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An analysis of Prime Minister Tony Blair's speech at the 2003 Labour Party Conference, focusing on the transitivity choices made by Blair when dealing with exigences to achieve his political intentions. The analysis is based on Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis.
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Dissertação submetida à Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina em cumprimento parcial dos requisitos para obtenção do grau de MESTRE EM LETRAS
Março de 2007
Esta dissertação de José Carlos Martins, intitulada Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Speech at the Annual Labour Party Conference 2003: an Analysis of Exigence and Transitivity Based on CDA and SFL , foi julgada aprovada em sua forma final pelo Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, para fins de obtenção de título de
MESTRE EM LETRAS/INGLÊS E LITERATURA CORRESPONDENTE Área de concentração: Língua Inglesa e Lingüística Aplicada
Dr. José Luiz Meurer (Coordenador) ____________________________________ Viviane Maria Heberle (Orientadora) BANCA EXAMINADORA: ____________________________________ Anna Maria Grammatico Carmagnani (Examinadora) ____________________________________ Aleksandra Piasecka-Till (Examinadora)
Florianópolis, SC, 19 de março de 2007.
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After overcoming several difficulties I achieved the conclusion of my thesis which could not have happened without the helping hand and cooperation of several dear people. Thus, first of all, I would like to thank God for giving me this opportunity. I do this humbly reflecting on the fact that many people, due to our country’s context, even desiring and struggling for it, maybe, will never achieve the point of taking part in a Master’s Degree program and write a thesis in a federal institution. Secondly, I thank Doctor Viviane Maria Heberle, my advisor, for her help and counseling, a professor who trusted me and supported me to enter this program, opening the door of her classroom to receive me as a special student. Thirdly, I also thank Professor Aleksandra Piasecka-Till from FURB who also encouraged me to ingress the PPGI when I was her student in a specialization at FURB. I am also grateful for the dedication and valuable teachings of Professors José Luiz Meurer, Lêda Maria Braga Tomitch, Anelise Reich Corseuil, Maria Lúcia Milleo Martins, Mailce Borges Mota Fortkamp, Adriana Dallagnelo, Maria Lúcia Barbosa de Vasconcellos, Josalba Ramalho Vieira, and Antônio João Teixeira from the Programa de Pós-Gruaduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente. My wife Helana, my children Adriel, Ana Rúbia, and Alaiane played an important role in this work too, understanding me when I was absorbed by my studies, and was not able to be as next to them as perhaps they desired. And I thank my classmates with whom I spent nice hours inside and outside the classroom, sharing our achievements and disappointments.
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Supervisor Professor: Viviane Maria Heberle
This research analyzes the written version of the political speech given by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, in September 30, 2003, at the annual Labour Party Conference. The speech contains 5,778 words representing approximately 55 minutes of address. It was retrieved from the electronic UK’s Guardian newspaper. The research proposes to identify and classify the microexigences in the speech based on Bitzer’s (1968) and Gill and Whedbee’s (1997) definition of exigence. It also proposes to perform an analysis of the microexigences based on Fairclough’s Critical Discourse notions in connection with Halliday and Matthiessen’s 2004 transitivity system based on systemic-functional linguistics. Opinions of journalists of the main UK newspapers about the speech are taken into account in the analysis. The journalists’ opinions were retrieved from the Internet up to seven days after the speech. The research aims to answer the following three research questions: a) What are the exigences in the speech given by the Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Annual Labour Party Conference 2003?; b) What are the transitivity choices in terms of processes and main participants that Blair made in the speech when dealing with the exigences to try to achieve his intentions?; c) What does the analysis based on transitivity and on Fairclough’s notions of language, as an element of social practice, reveal in terms of political intentions in Blair’s speech? The suggestion is that 30 microexigences could befound in the speech. Within these 30 microexigences, eleven are considered more important and are analyzed in a more detailed way. 840 clauses were identified and classified regarding their process types and their main participants. Material processesand participants referring to Blair, his party, his government, and Britain predominate in the speech. This work was developed to contribute to the understanding of what is behind political speeches, their author’s intentions. Key words: microexigence, Systemic Functional Linguistics, Critical Discourse Analysis, transitivity, processes, participants, speech. Number of pages: 129 Number of words: 42,
ACKNOLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................. iv ABSTRACT ...... .......................................................................................................... v RESUME.. ........ ......................................................................................................... vi
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subject. In this sense, the scope of this work it to analyze a political speech given by the Prime Minister of United Kingdom, Tony Blair, on September 30, 2003, in the city of Bournemouth, England, at the annual Labour Party conference. It was given at a political and historical moment after Blair’s public image had faded due to allies’ failure to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, the main argument repeatedly claimed as irrefutable, used by him to support and take part in Iraq’s invasion. Blair’s speech was given based on an exigence (or exigences because there can be more than one in a text as it will be seen in chapter IV), an issue within a rhetorical situation demanding a response (Bitzer, 1968; Gill & Whedbee, 1997), which will be better defined in the review of literature. Once there are reasons ( exigences ) why Blair gave his speech, there are also features that may evidence how he gave it. One of the features of how he gave his speech are the specific lexical choices he made. Lexical choice is one of the aspects in political speeches that, if put under scrutiny, can help the analyst to understand the orator’s objectives. Concerning lexical choices, Heberle (1999) says that “[t]he study of vocabulary plays a crucial role in discourse, since it reveals world’s views, values and systems of beliefs of the participants in discourse. It is considered a fundamental tool to observe ideological, social or political issues in any given text” (p. 325). One possible alternative to analyze lexical choices is by means of Halliday’s SFL, more specifically through the system of transitivity (Eggins, 1994; Stubbs,1998; Wodak, 2001). Therefore, this thesis aims to analyze Blair’s speech at the Labour Party Conference 2003 regarding its exigence /s and also Blair’s transitivity choices, more
specifically the processes and the main participants he used when dealing with the exigences.
1.1 Objectives of the study
The overall research aim is to contribute to the debate on thorny issues such as political speeches and to contribute to the understanding of how political texts are organized in order to try to achieve their author’s goals. Along with this main objective, the research also intends specifically to:
- Analyze Tony Blair’s speech given at the Annual Labour Party Conference 2003 in relation the exigences in the speech. - Identify Blair’s lexical choices in terms of transitivity (SFL)^1 in order to communicate his political intentions. - Demonstrate by analyzing Blair’s speech that political speeches are given, as part of a social practice, to sustain political intentions in specific political moments. This objective will be sustained by Fairclough’s ideas of CDA.
1.2 Research Questions
My research will be guided by the following questions: A) What are the exigences in the speech given by Prime Minister Tony Blair at the Annual Labour Party Conference 2003? B) What are the transitivity choices in terms of processes and main participants (^1) It is appropriate to say that SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics) and CDA (Critical Discourse Analysis) are theoretical rationales used by NUPDISCURSO, a group of research investigating anddiscussing issues pertaining to Text, Discourse and Social Practice, coordinated by Doctor José Luiz MeurerUFSC. and Doctor Viviane Maria Heberle (www.cce.ufsc.br/~nupdiscurso/index-english.htm) from
1.3.2 Procedures for Data Analysis
It is a qualitative research, which also includes quantitative analysis. Thus, I present results in terms of number, tables, and I present some “meanings, motives, aspirations, beliefs, values and attitudes” (Minayo, 1994, p. 21), which are characteristics of a quantitative research. Despite the fact that Blair’s speech was given orally, I analyzed it as a written text, the version published in the electronic Guardian Newspaper from the UK (see appendix, page 135). The analysis took place according to the following sequence: Firstly, based on journalists’ opinions concerning the task Blair was facing, I came up with the macroexigence for the speech (see in chapter II what I mean by macroexigence). Secondly, I detected the exigences in the speech (which I will call microexigences
nineteen. To elect eleven microexigences as the ones deserving a more comprehensive analysis, I used as criterion the Iraq War issue which was treated by several journalists, mentioned in this paper, as indispensable in the speech. The microexigences to which Blair reserved fewer words than the one referring to the Iraq War were considered less important and were discussed briefly in chapter VI. The discussion about the microexigences was based on Bitzer’s (1968) and on Gill and Whedbee’s (1997) definition of exigence. Thirdly, I dealt with Blair’s transitivity choices. I analyzed the participants and processes used by Blair in the construction of the microexigences, based on Halliday and Matthiessen’s (2004) transitivity system. 840 clauses were detected, analyzed and classified concerning their process types and their main corresponding participants. Fourthly, based on the transitivity analysis and on CDA notions, I came up with a set of suggested political intentions in the speech. In order to count the frequency of participants and processes I used the Wordsmith Concordance and the Antconc computer program.
1.4 Significance of the Research
The justification for this research lies in the fact that with the analysis I developed, I can contribute to the understanding of the implicit persuasions political speeches encompass. In studying and analyzing this kind of text, we can have a better understanding and interpretation of the relations of power we are involved in as citizens, we can better understand the interests of those who govern society, which not always coincide with our community’s interests. In becoming aware of these relations, we gain voice, we have what to say, and we can agree or disagree with them, since we become
biography of the rhetor, Tony Blair; a depiction of who was his audience; and a picture of the circumstance surrounding his speech. In chapter four, Exigences in the Speech, I present the macroexigence for the speech and present some journalists’ opinions in order to sustain what I understand is the macroexigence for Blair’s speech; and still in this chapter four, I deal with the answer for the first research question: What are the exigences in the speech given by PM Tony Blair at the Annual Labour Party Conference 2003? In chapter five, Analyzing The Microexigences I, I deal with six of the main eleven microexigences (out of a number of thirty). The microexigences are analyzed in an attempt to answer the second research question: What are the transitivity choices in terms of processes and main participants that Blair made in the speech when dealing with the exigences in order to try to achieve his intentions? The analysis is performed considering, mainly, the recurrence of process types and, secondarily, the main participants involved in. Along with the analysis of the processes and the main participants, I also suggest possible political intentions behind the use of the processes and the participants, which it is an attempt to answer the third research question: What does the analysis based on transitivity and on Fairclough’s notions of language, as an element of social practice, reveal in terms of political intentions in Blair’s speech? In chapter six, Analyzing the Microexigences II, I deal with the other five microexigences of the main eleven microexigences, and I also present a brief discussion of the other nineteen microexigences, demonstrating the percentage of the most recurrent types of processes and the most recurrent participants and their implications. I decided to divide the analysis of the main eleven microexigences into two chapters for the sake of organization and readers’ understanding, since maintaining the
analysis of all microexigences together could cause readers difficulty to follow and to understand the discussion. In chapter seven, The Conclusion, I summarize the answers for the three proposed research questions; present the final remarks and further research suggestions.
