The Ideology Of What Is An American

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Chapter I

Introduction

Background of the Study

Systemic Functional Linguistic approach contributes on how genre is understood and applied in textual analysis. Systemic Functional was developed mostly by Michael Halliday (Halliday; Halliday and Hasan) at the University of Sydney, and applied to genre particularly in the work of J. R. Martin, Frances Christie, Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, Gunther Kress, Brian Paltridge, Joan Rothery, Eija Ventola, and others.

SFL operates from the premise that language structure is integrally related to social function and context. SFL is a way of understanding how language performs and people choices when they speak or write to exchange meaning with the readers or listeners. "Functional" thus refers to the work that language does within particular contexts. "Systemic" refers to the structure or organization of language so that it can be used to get things done within those contexts. "Systemic" then refers to the "systems of choices" available to language users for the realization of meaning (Christie, "Genre Theory": 759). The concept of "realization" is especially important within SFL, for it describes the dynamic way that language realizes social purposes and contexts as specific linguistic interactions, at the same time as social purposes and contexts realize language as specific social actions and meanings.

The writer will combine two approaches, SFL and CDA because this method will protect the analyses from bias. SFL will provide the methodological tools to answer the question that provide a description of a discourse. The description will help to answer CDA question that provide an explanation and interpretation of a discourse in term of relationships between language and ideology.

Systemic functional theory views language as a resource people use to accomplish their purposes by expressing meaning in context. In examining how context affects language use, linguists refer to the context-specific variety of language as a register. The three aspects of the context are known as field, tenor and mode. Field refers to the topics and actions which language expresses, tenor denotes language users, their relationships and their purposes, and mode describes the channel in which communication takes place, be it speaking, writing or any combination of these two. Each analyzed text can be viewed as having three important facets: textual, interpersonal and ideational. To analyze this text, the writer uses Hallidayan term of language metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal and textual) as the analytical methodology.

CDA concerns with the interconnections among power, ideology and language. Ruth Wodak, an analyst who is an important figure in current discourse research, sets out principle for CDA that will help answers the question research in this paper. Discourse does ideology work. Ideology is defined as ‘particular ways of representing and constructing society, which reproduce unequal relations of power, relations of domination and exploitation’. (Wodak, 1996:17-20)

On September 11th, 2001, for the first time that the United States as a nation had been attacked by a foreigner force and it bring such a tragedy for the American people. But in the other hand this tragedy also brought up some action for other people in certain society to fight against the American. ‘What is an American?’ was written by Peter Ferrara after the tragedy of WTC on September 11th, 2001 and when the issues on terrorist attacks to the American civilians were happened around the world. Peter Ferrara wrote this essay, ‘What is an American?’ for National Review Magazine and published September 25th, 2001. This essay caught a lot of attentions in American and non-American society because it spread out through National Review Magazine and online magazine also in internet by emails or forums. The analysis of Ferrara’s essay will try to answer as many of there factors as possible in order to arrive at a valid and accurate interpretation of the text analyzed to answer the research question.

Statement of the Problems

Some questions to answer in this research are:

What is the ideology of the essay ‘What is An American?’ by Peter Ferrara?

How is ideology represented in the essay ‘What is An American?’ by Peter Ferrara?

Objectives of the Study

The aims of this research are as follows:

To analyze the ideology of the essay ‘What is An American?’ by Peter Ferrara

To find out how the ideology behind the text is represented.

Research Question

What is the ideology of the essay ‘What is An American?’ by Peter Ferrara?

Significance of the Study

The writer hopes that this study will contribute towards an understanding of how linguistic analysis of a text can be used extensively to clarify features and meanings in any text. The linguistic analysis enables one to show how and why the text means what it does. The analytical method can be used successfully in either literary texts (including personal narratives or diaries) or nonliterary texts (including newspaper reports or articles or advertisements or essay).

The writer expectations in this research are to enrich the Cultural Studies Subject in UNJ English department and help the students who are interested in the discourse analysis studies. The writer hopes this research will also help the other researcher in observing deeper research about ideology combining SFL and CDA to analyze the text.

Chapter II

Literature Review

Ideology

Ideology is also the central concept in critical discourse analysis. It comes as the fact that text or conversation is a form of ideological practice or ideological reflection. As cited in Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics (2001:338), Kress claims that all texts equally encode the ideological positions of their producers. ‘The everyday, innocent, and innocuous, the mundane text is as ideologically saturated as a text which wears its ideological constitution overtly.’ (Kress 1993:174). This means that in every discourse, the writer/speaker tries to insert his own belief to be perceived by the reader/audience.

The word ideology was coined by Count Antoine Destutt de Tracy, a French materialist in the late eighteenth century, to define a "science of ideas." The current usage of the term was, however, originated from Karl Marx. Fowler (1981:26) defines ideology as" a system of beliefs which has come to be constructed as a way of comprehending the world." He goes on to state that ideology is always present; it can only be replaced by alternative ideology. Discourse is always more or less ideological. Fowler emphasizes that "Every time people speak or write the form of their sentences necessarily articulates and so reproduces elements of ideology" (Helameri 2005:15).

Van Dijk (1997:25) added that discourse in this approach essentially serves as the medium by which ideologies are persuasively communicated in society, and thereby helps reproduce power and domination of specific groups or classes. Organizations that strive for power will try to influence the ideology of a society to become closer to what they want it to be. Ideology from the dominant group is effective only if it is based on the fact that the community members that are dominated consider that thing as the truth and proper. In here, according to van Dijk, that phenomenon can be said as an ‘artificial truth’ – how the dominant group could manipulate ideology to the non dominant group through campaign, media control, etc. Further, ideology aims primarily to arrange individual or a group action and practice. Ideology constructs the society to act in the same situation, to relate their problems, and to give solidarity and cohesive contribution in the group. In this perspective, ideology has some important implications.

First, ideology is inherently social; it is not personal or individual: it needs to be shared among the group members, organization, or collectivity. Second, ideology, although it is social, it is used internally in group members and community. Therefore, ideology provides not only coordinative and cohesive function but also shape the identity of a group to distinguish them with another group (Eriyanto: 2009:13-14).

The theory of ideology that informs the discourse analytic approach of this paper is articulated within a conceptual triangle that connects society, discourse and social cognition in the framework of a critical discourse analysis (van Dijk, 1993b). In this approach, ideologies are the basic frameworks for organizing the social cognitions shared by members of social groups, organizations or institutions.

Systemic Functional Linguistic

Systemic-functional linguistics is a linguistic framework for the analysis of grammatical and semantic information in text. A great deal of the work in SFL can be traced to Halliday’s Language as Social Semiotic, in which Halliday describes how "the network of meanings" that constitute any culture, what he calls the "social semiotic," is to a large extent encoded in and maintained by its discourse-semantic system, which represents a culture’s "meaning potential". This is why, as Halliday argues, language is a form of socialization, playing a role in how individuals become socialized and perform meaningful actions within what he calls "contexts of situation."

As the situation types could become conventionalized over time, Halliday begin to "specify the semantic configurations that the speaker will typically fashion". Halliday refers to this "clustering of semantic features according to situation types" as register. By linking a situation type with particular semantic and lexico-grammatic patterns, register describes what actually takes place (the "field"), how participants relate to one another (the "tenor"), and what role language is playing (the "mode"). For example, the "field" of discourse represents the system of activity within a particular setting, including the participants, practices, and circumstances involved. The "tenor" of discourse represents the social relations between the participants—their interactions—within the discourse. And the "mode" of discourse represents the channel or wavelength of communication (face-to-face, via e-mail, telephone, and so on) used by the participants to perform their actions and relations (Halliday 1985:33)

In this research, the researcher uses the functional side of SFL in which the metafunctional theory exists. The metafunctional theory divided into three broad metafunctions which are concerned with a different more o meaning of clauses: ideational, interpersonal and textual (Halliday 2004).

Ideational Metafunction

The ideational metafunction is about the natural world in the broadest sense, including our own consciousness, and is concerned with clauses as representations. The interpersonal metafunction is about the social world, especially the relationship between speaker and hearer, and is concerned with clauses as exchanges. The textual metafunction is about the verbal world, especially the flow of information in a text, and is concerned with clauses as messages. The ideational metafunction relates to the context of culture, the interpersonal metafunction relates to the context of situation, and the textual metafunction relates to the verbal context.

Two main elements of transitivity are process and participants (Barker and Galasinski 2001:70). Process types are verbs and verbal groups which describe actions or states of being. Halliday classified processes into six types: Material (process if doing), Mental (process of sensing – feel, think, perceive), Verbal (process of saying), Existential (expresses the existence of something), Behavioral (Process if physiological and psychological behavior), and Relational attributive (relates a participant to its attribute), and Relational Identifying (relates participant to its identity).

Interpersonal Metafunction

In interaction activities, people use language to communicate ideas and maintain social relationships in the interactions. Halliday stated that there are two basic types of interactions, giving and demanding. The commodities being communicated are either goods and services or information. (Halliday, 1994:68). As Gerot&Wignell said "A speaker, in uttering, selects a speech role for her or himself, and simultaneously and thereby, allocates a speech role to the addressee." (Gerot&Wignell, 1995:22). This defines what happens in the interaction activities. If a speaker takes the role as the demander of the commodities, he inherently puts the role as the supplier of the commodities to the addressee. This is how communication happened in order to make and maintain social relationship among people in society.

Different language forms are used in these communication activities. Generally, a declarative form is used in giving information, an Interrogative form is used in giving goods and services, or in demanding information, and an Imperative form is used in demanding goods and services. Nevertheless, this is not always the case. Different language forms may be used in different types of interactions. For example, Interrogative form may be used instead of imperative form for it sounds more polite. All of there language forms can be identified through the position of the subject and the verb in a clause. Halliday gives the term Mood for these two elements of subject and verb in a clause. He uses the term Finite to represent the part of verbal group. Halliday said, "Mood consists of two parts: (1). the subject, which is a nominal group, and (2). the finite operator, which is part of a verbal group." (Halliday, 1994:72).

Thus, through this Mood system, it may be seen what kind of language form is used. Generally, when the subject comes first, follows by the finite, the Mood is Declarative. When the finite precedes the subject, the type of Mood then is Interrogative. For Imperative form the structure may vary. In fact, there may be no Mood involve, e.g. Put it there! However, once again, this may not always be the case. Many factors contribute to there type of Mood. One can use any language forms in the communication activities.

In conclusion, through this Mood system, it may be seen how interactions happen among the authors and the readers and how they put them selves in the interactions.

Textual Metafunction

Textual function of language may give insight on how language is organized as a whole to deliver messages. These messages going to be communicated are called Theme. Since theme is the most important element that is going to be communicated, it has to be put the first. This way, the addressee will straightly get the idea being delivered. As Gerot&Wignell said, "In English, the Theme can be identified as that or those element(s) which come(s) the first in the clause." (Gerot&Wignell, 1994:103). The rest of the clause, which usually contains new information, is called rheme.

There are three categories of theme namely Topical, Textual, and Interpersonal. Topical theme consists of three experiential elements, participant, process, circumstance. However, only one of there elements can be the Theme of a clause. Halliday defined Textual theme as any combination of continuative, structural, and conjunction. This Textual theme precedes the Topical theme in a clause. Finally, Interpersonal theme may be any combination of vocative, modal, or mood marking (Halliday, 1994:53). This interpersonal theme also precedes the Tropical theme in a clause.

Critical Discourse Analysis

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is a method of Discourse Analysis that reveals the way discourses are used everyday for signification, power relations and development of new knowledge. Words, whether spoken or written have power (see Luke, 1997). CDA is concerned with studying and analyzing words used in discourses to reveal the source of power, abuse, dominance, inequality and bias and how these sources are initiated, maintained, reproduced and transformed within specific social, economic, political and historical contexts (Van Dijk, 1988).

This approach is often called "critical linguistics" 'an interdisciplinary approach to language study with critical point of view for the purpose of studying language behavior in natural speech situations of social relevance' (Wodak, 1989). Fairclough (2000) identifies three central tenets of CDA namely: social structure (class, status, age, ethnic identity and gender); culture (the generally accepted norms of behavior in the society); and discourse (the words we use). The goal of CDA is to determine the relationship between these three central tenets. Our discourses reflect the societal norms and beliefs, i.e., we say things in conformity with the way they should normally be said in our society, and there are certain things we do not say because the society has constrained us not to say them. Likewise, our identity in the social structure is shown in the way we think, act and speak.

A text is a record of communication, which involves the presentation of facts, beliefs and the construction of identities of participants. It is produced by socially-situated speakers. It is therefore more than just words spoken or written on the pages of books, but how such words are used in particular social context (Huckin, 1997). McGregor (2003) identifies an aspect of CDA, which she calls the "discursive practices". These are rules, norms and mental models of socially acceptable behavior in specific roles or relationships used to produce, receive, and interpret the message. Discursive practices then, are the processes involved in speaking, writing, hearing and reading texts.

Theoretical Framework

The writer focuses the study by using Critical Linguistics to analyze the vocabulary, grammar and textual structures of the Peter Ferrara essay: ‘What is an American?’ In order to acquire the effectiveness and relevance of analysis, this study uses SFL and CDA perspectives provided by Lynne Young in her book with Brigid Fitzgerald ‘The Power of Language: How Discourse influences society’

SFL questions

CDA questions

Who are the main participants?

Who in this discourse is acting on whom and therefore has the power?

Who are the other participants?

Are they less important? Why?

What are the processes in which two sets of participants are involved?

What do the actions carried out by the participants tell you about the use of power?

What do the circumstances in the discourse focus on?

How do the circumstances differ according to participants/

What are the attitudes and stances of the writer?

Do you agree with or differ from these attitudes?

Are you in agreement with the writer’s position//stance? Why?

What are the topical themes in the text?

What do there theme choices tell us about the focus and organization of the discourse?

What features make this discourse a cohesive one instead of a group of unrelated sentences?

Are these features selected to emphasize particular position/stances?

This is the basic tools for undertaking the critical discourse analysis as the conceptual methodology and Hallidayan term of language metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal and textual) as the analytical methodology.

The writer uses Young’s framework because it’s easy to use and the step-by-step layout is very helpful for people who are new to language study and discourse analysis in particular.

Chapter III

Methodology

This chapter describes method of the study, source of the data, data collecting procedures and data analysis technique.

Method of the Research

The study is a descriptive analytical interpretative since the writer provides description of the phenomena that occur naturally, without the intervention of an experiment or an artificially contrived treatment (Kountour 2004:105). The study presents an in-depth linguistic analysis of the basic tools CDA as the conceptual methodology and Hallidayan term of language metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal and textual) as the analytical methodology.

Source of the Data

The data source is from an essay ‘What is an American?’ that was written by Peter Ferrara for National Review Magazine and published September 25th, 2001. The data was taken on May 20th, 2010 from http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-ferrara092501.shtml a website for National Review online magazine.

Data Collecting Procedures

In collecting the data, the writer takes these following procedures:

Reading the text of ‘What is an American?’

Choosing the sentences to be analyzed that showing the writer’s ideology

Breaking down each sentences in the essays into clauses

Identifying the data based on the type of process, mood, modality and participants.

Describing the findings using CDA

Data Analysis Technique

In the previous chapter, the writer stated that this research analyzes the data by using SFL and CDA perspectives from Lynne Young. Therefore, the procedures of the data analysis are done as follows:

Describing the data

In this step, the writer described the data through the context of the culture and the context of the situation

Analyzing the data

The data are analyzed by using Hallidayan term of language metafunctions to examine the ideational, interpersonal and textual as analytical methodology.

Interpreting the data

In this step, the writer interprets the findings and relates those findings with the hidden ideology practice of the text.

Concluding data

The last step of the data analysis technique provides the conclusion based on the findings.

CHAPTER IV

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

In this chapter the data collection will be analyzed using the Hallidayan term of language metafunctions in the attempt to discover the way ideology is represented in ‘What is An American?’ text.

4.1 Description of Data

4.1.1 Context of Culture

‘What is an American?’ was written by Peter Ferrara for National Review Magazine and published September 25th, 2001. The data was taken from http://old.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-ferrara092501.shtml a website for National Review online magazine. This text was written after the tragedy of WTC on September 11th, 2001 and when the issues on terrorist attacks to the American civilians were happened around the world.

Peter Ferrara is an American policy analyst and columnist. He is also the professor of law at George Mason University, Virginia. His essay rapidly became one of the most e-mailed articles in the world because the points he delivered in the essay have strong opinion. He focused on the definition of an American as the response of a report about someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper there an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American. So in his essay he tried to describe what an American is to the people who against America at that time.

4.1.2 Context of Situation

The context of situation can be broken down further into the Hallidayan terms of field, tenor and mode. Field refers to what is happening and what is being discussed. Tenor refers to who is taking part in the discourse and their social roles. Mode refers to how the text is organized and the channel of communication (Richards and Schmidt, 2002: 491).

The field of the text is an online newpaper article as a respond of an American hunting in Pakistan. This is also the respond of the terrorism issues in World trade ceter and Pentagon on late September 11, 2001. The tenor of the speech is that it is allegedly delivered by a law professor at George Mason University, Peter Ferrara. The mode of the speech is that it is a written form and is published on National Review Magazine on September 25, 2001. It is organized seemingly to provide discourse act, and is intended to be read by not only American readers but also non-American readers. It is an explanation text that uses a number of ‘facts’ to reinforce and further its aims.

4.2 Analysis

By using Hallidayan term of language metafunctions, the writer examines the ideational, interpersonal and textual as the analytical methodology.

4.2.1 Ideational Metafunction

When one wishes to represent textually some real or imaginary action, event, state of affairs or relationship, there is often a choice between different grammatical process and participant types, and the selection made can be ideologically significant. (Fairclough 1989: 120 as cited by Atkins 2002:7). The following table will show the use of grammatical processes in the speech:

Table 1 Ideational Metafunction: Percentages of Processes

clausa

precentage

MATERIAL PROCESS

17

41,5%

MENTAL PROCESS

6

14,6%

VERBAL PROCESS

2

4,9%

RELATIONAL PROCESS

15

36,6%

BEHAVIORAL PROCESS

0

0%

EXISTENTIAL PROCESS

1

2,4%

41

100%

From Table 1 found below we can see that Behavioral processes are absent from the text. The most frequent processes are the material ones. Their role in this text is referring to ideas of what Americans already did or doing to show their freedom ideology. The identified processes are appropriate choices for stating explanation for and against the American society; the material processes indicate that the topic discussed was about the characteristic of Americans on a positive way. Also, there is a dominant occurrence of relational process which very close related to material process. Relational processes identify the identified and attribute the carrier which is the American as the object

There are also mental processes, which project speakers' beliefs, opinions, wishes, dislikes, characteristic choices when expressing one's attitude.

4.2.2 Interpersonal Metafunction

In EU Discourse on Turkey, Dimitrov (2006:28) stated Fairclough’s explanation of modes, that there are three major modes of sentences, the first being the declarative mode, which is the most common. When the mode of a sentence is declarative, the subject (S) precedes the verbal (V). The imperative is another mode, in this case the sentence starts with the verbal (V) and does not have a subject (S). The grammatical question is the third mode, which can be further divided into wh-questions and yes/no questions.

The declarative mood is 100% used in the 41 clauses, which is very dominant mode used in the text that are used to make statements.

4.2.3 Textual Metafunction

Modality, understood in its broadest sense as the speaker’s stance towards the message communicated, is an all pervasive feature of most discourse (Mc Carthy and Carter 1994:102). There are many modal auxiliaries in the text, which mostly used in predictive statements ‘will' in relation to the text attempt of American’s attitude among the society also how other people that thirst of freedom will someda yjoin the nation as a free man.

4.3 Summary of the Analysis

It can be seen that in this text, Peter Ferrara used certain words, grammatical features, and textual structures that represent the ideological motivation. The ideology of ‘What is an American?’ is represented in the use of rewording of the essence of the American characteristic: individual freedom and mutual freedom through the law, the use of relational process and modality ‘will’ to emphasize his goal to convince the reader that American is not a particular person and not only the citizen of America but also the people who eager to have freedom in their life. Besides that, we could see that he discused the familiar themes focusing on freedom. Those familiar themes are intended to get closer with the audiences.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION

5.1 Conclusion

Upon the analysis of this text, the writer can say that the text has both fulfilled the theoretical expectations and that the theory has helped us understand the text better. In other words, Halliday's approach to grammar is an interaction of texts and extra-linguistic situations, functioning as a bottom-up and top-down process. "Systemic Functional Grammar in particular provides a principled and systematic description of the relationship between function, meaning and grammar" (Derewianka 2001: 262). SFG represents the description which "starts from the evidence rather than from imposing some theoretical model" (Derewianka 2001: 262) and is therefore of great importance for the field of applied linguistics and discourse analysis. It reveals how language users predict the meanings that are likely to be exchanged and the language that is likely to be used. When people are communicating they make predictions by using the values of field, tenor and mode to understand the register and when linguists analyze texts they use the same values to understand the speakers' choices and the system that lies behind them.

From the analysis, it can be concluded that there are some ideological intentions in ‘What is An America?’ essay. It can be seen from the rewording of Americans central belief, the freedom. Peter Ferrara intended to insert the ideology of the American freedom as the greatest values that the Americans have that contain the individual freedom and mutual freedom. It is believed as his attempt to questioned the people who want to kill Americans, what kind of Americans they mean. Because the plurality of Americans will bring the American’s killers kill their own people who deserve freedom in the as American citizen.

5.2 Suggestion

Based on the study, the writer suggests the readers, especially the students of Linguitics major to use Hallidayan term of language metafunctions (ideational, interpersonal and textual) as the analytical methodology. This method will be very helpful for people who are new to language study and discourse analysis in particular since it could facilitate a close focus on the linguistics aspects and examine texts systematically.