The Interview of Princess Diana - Case Study Example

Critical discourse analysis of the Interview of Princess Diana According to Fairclough (2001) discourse has in many ways become a more salient and potent element of social life in the contemporary world, and that more general processes of current social change often seem to be initiated and driven by changes in discourse. So before going to analyze the text we have to know certain things like a literature review is a piece of discursive prose, not a list describing or summarizing one piece of literature after another (Taylor 2008). Descriptive Interpretation: The text is a transcription of an interview broadcasted in November 1995 in a program Panorama interview with Princes of Wales, the interviewee in the text. Though the topics in the interview are personal, the interviewer has the capacity to pierce into different aspect of the royal family and has intelligently brought out the matters, which are secret for the common man. The genre of the text is interactive-narrative in the form of dialogue between two persons - an interviewer- an adept journalist and an interviewee- a person from royal family. The text is interactive in the sense that the conversation is in cooperation and both the persons have some arguments on several topics and narrative in the sense that the interviewee is narrating her personal understanding concerning her difficulties and problems along with the method adopted to solve the same. The opening sentence of the journalist Martin Bashir is in the tone of satire. When he says, ‘...pressures that came with marrying into the Royal Family?’ he comprehends that a royal family has an assortment of pressures owing to their obligations. The person is from a political royal family so the chances of political statement were high but there are only personal statements in the text. Awfully gracious and pleasant accent is presented with some twist of satire at certain points throughout the statements. The satire can be sensed in the statement of Diana when she said- ‘At the age of 19, you always think you're prepared for everything, and you think you have the knowledge of what's coming ahead.’ she actually resources that a person at the age of 19 cannot have big responsibility, which she has to acquire on the marriage and to accept the titanic responsibility at that premature age. She has interpersonal intentions of putting the matter to the listener leasing him decide the situation himself. Here use of the word ‘you’ is for herself. The styles of utterance and presentation of speech of the language evidently transmits the message to the general people that at such a small age a person is not able to take such a high responsibility appropriately. There is a little twist in uttering the voices; the question is thrown on the interviewer to take decision. And the speaker is confident the listener cannot do that. Here the matter is offered persuasively with a deliberation that the listener is going to believe the argument without any stress on the subject. A good humor is provided in the utterance while asking the questions. The wide-ranging message of the text is mainly dealing with the problems of the royal family. Despite the fact that a girl may emerge from or depart to a family with a gigantic financial support but her standard of comprehension and the capability of dealing with situation are only according to her age. So at this under-mature age she cannot cope with the circumstances and she has to endure a lot in diminutive time of space. She requires a little bit more time to make herself competent with the circumstances. Through the utterance of personal experience in the text, the speaker is able to bestow the message to the society about the pain of the separation by parents. The pain is unbearable to the children. When she says ‘I was absolutely devastated when this book appeared, because I trusted him, and because, again, I worried about the reaction on my children.’ She is fully aware of the fact that the children will not comprehend the situation and there would be an appalling reflection on the memory. The preferred reading of the text is to find out an assortment of situations occurred by such separation. The message from the raised situation of Diana to the society is that however big a family may be, the universal tribulations of daily life will be the same for all the personals in the culture. There are additional tribulations on the royal family, as they have no time of their own to interact with each member of the family to resolve them. A person who has supplementary interest in the delicate predicament of the others that is an extremely extroverted person with an eagle eye on all situation of the humanity, with the curiosity to know the matter of the critical situation in life, will be the ideal person to read such type of the text. To the broad-spectrum every inhabitant of the humankind has interest to know about a women who generally comes from a royal family in the age of nineteen and has to suffer every potential condition in life. So, there may be varieties of readers who may be interested in these types of text. Representative interpretation: Regarding visuals in the text there is only one picture image of the royal princess Diana but the arrangement and position of the illustration in the text is such that it gives the impression of personal image and the presence of the person can be experienced through the pages in each and every moment as if she is talking to the reader which gives the illusion of physical presence of Diana. The picture is arranged on the left side of the text with a frame of shadow, which some how give the intuition of three-dimension looks to the picture. The title ‘the Panoramic Interview’ on the right side of the picture above the text matter is itself a panoramic view to the text. The very bold nature of the formatting of the title makes it different with another text in the page. The mentioned text ‘This is a transcript of the BBC1 Panorama interview with the Princess of Wales, broadcast in November 1995’ on the top of the page, describing about the matter of the interview, gives the live impression, and it seems that the reader is going to view the broadcast of the text while reading the text as an interview. The colour photograph of Lady Diana on the left side of the text is making a coherent relation between the text and the reader. The piercing and questionable look of the Lady in the picture gives the lively look into the eye of the reader, and when reader looks at the picture he/she has an illusion in the mind of giving the impression of being in the eye of the lady. The gestures of the body movement in the reflection can easily be glimpsed which give full understanding and maturing nature of the person in question. The experience of the difficult situation in life can easily be distinguished on the face in the depiction of Lady Diana. Only one image in the text gives full coverage to the importance of the matter. The capital letter heading of the names of the interviewer and interviewee, align on the left, gives the impression of the originality of the text along with the impression in the mind that the conversation is going on in the process and the psyche of the reader will comprehend both the person in the text, unlike if the name were align in the middle, as is possible for such arrangement in the text, the impression of originality could not have been conventional in the text. The middle alignment of some of the text of the interviewee gives magnitude and foremost emphasis of the stuff of the text. The vocabulary in the text is informal right through the progression of the interview and there is no any formality in the accent of the interviewee; she is using untailored vocabulary to express her sentiments. The text in the interview has constructive terminology when Diana assures, "I want to reassure all those people who have loved me and supported me throughout the last 15 years that I'd never let them down.” (TPI, p-1). The words ‘reassure’, ‘supported’ and ‘loved’ are used as optimistic consequence on the mind of the reader. The word ‘never’ is itself a negative word but its internal meaning here is positive when she utters ‘…I'd never let them down.’(PTI, p-20) Another example of the situation in the text is ‘we didn't want to disappoint the public’, where the word ‘disappoint’ is negative word but used as positive inspiration of the person in the text with the use of word ‘didn’t’ which implies two negative word used together gives the positive meaning. The negative aspect of the vocabulary can also be perceived all the way through the text. In the voice of the interviewee, ‘I was very confused by which area I should go into’ (TPI, p-3), the word ‘confused’ is a negative word and she unearths no way when she says, ‘which area I should go into’ here unlike above only negative aspect of the person is highlighted in the word ‘which area’. Here the meaning is -there is no area where she should go and at the same time she is even not going to find out the answer from the interviewer, she simply said in negative. Similarly in the phrase ‘it was difficult to share that load’ (TPI, p-7), the word ‘difficult’ indicate that the load cannot be shared anyhow. ‘I don't want a divorce, but obviously we need clarity on a situation that has been of enormous discussion over the last three years in particular.’(TPI, p-18). The word ‘divorce’ is itself a negative word not only from the vocabulary point of view, but also from the social point of view, as this word gives pain to the children whose parents are going to use that word in their life that is they decided to live separately. In the phrase ‘need clarity on a situation’ indicates that the situation is negative. The phrase ‘enormous discussion’ indicates that there are numerous problems on which discussion is required, so this positive word gives the negative meaning in the sense of problems. There is no any dramatic vocabulary in the text and whole the text is in the mood of informal conversation between two persons as there is no any plot or any sound effect or any stage performance and also there is no any coherent and chronological story about the person, only the haul out from the ingredient of the life is presented from any where in any odder. But at some points dramatic expression can easily be felt in the influence of Diana. In the early part of the text ‘At the age of 19, you always think you're prepared for everything, and you think you have the knowledge of what's coming ahead. But although I….’ (TPI, p-1). When she utters the words -‘At the age of 19…’ her expression of the countenance changes to some extent aggressive as the question is against the normal situations in life and she supposes the matter to be known by one and all. On arising the above-mentioned questions, her face may have shown some type of remarkable changing making it some type of dramatic expression. Her mentality at this point is experiencing invariable changes. At any point of time the changes in the psyche of a person is shown in the expression of the face then it is called the dramatic expression. When she says, ‘But although I …’ then her expression changes to a few degree and goes beyond standard. Now the eagerness to know the matter from the listener is degraded and she keeps on talking on normal argumentative voice to affirm the matter to him. At many places in the text the voice and vocabulary are to a large extent solemn as the matter is being dealt with such a social and moral concern that the deep regret can be seen in the text and the sign of which can be seen in many of the vocabularies. The greeting sentence ‘Your Royal Highness’ by the Martin Basir in the first page has highly serious vocabulary. This type of vocabulary is generally not used for the common people. As the interviewee is a person from a royal family, this use of most serious vocabulary becomes mandatory. In the phrase -‘It had been quite a difficult pregnancy’ (TPI, p-3), ‘difficult pregnancy’ is very serious vocabulary, widely used in the society as when it is uttered every one becomes aware of the fact about the seriousness in the matter. Even if ‘difficulty’ is detached then also the word ‘pregnancy’ will give the serious impression of the situation mere by hearing. Another example of serious vocabulary appears when Diana utters ‘I was unwell with post-natal depression,’ (TPI, p-4), she is the most serious as the phrase ‘post-natal depression’ is highly serious word used in the vocabulary. When an audience perceives sound of this phrase, he/she becomes the most somber with lots of query in the mind. The change of status of mind is very much possible on hearing the phrase. For example if a person, who is in the relaxation state of mind with delight of mock may fall into the state of serious condition of mind on coming across such words. Further in the use of phrase in the text, ‘Diana's unstable and Diana's mentally unbalanced.’(TPI, p-4), the disgusted seriousness with emotional torture is expressed through the use of such vocabulary. Another example for serious use of vocabulary is ‘the physical act of hurting yourself,’ (TPI, p-5) the ‘physical act’ is a serious vocabulary and ‘hurting’ is also a serious word. The emotional vocabulary is also present though the entire text ‘..you have bulimia you're very ashamed of yourself and you hate yourself..’ (TPI, p-6). The use of phrase ‘ashamed of yourself’ is very much emotional as when uttered there is no need to say that they are emotional word; only on hearing the pronunciation one can understand the nature of the vocabulary with little attention. Similar is the case with ‘hate yourself’ which gives the impression of emotional nature of the person. If we come to know that anybody hate oneself, an impression in the mind advances that the person in the question is very much emotional, so these words are vocabulary of emotional behavior of an individuals. The greatness of the emotional vocabulary can be seen in ‘You're effectively living separate lives, yet in public there's this appearance of this happily married royal couple.’ (TPI, p-9). In spite of great difficulties in personal life of emotion, the persons are regarded as ‘happy married ..couple’ in the text. ‘ yet………..happily’ give occurrence of great emotional vocabulary. Some of the vocabularies are very much important for the contexts of the text as whole the matter of the interviews are dependent on them. Considering the voice uttered by Diana ‘The most daunting aspect was the media attention (TPI, p-1).’, here the last two words -‘media attention’ have much importance in relation to the interviewee as these are the ‘words’ which have given immense pressure in private life of Diana and some time she was unable to handle the situation. Another very much important vocabulary with interpersonal relation is ‘divorce’ in ‘…I don't want a divorce, but obviously we need….’(TPI, p-1). The word ‘divorce’ has inter-relation with the situation of the speaker as this has chanced her life and made her famous for the media attention in public. The most important vocabulary in the text can be found out as ‘royal family’ as this was the cause of immense media attention. If the family were ordinary then the attention would have less or no attentions at all. Regarding use of the capital letters it is noted that the title of the text is given in all the initial capital letters as usual. The names of the interviewee and interviewer are given in full capital letters to separate the utterances of the voice and the captions of the names. By such arrangement of the letters one can easily ignore these name while reading, only the names will be read in subconscious mind and the attention will go directly to the sentences. These have a big visual effects on the mind as during reading the text the eye will see the captioned names in capital letters and the mind will start reading immediately the sentences without loosing any momentary concentration. There are no italicized or underlined words or phrase in the text due to lack of necessity of such formatting. Due to use of captioned heading for the name the need of using inverted commas are less but when the utterance of Diana is given in two sentence then the use of inverted commas become essential as in "I want to reassure all those people who have loved me and supported me throughout the last 15 years that I'd never let them down." (TPI, p-1). When Diana is going to utter some important matter, which were earlier uttered then the use of inverted commas is shown in the text. In the sentence -`I suppose you're going to waste that food later on?', the reader sees such types of quotations, and he has some understanding in the mind about the situation. As there are two people in the text - one is interviewer and another is interviewee, there are mixing of present and past tense. The former is asking the questions in past tense and the later is answering in present tense only with the earlier description in the past tense. Diana is using present tense while uttering at the real moment. But when she is narrating some experience she is using the past tense. So there is mixing of tense throughout the interview. Use of ‘we’, ‘you’ and ‘I’ are of normal meaning in the text but at many point of time Diana is using the word ‘you’ for her situation in life. As in ‘…At the age of 19, you always think you're prepared…’(TPI, p-1). Here use of ‘you’ is not for the interviewer Bashir but for herself and for the entire women in the society. In another sentence ‘You, you have to know that when you have bulimia you're very ashamed of yourself and you hate yourself’ (TPI, p-6), ‘you’ has similar importance for the society. Modal verb ‘should’ is frequently used in the text, when there is some suggestions to give, ‘And I'm a great believer that you should always confuse the enemy.(TPI, p-14)’ ‘I think that should be sorted out,’(TPI, p-17). Modal verb ‘must’ is also used when she has some suggestion for the people from her experience ‘you love in life you must hang on to it and look after it, ‘you love in life you must hang on to it and look after it, There are many nominalizations in the text. They are uttered when talking about them. ‘Prince William’, ‘Royal Family’ ‘Princess of Wales,’ ‘Mrs. Camilla Parker-Bowles’, ‘Charles’ are some of the nominalizations. The voices used in the text are active but for uttering some personal feeling, the passive voice is used to emphasize for there is no way to put such matter in active voice without distorting the image of the sentence. As in ‘I wasn't daunted, and am not daunted by the responsibilities that that role creates. It was a challenge, it is a challenge.’ First two sentences are in passive voice but the last two sentences are in active voice. The passive is fore-grounded in these mixing to give supplementary imperative to the problems. In the text, the matter of the royal family and their marriage at the age of 19, is put first and another matter like the pain of separation and difficulties of the children in such cases, is schematized. This gives the impression to the reader of having the whole idea in very sequential and organized manner. In whole the matter of text there is mixture of genre of narrative and social matters. At some places, news reports are cited by the interviewer while coming across such references. Social Interpretation: The text is the part of social framework of family and class on the first priority and age, sex and property on the secondary priority. There is much converse about the royal family and their problems of being famous for the minor reason. The marriage of Diana at the age of 19 is the concern for her about appreciating the family and taking the responsibility. The relation with another person and the matter of divorce are another focal issue in the text. Deconstructive Interpretation: There is no any major deconstructive representation in the text and the main matter in the text is narrative. Some time suggestive-attitude of the speaker mainly of Diana gives the illusion of deconstructions in the text. References: Fairclough N 2001, 'Language and power’, 2nd edition, London: Longman. Lukmari, Y & Bellore N 2004, ‘Aspects of language’ IGNOU, Delhi. Burton, D 1982, Dialogue and discourse, A sociolinguistic approach to modern drama dialogue and naturally occurring conversation, Lond.: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Taylor, D 2008, Writing Support, University of Toronto, Viewed 27th April 2009 http://www.utoronto.ca/writing/litrev.html See reference: TPI- see The Panorama Interview Read More