DOI: 10.14457/tu.the.2017.781
title: A critical discourse analysis of General Prayuth Chan-o-cha’s weekly addresses in times of political crisis

description: This thesis seeks to investigate the linguistic features and discursive strategies employed in 15 English-subtitled versions of the weekly addresses by General Prayuth Chan-o-cha during his tenure as the head of the National Council for Peace and Order (30th May to 5th September 2014), downloaded from the official Thai government website at www.thaigov.go.th. The major purposes of this study are to disclose the discursive representation of identities of General Prayuth Chan-o-cha, as well as to examine the underlying ideologies in relation to the concept of democracy and politically-related issues by focusing on the choice of linguistic devices including the five pronouns and social actors “We”, “I”, “NCPO”, “Government” and “Military”; the modality types and degrees; the process types and the participant roles; and the metaphorical expressions embedded in the weekly addresses.Relying on Fairclough’s Three-Dimensional Model of Critical Discourse Analysis, this study uses critical approaches to discourse analysis as theoretical as well as the analytical framework underpinning the three main stages of analysis: (1) Textual practice; (2) Discursive practice; and (3) Socio-cultural practice. Furthermore, the analytical notion of pronouns and social actors, theoretical frameworks of transitivity and modality based on Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT) and Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) were additionally employed as the analytical framework. In addition to the partial operation of corpus-based methodology, each dataset from the weekly addresses was analysed via the AntConc software program to generate authentic examples and frequencies of prominent linguistic features as supporting evidence to enhance data analysis and interpretation within the lens of the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA) perspectives.The findings of the data analysis revealed that the use of the exclusive and inclusive pronoun “We”, the inclination modality and the role of participant as the Actor in the material processes was exploited predominantly over other discursive strategies to evoke a sense of collectivity and good rapport between the politician and the audience during a time of political crisis. The findings also emphasised that General Prayuth Chan-o-cha used linguistic choices through the notion of positive-self representation in order to describe and to highlight his personal qualities in a positive way. Additionally, General Prayuth Chan-o-cha employed metaphors of DEMOCRACY AND POLITICS AS MACHINES AND TOOLS, DEMOCRACY AND POLITICS AS JOURNEY, DEMOCRACY AND POLITICS AS BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION and DEMOCRACY AND POLITICS AS HUMAN which appear to be the top four highest percentages in the corpus. It should be noted that metaphorical expressions were utilised in these weekly addresses for the purpose of promoting national reconciliation and representing his underlying political ideologies in a positive light regarding the democratic and political processes. This study also suggested that linguistic choices employed in the weekly addresses were designed to unite citizens at a time of political crisis through the use of the concepts of inclusiveness, group membership and national self-glorification. This would influence Thai citizens’ confidence in the government’s administration in governing the country while the political situation remained fragile.Lastly, this thesis concluded that linguistic features at the level of textual analysis have denotative and connotative meanings which convey different communicative functions to assist the spokesperson in accomplishing the goals of shaping and influencing audience to believe that Thailand can move forward through the government’s developmental plan and policies. The findings not only heighten the readers’ awareness of language and ideologies in this particular type of discourse but also aim to encourage language users to be more sensitive and critical of the role of discourse in different genres employed to persuade and manipulate individuals and societies.