Deconstructing Functional Organisation of Newspaper Discourse

Radzuwan Ab Rashid, Kamariah Yunus, Zanirah Wahab

Abstract


This paper aims to shed light on the functional organisation of language in the reports published in Malaysian newspapers. Adopting Halliday’s (1970; 1990; 1994) systemic functional grammar as its analytical lens, two text extracts, one from New Strait Times (NST) and one from The Star, were scrutinized. Both reports cover an urge to improve the standard of sub-standard National Service camps. The analysis shows that NST report uses a serious and aggressive tone while The Star report is less serious and less aggressive. Interestingly, both The Star and New Strait Times are considered as right-wing and formal Malaysian newspapers instead of the ‘Tabloid’ ones. This paper argues that even though the differences in the organisation of the language are subtle, the two reports convey different messages to readers and possibly leave different impacts on them.       

 


Keywords


Halliday, functional grammar, newspaper discourse, New Strait Times, The Star, Malaysia

Full Text:

PDF

References


Adeniyi, H., & Bello, O.R. (2016). The choice of diction as empowerment for marital freedom: A study of selected divorce registers in a Nigerian newspaper. International Journal of Humanities and Cultural Studies, 2(2), 56-69.

Bailey, A., Giangola, L., & Boykoff, M.T. (2014). How grammatical choice shapes media representations of climate uncertainty. Environmental Communication, 8 (2), 197-215.

Bakaa, A. J. A. (2015). Functional analysis of marked and unmarked theme in demonstrating a critical argument written by Iraqi and Australian postgraduate students. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 5 (2), 247-254.

Bamberg, M. (2011). Who am I? Narration and its contribution to self and identity. Theory & Psychology, 21(1), 3–24.

Benwell, B., & Stokoe, E. (2006). Discourse and identity. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.

Dabrowska, E., & Street, J. (2006). Individual differences in language attainment: Comprehension of passive sentences by native and non-native English speakers. Language Sciences, 28(6), 604- 615.

Edwards, D. (2006). Facts, norms and dispositions: practical uses of the modal verb would in police interrogations. Discourse Studies, 8(4), 475–501. doi:?/ Retrieved from http://www.

Edwards, D., & Potter, J. (2005). Discursive psychology, mental states and descriptions. In H. Te Molder, & J. Potter (Eds.), Conversation and cognition (pp.241-259). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Eggins, S. (2004). An Introduction to systemic functional linguistics (2nd ed.

London: Continuum.

Firth, J. R. (1957). Modes of meaning. In J. R. Firth (Ed.), Papers in linguistics, 1934-1951 (pp. 190-215). London: Oxford University Press.

Halliday, M. A. K, & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed.). London: Arnold.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1990). New ways of meaning: The challenge to applied linguistics. Journal of Applied Linguistics, 6, Ninth World Congress of Applied Linguistics Special Issue. The Greek Applied Linguistics Association (GALA) (Thessaloniki), 7–36.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1994). An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold.

Halliday, M. A. K. (2004). The spoken language corpus: A foundation for grammatical theory. Language and Computers, 49, 11-38.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1970). Functional diversity in language, as seen from a consideration of modality and mood in English. Foundations of Language 6 (3), 322-361.

Hasan, R. (2009). Wanted: A theory for integrated sociolinguistics. London: Equinox.

Hawes, T. (2010). Thematic progression and rhetoric in Sun and Times editorials: 1991-2008. Rice Working Papers in Linguistics. Spring, 2, 39-51.

Hoey, M. (2004). The textual priming of lexis. In G. Aston, S. Bernardini, & D. Stewart (Eds.), Corpora and Language Learners (pp. 21–41). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Hyland, K. (2001). Bringing in the reader: Addressee features in academic articles. Written Communication, 18(4), 549-574.

Lu, A. (2013). A Functional Grammar Approach to Analysing Asian Students’ Writing. American Journal of Educational Research, 1(2), 49-57

Padmaja, S., Fatima, S.S., & Bandu, S. (2014). Evaluating sentiment analysis methods and identifying scope of negation in Newspaper articles. International Journal of Advanced Research in Artificial Intelligence, 3(11), 1-6.

Rashid, R.A, Rahman, M. F. A., & Rahman, S. B. A. (2016). Teachers’engagement in social support process on a networking site. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 1(1), 34-45.

Rashid, R.A, Wahab, Z., Yunus, K., Ismail, N. S., Yusof, N., Omar, S. S., & Azmi, M. N. L. (2016). English language teachers as a dissenter on a social networking site. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, 5(4), 72-78.

Rashid, R.A. (2016). Topic continuation strategies employed by teachers in managing supportive conversations on Facebook Timeline. Discourse Studies, 18(2), 188-203.

RM2.37bil spent on NS. (2008, May 16). The Star. Retrieved from http://www.malaysia-today.net/rm237bil-spent-on-ns-programme/

Sinclair, J. M. H. (1991). Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sinclair, J. M. H. (1998). The lexical item. In E. Weigand (Eds.), Contrastive lexical semantics (pp. 1-24). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Swales, J. M. (1990). Genre analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thompson, G. (2004). Introducing functional grammar (2nd ed.). London: Hodder Education.

Trenkic, D., Mirkovic, J., & Altmann, G. T. M. (2014). Real-time grammar processing by native and non-native speakers: Constructions unique to the second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 17(02), 237-257.

Witte, A. D., Hollevoet, J., Dobruszkes, F., Hubert, M., & Macharis, C. (2013). Linking modal choice to motility: A comprehensive review. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, 49, 329-341.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.5n.6p.183

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Bookmark and Share


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

2012-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD. 

International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature

To make sure that you can receive messages from us, please add the journal emails into your e-mail 'safe list'. If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox', check your 'bulk mail' or 'junk mail' folders.