Use of Lexical Choices and How They Would Affect the Discursive Power of Media - Essay Example

Use of Lexical Choices and How They Would Affect the Discursive Power of Media This paper encompasses an examination of use of lexical choices and how they would affect the discursive power of media. This will be demonstrated by using three news articles reporting the same event. The paper will then analyze the three pieces of news (reporting the same issue) and compare their lexical choices by picking 5 words to discuss. The objective of the paper is to illustrate how their different use of lexical choices would affect the discursive power of media. Power and persuasion are an essential part of human life. Power is especially important in political life. Politics is a continuous power struggle. People seek to reach their aims and goals by using power. In defining power attention must be paid to the fact that it is not something you can simply possess. It is rather a relationship between people. Power is always related to situations. Using power means having the power to persuade and impress by verbal communication. Pekonen (1991, 46) states that modern politics can be explained as a symbolic power struggle: the winner is a party whose language, words, terms and symbolic expressions are dominant once reality and the context has been defined. (Chilton, P. & Ilyin M. p 4) Presidential speeches are very important in society. According to Denton and Hahn (1986), the presidency is a rhetorical institution. Through speeches a president leads his country and seeks to persuade the nation and society. Presidential power is the power to persuade. The rhetorical style of a presidential speech can directly affect the political speaker’s aims and success. Han (1998) believes that the significance of presidential rhetorical skills has increased during the last 50 years and in part because of the media. This conceals some problems: when the style is emphasized, content may have only a secondary role. The images may be stronger than the message, and credibility may be more important than information. In this study attention is paid to the Aristoteles le of presidential power and per-suasion especially from the rhetorical point of view. (Aristoteles) Kress (1990) has introduced theoretical criteria characterizing work in the CDA paradigm which distinguishes it from other politically engaged discourse analysis work. (a) Language is first and foremost a type of social practice. (b) Texts are the result of the actions of socially situated speakers and writers. (c) The relations of the participants in the production of texts are generally unequal. (d) Meanings are the result of the (inter)action of readers and hearers with texts and with the speaker/writers of texts. They are always subject to more or less closely enforced normative rules, and to the relations of power obtaining in this interaction. (e) Linguistic features at any level are the result of social processes. Linguistic features are never arbitrary conjuncts of form and meaning. (f) Linguistic features in their occurrence in texts are always characterized by opacity. (g) Users of language have a particular stance towards the set of codes which make up a language. (h) System of language is a highly problematic in CDA. (i) History has to be taken into account. (j) CDA must be based on rather precise analyses and descriptions of the materiality of language on close linguistic description. (Kress, p 84) CDA begins from the assumption that systematic asymmetries of power and resources between participants – speakers and listeners, readers and writers – can be linked to their unequal access to linguistic and social resources. The important unit of analysis is the text. Texts are taken to be social uses of spoken and written language. Critical discourse analysis focuses on genre as well as on sentences and word-level analysis. The study of subject positions may clarify traditional values, ideologies and representations. When analyzing the cultural assumptions expressed in a text, one way to do it is to study the lexical choices or grammatical representations of agency and action. Also it’s possible to analyze texts in terms of how they structure and stipulate social relations. According to Luke (1997), texts operate pragmatically through the use of pronominalisation, modal auxiliaries, and the selection of speech acts. Different kind of lexical and grammatical choices build different kinds of relations of power and agency. What are the verbal means of persuasion that President Ahtisaari uses in his speeches? What topics do the speeches deal with? To whom or what do the speeches appeal? What values do they project? Who is the audience? A model of argumentation with which to analyze the speeches. This model was influenced by both Greimas’s semiotics and actants and Toulmin’s theory of argumentation. Figure 1. Model for analyzing argumentation of President Ahtisaari’s speeches. In considering the interaction between the president and his audience, we must pay attention to the fact that the presidential speeches studied are rather epideictic. The relationship between speaker and listeners is not equal. The audience is cast more in the role of listeners and spectators than active par-ticipants. The importance of the media and the feedback it provides is emphasized in the speeches, especially in those delivered abroad. Rhetorical figures are linguistic ornaments (ornatus) by which expressions are intensified and appeal is made to the emotions of the listeners. According to Göttert (1994, 44), rhetorical figures have re-ceived more attention than other elements in studies of rhetoric. Rhetorical figures may appear in single words (for example tropes), but also in lexis (for example parallelism or inversion). The most typical rhetorical figures President Ahtisaari’s speeches are parallelism (both anafora, anti-strofi and complexio), antithesis, and rhetorical questions. Anafora is more typical than antistrofi. Anafora means repeating something (word/sentence) at the beginning of consecutive sentences. Anti-strofi is repetition at the end of sentences. Complexio is a combined expression from anafora and an-tistrofi. For example, in his inaugural speech Ahtisaari says the following: - - We Finns enjoy a good reputation. We are trusted, and our persistence is recognized. We do not give in, and will not in the present circumstances. Instead, we shall look to the future with confidence. A better tomorrow al-ready waits beyond the mountains we still have to cross. Most of the antitheses include expressions ending in a climax; emphasizing a positive aspect of the issue. Expressions containing antitheses consist of metaphors (watchful big brother – partner; open-ing gates – building fences), verbs (approve – neglect), adjectives and adverbs (stable – unstable; adjustment not to lesser, but to greater, opportunities) and substantives (war – peace; courageous – daring). Rhetorical questions are used in only two speeches. These same speeches, the Kiljava speech and the Tampere speech, are those which contain the most persuasive elements in the data. The stance is quite clear: join the EU. - - Which side do we want to be on? What values do we want to promote? How do we want Europe to develop in the future? What kind of Finland do we want to live in, in the years to come? Lakoff and Johnson (1980) use the concepts target domain and source domain in discussing about metaphor (See also Chilton 1988). The source domain is that whose terms are used to build a meta-phor. For example, joining the EU is seen as a journey. The idea of journey thus represents the source. The target domain is the phenomenon which is concerned, such as joining the EU. I classified the source domains used in the metaphors in the presidential speeches into six groups (Figure 2). Works Cited Aristoteles (1997). Retoriikka ja Runousoppi. Osa IX. Tampere: Tammer-Paino. Chilton, P. & Ilyin M. (1993). Metaphor in political discourse: The case of the “Common European House”. Discourse and Society 4, 732. Kress, G. (1990). Critical discourse analysis. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 11, 84-99. Toulmin, S. (1986). The place of reason in ethics. Second edition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Read More