A Critical Discourse Analysis of Prayut Chan-o-cha’s
Speeches of Elections and Reforms
Rachayanandhana Phraekhao
5406610039
1 Introduction
Politics is a struggle of power in order to put certain political, economic and social ideas into practice. In this process, language plays a crucial role. Every political action is prepared, accompanied, influenced and played by language. This paper analyses the political discourse of General Prayut Chan-o-Cha, the Prime Minister of Thailand who gave the enormous domestic significance to the speech since when the nation was under administration of National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO) in May, 2014. It is interesting to decipher ideological traits typical that PM Prayut enshrined in his incumbent…show more content… (van Dijk 1993b: 131) CDA objective is to perceive language use as social practice. The users of language do not function in isolation, but in a set of cultural, social and psychological frameworks. CDA accepts this social context and studies the connections between textual structures and takes this social context into account and explores the links between textual structures and their function in interaction within the society. Such an analysis is a complex, multi-level one, given the obvious lack of direct, one to one correspondence between text structures and social functions. Especially when it comes to creating and maintaining differences in power relations. The relatedness of the complex mechanism of discursive practice and their social function is frequently and willingly left opaque, especially when the need occurs to create and maintain differences in power relations. One of the objectives of CDA is to create a framework for decreasing this said opacity. Fairclough (1993: 135) in his definition perceives CDA…show more content… Small ‘d’
In the analysis of the role of language in society, Gee (2003) argues that language has uses that go beyond common use of conveying information. Language is a tool that people use to situate action by giving context-specific meanings to actions and to the objects involved in those actions. Language also is used to convey perspectives by giving others "alternative ways to view one and the same state of affairs" (Gee, 1999). To study how language works, he developed the concepts of little "d" and big "D" discourse. With little "d" discourse, he refers to the analysis of specific instances of language-in-use, whereas big "D" discourse, on the other hand, refers to ways of thinking, acting, doing and being in the world.
Discourses can be thought of as identity kits that exist in the social context of the groups that affiliate with such identities. This entails a view of learning as the gradual adoption by learners of the practices, specialist language and ways of thinking associated with a