-rhetorical means, programmatic ideological messages, and
interpretation. (Jager 1999:175-187)
1.4. Functional Systemic CDA (Fairclough):
Kress and Fairclough, especially Fairclough, are known as the most successful analysts
of Functional Systemic CDA which is much based on Hallidayan Systemic Functional
Grammar. The central of this approach is on semiotic features of discourse.
Of Fairclough‟s most remarkable success, according to Hoa, N. (2006), is his research
on social traditional conflicts as per Marxism and their representations in discourse.
CDA is then, in Fairclough‟s opinion, to analyze the dialectical relationship among
semiotic systems and constituents of social practice. Reasonably, Fairclough employs
Halliday‟s systemic functional grammar corresponding to his view. And in his
“Language and power” (2001), he proposes a three step model of analyzing a discourse
which consists of:
- Description of text
- Interpretation of the relationship between the productive and interpretative processes
- Explanation of the relationship between discourse processes and social processes.
The stage of description:

- Are complex sentences characterized by coordination or subordination?
- What means are used for referring inside and outside the text?
C. Textual Structure:
i. What interactional convention are used?
- Are there ways in which one participant controls the turns of others?
j. What larger scale structures does the text have?
The Stage of Interpretation

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The interpretation of discourse is exercised via the combination of what is in the text and
what is in the interpreter. In that process, member‟s resources – MR (or background
knowledge) and discourse features (or described language) which are considered as
CUES are factors activating interpreters‟ MR.
The procedure of interpretation is well described in the following figure suggested by
Fairclough (2001:119):

Interpretative Procedures
(MR)

Resources

Interpreting Social Orders
Situational Context


Semantics, Pragmatics
Meaning of Utterance
Cohesion, Pragmatics
Local Coherence
Schemata


struggle, within a matrix of relations of power” (Fairclough, 2001:135).
Correspondingly, the emphasis of the explanation process is on two dimensions: the
social effects of discourse and the social determinants of discourse. These two
dimensions is to be examined at three levels of social organizations: Societal,
Institutional, and Situational which are illustrated as in following figure:
Societal Societal
Institutional

MR

Discourse

MR Institutional
Situational


creating and being created by social identities, social relations and systems of knowledge

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and beliefs. For this common assumption, Halliday‟s Systemic Functional Grammar
(SFG) has been widely accepted and adopted in doing CDA by most linguistic analysts
such as Fairclough (2000, 1995, 1992, 1989); Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999), Kress
(1989), and Kress and van Leeuwen (1996).
The covering notion in SFL is that of “stratification”. Language, as of SFL, is considered
as a social semiotic organized in four strata in such relationships as „realization‟ and
„instantiation‟. Such strata are recognized as: Context, Semantics, Lexico-Grammar,
and Phonology – Graphology.
Context is realized via such values as Field, Tenor, and Mode. While Field is what is
going on, Tenor is the social roles and relationships between the participants, Mode is
defined as aspects of the channel of communication, e.g., monologic/dialogic, spoken/
written, +/ - visual – contact, etc.
Semantics in SFL consists of three components:
- Ideational Semantics (propositional content);
- Interpersonal Semantics (dealing with speech-function, exchange structure,
expression of attitude, etc.)
- Textual Semantics (how text is structured as a message, e.g.: theme structure, given/
new, rhetorical structure…)
The three above metafunctions of language are realized at the Lexico–Grammar by
choices in the Transitivity, Mood & Modality, and Thematic systems of language.
4. Transitivity
Transitivity plays as a key analytic component of the ideational metafunction. It
expresses the experiential aspect of meaning. The system of transitivity consists of three
components which are process types and their participants as well as circumstances
described within text. In English, there are six process types namely Material, Mental,
Verbal, Behavioral, Relational, and Existential Process.
Material Process is the process of doing; it involves action and event with one, two or

Event
„happening‟

Behavioral:
„behaving‟
Behaver, Phenomenon
Mental:
„feeling‟
Sensor, phenomenon

Perception
„sensing‟ Affection
„emotive‟ Cognition
„thinking‟

Verbal:
„saying‟
Sayer, Target, Verbiage,
Recipient
Relational:
„being‟
Carrier, Atrribute

Attribution
Yes/No
Interrogative

„Wh‟ Indicative
MOOD
lexicogrammatically. The system of theme is realized by two elements, Theme and
Rheme. While Theme serves as the initial element of the clause, Rheme is the remainder.
Theme may be single or multiple. As a single theme, it is represented by only one
constituent – a nominal group, and adverbial group, or a prepositional phrase.
Meanwhile, a multiple theme has a further internal structure of its own. It may have the
combination of three different components: textual theme, interpersonal theme, and
topical theme which is conflated with the experiential element of the clause. Below in
the table are the components of a multiple theme:
Metafunction
Component of Theme
Textual Theme
Continuative
Structural
Conjunctive
Interpersonal theme
Vocative
Modal
Finite
Wh-interrogative
Topical (Experiential) Theme
Participant, Circumstance, Process
Table 2: Components of a Multiple Theme
In sum, with the perception of language as a social semiotic as well as the emphasis on
language function, SFG serves as the best linguistic background for CDA. Halliday
(1994: 16) says: “A discourse analysis that is not based on grammar is not an analysis at
all, but simply a running commentary on a text.”
It is obviously that speakers choose and use language intentionally for certain
purpose(s), in other words, they are „doing things with words‟. And in Halliday (1970) it
is affirmed that language has three functions: ideational which includes experiential,