INTRODUCTION TO DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

SYSTEMATIC FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR: A CRITICAL

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF DONALD TRUMP’S SPEECH

ILHAMDI HAFIZ SOFYAN

1410731012

JURUSAN SASTRA INGGRIS

FAKULTAS ILMU BUDAYA

UNIVERSITAS ANDALAS

PADANG

2017
 Discourse is a broad term that has many definitions and encompasses several field
studies such as linguistics, sociology, philosophy and others. Norman Fairclough (1989)
defines discourse as a process of social interaction of which text is part of said process. There
are several different methods in discourse in order to analyze a text. One of those methods is
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The main objective of CDA is to perceive language use
as social practice, which means that the users of language do not function in isolation, but
rather in a set of cultural, social and psychological frameworks (Fairclough, 1989, p. 24).

In this paper, I would apply Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar, in terms of the
three meta-functions: ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function, to find
out the formal features of Donald Trump’s speech. Its aim is to explore the relationships
among language, ideology and power and to find out how how Donald Trump conveys his
‘patriotic’ ideas in his speech about North Korea during the United Nations General
Assembly in September 2017, as written in politico.com. I argue that Trump’s choice of
words in his speech is mainly influenced by his American conservatism, a political belief
characterized by its support for Judeo-Christian values, moral absolutism, economic
liberalism, anti-communism, and stance against liberalism. As the President of United States
of America, Donald Trump were viewed positively from his supporters—mainly from the
Conservatives—for his concern on the well-being of American people and the continuity of
Western traditions, referring it as ‘American First’.

M.A.K. Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar is usually considered the main

foundation of Critical Discourse Analysis as well as other theories in pragmatics. Systemic
Functional Grammar has two components: Systemic Grammar and Functional Grammar.
“Systemic grammar aims to explain the internal relations in language as a system network, or
meaning potential. And this network consists of subsystems from which language users make
choices. Functional grammar aims to reveal that language is a means of social interaction,
based on the position that language system and the forms that make it up are inescapably
determined by the uses or functions which they serve” (Hu, 1988, p. 307).

In order to analyze how Donald Trump conveyed American conservatism discourse in

his speech, I would refer to the study conducted by Junling Wang. In one of his article,
Wang (2010) analyze how ideology and power were embedded in Obama’s speeches and
argues that these speeches have a political purpose behind it (p. 254). Using the Critical
Discourse Analysis method, Wang took several speeches as samples for his analysis, mainly
from Obama’s Victory Speech in November 2008 and Inaugural Address in January 2009.
After collected several data from both samples, Wang found out that Obama mainly uses easy
and colloquial language with simple words and short sentences in order to shorten the
distance between him and his audience. Through material process, relational process and
mental process, Wang grouped several words that could give a hint towards Obama’s
embedded ideology in his speeches. Using textual analysis, Wang examined how Obama use
a coherent, organized, accurate and logical language form in his speech in order to persuade
the public to accept and support his policies (p. 260). Wang later concludes that Obama more
likely to use simpler words to shorten the distance between him and his audience, which
varies from the poor and the rich up to the white and the black. It is suggested that Obama’s
choice of words signify the democratic nature of political discourse in his speech.

From Wang’s analysis, we can draw a conclusion that ideology can be embedded into
one’s speech through words choice. From this perspective, I would argue that the same thing
could also be applied as well to Trump’s speech. In order to understand how Trump embeds
his American conservatism into his speech, I would scrutinize his choice of words and
analyze the structure of his sentences using the same method applied by Wang. First, I would
read thoroughly Trump’s speech during United Nations General Assembly in September
2017. Secondly, I would examine the word choices used by Trump and how his sentences
were constructed. After that, using transitivity analysis, I would examine how the ideational
function is represented in text.

After analyzed Trump’s speech thoroughly, I found that terrorism, dictatorship and
patriotism were the main topics presented in the speech. From about 4.600 words spoken
during the speech, there are several instances where the words terrorist, dictator, war and
similar words were spoken by Trump. Other words such as vile, evil, sinister, and wicked
were also mentioned throughout his speech. From these findings, I see that Trump’s speech is
marked with such a fiery choice of words and strong vocabularies in order to put emphasize
on the importance of counterterrorism and oppressive government. His audience is mostly
leader of a country and delegates, which make his speech more formal compared with
Obama’s speech during his inaugural address. Moreover, the subject of the two speeches is
extensive, which isn’t on account of one or two concrete issue. That is because the
presidential speeches usually reflect the political platforms of the candidate, so the field is
large, such as American history, present crisis, and global issues and so on.
 Later, using transitivity analysis, I would classify Trump’s speech into three set of
process type as proposed by M. A. K. Halliday, which are material process, relational process
and mental process. Material process is a process of “doing”. The process is usually indicated
by a verb expressing an action, either concrete or abstract. There are usually two participants
in the process: Actor and Goal. Actor is comparable to the Subject and Goal is comparable to
the Object and both of them are usually realized by noun phrases. When the participants both
exist, the clause can be either in active voice or in passive voice. This process can be seen in
the following statement.

“As President of the United States, I (Actor) will always put (Material
Process) America first (Goal), just like you (Actor), as the leaders of your
countries will always, and should always, put (Material Process) your
countries first (Goal)” (Politico, 2017, Para. 23).

In this sentence, we can see how Trump mentioned about ‘America First’, which has
become one of his trademarks as the President of the United States of America. The main
point expressed by Trump here is that a leader should put his people first before anybody
else. This statement is relevant with American conservatism that put the American
fundamental trait of democracy—namely Liberty—as its core value.

The next process is relational process, which can be divided into two modes:
attributive relation and identifying relation. The first means what properties an object
possesses or what category it can be put into. And the other means that an entity and another
is uniform. It is used widely in describing people and objects. Relational process, as a process
of being, is appropriate to explain the complex relationships between some abstract items
because it sounds definite. As a result, the process accounts for a large proportion in these
addresses to elaborate the relationship between traditional ideals and their beliefs. Such an
elaboration can reach the President’s aim of making the reasoning naturally and
unconsciously accepted and making the required sacrifice in the speech willingly taken by the
audience (Wang, 2010). In Trump’s speech, attributive relation can be found in sentences,
such as:

 “Our military will soon be the strongest it has ever been” (Politico, 2017, Para.
4).
  “Our success depends on a coalition of strong and independent nations that
embrace their sovereignty to promote security, prosperity, and peace for
themselves and for the world” (Politico, 2017, Para. 14).

Meanwhile, the identifying relation can be found in the following sentences, such as:

 “The American people are strong and resilient….” (Politico, 2017, Para. 2).
 “The scourge of our planet today is a small group of rogue regimes that violate
every principle” (Politico, 2017, p. 33).

The next process is the mental process, which is a process of feeling, thinking and
seeing. Actor is not the real subject of doing, but the feeling. It represents inner experience,
such as “perception”, “reaction” and “cognition”. We call the two participants are Senser and
phenomenon. This process can be found in the following sentence.

 “We (Senser) want (Mental Process) harmony and friendship, not conflict and
strife” (Politico, 2017, Para. 30).
 “In remembering the great victory that led to this body's founding, we (Senser)
must never forget (Mental Process) that those heroes who fought against evil also
fought for the nations that they loved” (Politico, 2017, Para. 84).

From above examples, we can see that mental process, as a process of sensing,
appeals to the audience’s inner heart to connect the political beliefs, ambitions with their
expectation, hope in a clear and emphasized way. In this way, the audience’s emotion of
promotion and willingness to devotion is aroused and strengthened.

Finally, after analyzing Trump’s speech, we could come to a conclusion. Based on the
aforementioned analysis, we could group Donald Trump’s speech into several categories
using Systemic Functional Grammar—which is part of Critical Discourse Analysis. From the
analysis, it found out that throughout his speech Donald Trump use words related to the topic
of terrorism and dictatorship such as evil, sinister, wicked, etc. in order to put emphasize on
the importance of counterterrorism and oppressive government. These findings are in
accordance with Trump’s conservative view—mainly professed by Republican Party—in
order to protect American citizen from external threats of terrorism, dictatorship,
communism, and liberalism. Critical Discourse Analysis can explore the relationships among
language, ideology and power. It provides a new idea and method to analyze public
addresses. So it is worth for us to pay more attention.
 References

Fairclough, N. (1989). Michel Foucault and the Analysis of Discourse. Lancaster: Centre for
Language in Social Life, Lancaster University.

Halliday, M. A. K. (1979). “Linguistic Function and Literary Style: An Inquiry into the
Language of William Golding’s The Inheritors.” Linguistic Studies of Text and
Discourse. ed. Jonathan J.Webster. 88-125. Peking: Peking University Press.

Hu, Z. (1988). A Course of Linguistics. Peking: Peking University Press.

Wang, J. (2010). “A Critical Discourse Analysis of Barack Obama's Speeches.” Journal of

Language Teaching and Research, 1(3), 254-261. doi:doi:10.4304/jltr.1.3.254-261

Toosi, N., McCaskill, N. D., & Jackson, H. C. (2017). Full text: Trump's 2017 U.N. Speech
Transcript. Retrieved December 04, 2017, from
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/19/trump-un-speech-2017-full-text-
transcript-242879