Political Discourses of Trust: Stance-taking Acts in the Thai PM’s Weekly TV Addresses

Melada Sudajit-apa

Abstract


This study aims to investigate the Thai PM Gen Prayuth Chan-o-cha’s use of stance expressions to construe trust, comprising attitudinal stance, epistemic stance and modality, in his weekly addresses broadcast on national television from March to December, 2017. The linguistic investigation incorporating Critical Discourse Analysis and trust frameworks shows that the three main aspects of trust are pursued. Integrity is however predominantly constructed through the use of a modal verb kʰᴐ̌ː ‘would like’ and an attitudinal verb jà:k ‘want’. Interestingly, a relatively small number of stance markers are found to project competency and benevolence. The results have led to the conclusion that the PM’s trust-building strategies mainly involve the construal of integrity by asserting his moral values linked with national reform, reconciliation, and advancement. These characteristics of linguistic hegemony via the construction of trust-building are expected to raise more sociopolitical awareness in the Thai political context.

Keywords


Stance-taking Acts Trust-building Political Discourse Analysis Thai Politics Critical Discourse Analysis

Full Text:

PDF

References


Biber, D., Conrad, S., and Cortes, V. (2004). If you look at…lexical bundles in university teaching and textbook. Applied Linguistics, 25(3), 371-405, https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/25.3.371

Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., and Finegan, E. (1999). Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Pearson Education Limited.

Bloommaert, J. and Bulcaen, C. (2000). Critical discourse analysis. Annual Review of Anthropology, 29, 447-466.

Carreon, J. R. and Svetanant, C. (2017). What lies underneath a political speech?: Critical discourse analysis of Thai PM’s political speeches aired on the TV programme Returning Happiness to the People. Open Linguistics, 3, 638-655, https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2017-0032.

Chilton, P. (2004). Analyzing political discourse: Theory and practice. London: Routledge.

Conrad, S. and Biber, D. (2005). The frequency and use of lexical bundles in conversation and academic prose. Lexicographica – International Annual for Lexicography, 20, 56-71.

De Saint-Georges, I. (2013). Context in the analysis of discourse and interaction. The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0194

Fairclough, N. (2010). Critical discourse analysis: The critical study of language. London: Longman.

Fairclough, N. (2003). Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. New York: Routledge.

Fairclough, N. and Mauranen, A. (1997). Conversationalization of political discourse: A comparative view. In Jan Bloommaert & Chris Bulcaen (Eds.), Political Linguistics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. (pp. 89-119).

Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and text: Linguistic and intertextual analysis within discourse analysis. Discourse & Society, 3(2), 193-217.

Fuoli, M. and Hart, C. (2018). Trust-building strategies in corporate discourse: An experimental study. Discourse and Society, 29(5), https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926518770264

Fuoli, M. (2017). Building a trustworthy corporate identity: A corpus-based analysis of stance in annual and corporate social responsibility reports. Applied Linguistics, 39(6), 846-855.

Givón, T. (1990). Syntax: A functional typology introduction. Volume 2. Amsterdam/ Philadephia: John Benjamins.

Kegley, C.W. (2007). World politics: Trend and transformation. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

Kitikanan, P. (2012). Verb complementation in Thai. Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences Mahasarakham University, 31(3), 89-99.

Machin, D. and Mayr, A. (2012). How to do critical discourse analysis: A Multimodal Introduction. Los Angeles: Sage.

Prasithrathsint, A. (2009). Complementizers and verb classification in Thai. Journal of the Southeast Asian Linguistic Society, 2, 145-160.

Prevost, M., Brodeur, M. B., Onishi, K. H., Lepage, M., and Gold, I. (2015). Judging strangers’ trustworthiness is associated with theory of mind skills. Frontier in Psychiatry, 6, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2015.00052.

Rangkupan, S. (2005). A system of epistemic modality in Thai. MANUSYA: Journal of Humanities, 8(1), 53-67.

Salvi, R. (2017). The discursive construction of trust in European political communication. In R. Salvi & J. Turnbull (Eds.), The discursive construal of trust in the dynamics of knowledge diffusion (pp. 2-25). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Simpson, B., Harrell, A., and Willer, R. (2013). Hidden Paths from Morality to Cooperation: Moral Judgments Promote Trust and Trustworthiness. Social Forces, 91(4), 1529-1548.

van Dijk, T. A. (2013). Ideology and discourse. The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199585977.013.007

van Dijk, T. A. (2007). Ideology and discourse analysis. Journal of Political Ideologies, 11(2), 115-140, https://doi.org/10.1080/13569310600687908

Wang, X. (2016). A struggle for trustworthiness: Local officials’ discursive behaviour in press conferences handling Tianjin blasts in China. Discourse & Communication, 10(4), https://doi.org/10.1177/1750481316638150

Wodak, R. (2009). The discourse of politics in action: Politics as usual. London: Palgrave Macmillan.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.10n.6p.124

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.

2010-2023 (CC-BY) Australian International Academic Centre PTY.LTD.

Advances in Language and Literary Studies

You may require to add the 'aiac.org.au' domain to your e-mail 'safe list’ If you do not receive e-mail in your 'inbox'. Otherwise, you may check your 'Spam mail' or 'junk mail' folders.