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i
DECLARATION

I hereby declare that the thesis entitled A critical discourse analysis of verbal
expressions showing emotions in football commentaries in English and Vietnamese
 has been carried out at the University of Languages and International Studies
under the guidance of Dr. Huynh Anh Tuan. The work is original and has not ever been
submitted in part or full by me for any degree at another University.
I further declare that the material obtained from other sources has been duly
acknowledged in the thesis.
Ngo Viet Tuan
June 2014 iii
ABSTRACT

Nowadays, football is undeniably the most favourite sport in the world. It is not

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii
ABSTRACT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of the study 2
3. Scope of the study 2
4. Methods of the study 2
5. Design of the study 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4
Chapter 1: Theoretical Background&Literature Review 4
1.1. Overview of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) 4
1.1.1. The history of CDA 4
1.1.2. Definition of CDA 5
1.1.3. Aims of CDA 6
1.1.4. Differences between CDA and other approaches to Discourse Analysis (DA) 6
1.1.5. Key notions of CDA 7
1.1.6. Principles of CDA 9
1.1.7. Main approaches to CDA 9
1.1.8. Fairclough‟s analytical framework 11
1.1.9. Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and CDA in connection 13
1.2. Review of literature 14
Chapter 2: Methodology 15
2.1. Research approach 15
2.2. Research method 15
2.3. Research questions 15
2.4. Data collection 16
2.5. Method of data analysis 16
2.5.1. Analytical framework 16

1
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
It is undeniable that football (or soccer) is the most popular sport in the
world nowadays. It attracts billions of people of any age, gender, class,
religion, and nation. Football seems to form its own society in which
everyone can see the factors such as economy, politics, and culture; in which
the states of emotion can be demonstrated clearly and overtly: the crazy love
or the extreme hate, the outburst of happiness or the bottom of sorrow.
Possibly, football inventors never imagined it could become such a favourite
sport someday.
There are some reasons which can explain the popularity of football in
the world such as the easy rules, the great contribution to health and the
encouragement of team spirit. However, another important reason which is
not usually paid attention to is the remarkable support of the mass media.
Thanks to the live matches on TV or the emotional commentaries in the
newspapers, a lot of people from generation to generation have grown up with
the love and passion of football. This shows that mass media has such great
effects on the feeling and thought of football fans. Through the mass media,
football commentators can easily appeal for the entire nation‟s patriotism and
solidarity before every single football match of their national team. Also, they
can easily make football fans have biased views about some social problems
due to their emotionalistic commentaries. In order to illustrate how subjective
some of football commentaries nowadays are and how they badly affect
readers, I manage to do a thesis called “A critical discourse analysis of verbal
expressions showing emotions in football commentaries in English and
Vietnamese e-newspapers”.


3
Systemic Functional Grammar at the level of word and clause by Halliday.
The analysis procedure is specified more in the Methodology chapter.
5. Design of the study
The study consists of three parts:
Part A, INTRODUCTION, outlines the background of the research. In this
chapter, a brief account of relevant information is provided about the rationale,
aims, scope, significance, methodology and design of the research.
Part B, DEVELOPMENT, includes four chapters:
Chapter 1, THEORETICAL BACKGROUND and LITERATURE REVIEW,
presents all related theoretical background that precedes and necessitates the
formation of the research. Meanwhile, it gives a slight overview of some
previous researches on the same subject.
Chapter 2, METHODOLOGY, refers to the sources of data as well as the
method to collect and analyze the data to facilitate the research process.
Chapter 3, DATA ANALYSIS, analyzes the data collected.
Chapter 4, FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION, discusses the findings of the data
analysis.
Part C, CONCLUSION, draws important conclusions and makes
suggestions for further researches.
4
PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

theory of language, a radically different kind of linguistics” (Kress, 1990,
p.94).
1.1.2 Definition of CDA
Fairclough (1995, pp.132-3) defines CDA as follows: “By critical
discourse analysis, I mean discourse analysis which aims to systematically
explore often opaque relationships of casualty and determination between (a)
discursive practices, events, and texts (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”.
In the opinion of Van Leeuwen (1993, p.193) “Critical discourse
analysis should be concerned or is concerned…with discourse as the
instrument of power and control, as well as with discourse as the instrument
of the social construction of reality”.
According to Van Dijk (2001, p.352), CDA is a type of discourse
analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse,
dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and
talk in the social and political context. With such dissident research, critical
discourse analysts take explicit position, and thus want to understand, expose,
and ultimately resist social inequality.
According to Wodak (1996, p.16), CDA highlights the substantively
linguistic and discursive nature of social relations of power in contemporary
societies. This is partly the matter of how power relations are exercised and

6
negotiated in discourse. It is fruitful to look at both "power in discourse,"
"power of discourse" and "power over discourse" in these dynamic terms.
In summary, CDA can be defined as being fundamentally interested in
analyzing opaque as well as transparent structural relationships of dominance,

intention of providing an exhaustive structural model of discourse
organization. CDA is much different. This critical approach to discourse
really sets itself away from descriptivism of this sort. It foregrounds its
concern with social constructionism and with the construction of ideology in
particular.
Ruth Wodak & Michael Meyer (2009, p.2) show that the significant
difference between other DA approaches and CDA lies in the constitutive
problem-oriented, interdisciplinary approach of the latter. CDA is therefore
not interested in investigating a linguistic unit by itself but in studying social
phenomena which are necessarily complex and thus require a
multidisciplinary and multi-methodical approach.
1.1.5. Key notions of CDA
For proper understanding of CDA as a new linguistic approach, it is
important that some key CDA notions should be considered.
Critical and the use of this term in CDA can be traced to the influence
of Marxist and later the “Critical Theory” of Frankfurt School. Critical means
not taking anything for granted or self-reflection of the research process.
Therefore, Critical does not imply the common sense of the word, i.e.
criticizing, or being negative and "positive", of course, is in no way to be
understood as the counterpart of critical research. Nowadays, this term is also
adopted more popularly in everyday language to mean the use of rational
thinking to question arguments or prevailing ideas.

8
Power is another concept which is central for CDA. Max Weber (1947,
p.152) defining power as: “the probability that one actor within a social
relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance,
regardless of the basis on which this probability rests”. For CDA, language is
not powerful on its own – it gains power by the use powerful people make of
it. It explains why CDA researchers are interested in the way discourse

1.1.6. Principles of CDA
CDA‟s emergence was not long ago, yet it has received a lot of attention
and favors from linguists since then. Many researchers find themselves
interested in conducting CDA. Fairlough and Wodak (1997, pp.271-80)
summarize the main principles of CDA, acting as a guiding star for those who
expect to do CDA researches. The main principles are as follows:
 CDA addresses social problems
 Power relations are discursive
 Discourse constitutes society and culture
 Discourse does ideological work
 Discourse is historical
 The link between text and society is mediated
 Discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory
 Discourse is a form of social action.
Of eight main principles above, the first principle that CDA addresses social
problems such as inequalities of gender, race, class, religion is the most
important and distinctive of CDA. Any CDA research must highlight this
principle.
1.1.7. Main approaches to CDA
Socio-cognitive Approach: Teun Van Dijk

10
Teun Van Dijk is the leading figure in socio-cognitive approach to
CDA. This approach by Van Dijk is based on the assumptions that
“cognition” mediates between “society” and “discourse”. Van Dijk supposes
there is no direct relationship between social structures and discourse
structures and almost always they are connected to each other through
personal and social cognition. This cognition is the lost segment of many
critical linguistic studies and CDA; therefore he offers the triangle of society:
cognitive and society and discourse. Van Dijk‟s works mainly focus on the

social practices. His approach draws upon a particular linguistic theory –
Systemic Functional Linguistics (Halliday, 1985) – which analyses language
as shaped (even in its grammar) by the social functions it has come to serve.
1.1.   _an important background of
CDA
        
development of the analytical framework for studying discourse. Up to now,
many researchers have considered this framework as a useful tool to do CDA
studies. In fact, Fairclough gives
his opinion on the actual nature of
discourse and text analysis through
the three-dimensional framework in
Figure 1 below:
(Source: Locke, 2004, p. 42)
As shown in Figure 1,
Fairclough‟s analytical framework
includes three dimensions of discourse: the text, the discourse practice, and
the socio-cultural practice. Corresponding to these three dimensions of

12
discourse Fairclough identifies three dimensions, or stages, of CDA:
• Description is the stage which is concerned with formal properties of the
text. In this stage, the analysis of the language structures produced is
exercised. For the CDA practitioner‟s easy application of the framework
above to analysis, Fairclough suggests ten main questions (and some sub-
questions) in the stage of description. Of ten questions, the following eight
questions about vocabulary and grammar are really useful and necessary in
the scope of my CDA research:
A. Vocabulary
1. What experiential values do words have?

• Interpretation is concerned with the relationship between text and
interaction - with seeing the text as the product of a process of production,
and as a resource in the process of interpretation.
• Explanation is concerned with the relationship between interaction and
social context - with the social determination of the processes of production
and interpretation, and their social effects. Naturally, the analysis in this stage
includes the exploration of the ways in which discourses operate in various
domains of society.
In short, according to Fairclough‟s analytical framework, CDA
researchers concentrate on not just analysing texts, nor just analysing
processes of production and interpretation, but analysing the relationship
between texts, processes, and their social conditions, both the immediate
conditions of the situational context and the more remote conditions of
institutional and social structures.
1.1.9. Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and CDA in connection
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), which is developed mainly by
M.A.K. Halliday, is an approach to language that explores how language is
used in social contexts to achieve particular goals. Because it is concerned
with language use, SFL places higher importance on language function (what

14
it is used for) than on language structure (how it is composed). It is apparent
that the way SFL views language is closely appropriate to CDA. It is the
reason why SFL, especially Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), is usually
in favour with CDA practitioners and SFG is considered the main foundation
of text analysis in critical discourse studies. For instance, on the basis of SFG,
Fairclough sets up ten questions in the stage of description as mentioned
above and CDA practitioners have found them useful for their research so far.
1.2. Review of literature
There have been a lot of the researches on sexism and nationalism in

2.2. Research method
My research is carried out on the basis of analyzing football
commentaries in English and Vietnamese newspapers. Therefore, a
contrastive analysis to find out the differences in showing sportswriters‟
emotions in terms of social inequality in the two languages is necessary and it
makes the research more interesting.
2.3. Research questions
On the basis of the two objectives mentioned in the Introduction, two
research questions of the study are raised as follows:
- How are social inequalities in term of sexism and nationalism produced in
English and Vietnamese football commentaries?
In order to answer this question, the research would investigate the
words, phrases and clauses used to legitimize these social inequalities.
- How are readers affected by these commentaries?
For this question, the research would show readers‟ responses to these
commentaries. It is the best way to measure positive or negative effects on
readers.

16
Of course, all of my research is structured around these questions to
find out the reasonable answers at last.
2.4. Data collection
The data for the analysis in my research are the articles during the
period of 2001-2014 collected from some English e-newspapers such as The
BBC Sports, The Channel 4 News, The Daily Record, The Daily Mail, The
Huffington Post, The Guardian, The Bleacher Report and some Vietnamese e-
newspapers such as ng 

, T


implicitly. In the stage of explanation, I would like to mention to socio-
cultural conditions such as situational, institutional affecting the way that
sportswriters show their emotions as well as what effects those commentaries
have on readers‟ mind.
2.5.2. Analytical units
As mentioned above, the stage of description in my research plays a
very important role in the correct interpretation of the text. Therefore, in this
stage, in order to clarify the grammatical features used, Systemic Functional
Grammar at the level of word and clause by Halliday is chosen for the
analysis. Specifically, words and kinds of clause such as exclamation,
imperative, rhetorical question, clause with modal particle in the sentences of
showing sportswriter‟s emotions are core units for the analysis. Besides, eight
useful questions about vocabulary and grammar suggested by Fairclough are
also considered as the facilitators of the analysis. 18
CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS
In this chapter, the data collected from the newspapers presented in
chapter 2 will be analyzed to highlight the presence of the two social
equalities namely sexism and nationalism in verbal expressions showing
sportswriter‟s emotions.
3.1. SEXISM
In English football commentaries, sportswriters usually direct negative