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TMA 01 Question :

Introduction:

Language of any text whether spoken or written is characterized by several

ways. One way is to look at the relationship between language forms and

the features of the context. The primary construct for explaining linguistic

variation is a familiar one "register". Register is important in systemic

linguistics because it is seen as the linguistic consequence of interacting

aspects of context. The descriptive categories we use are Field, Tenor, and

Mode based on Halliday's theory of language variation. Accordingly, I am

going to explain the criticl discours analysis of two articles that I am going

to quote from two different journals (native and non-native). In order to

display the findings of my analysis in a meaningful way, I will carry out

three tasks. The first task involves the sources of the two articles. The

second task involves analysis of field, tenor and mode of the two texts. The

final task is to show the critical discourse analysis for the two texts.

Task one

Throughout this essay I have decided to show the ideological

discourse of the two media texts about the new selected Egyptian

president and contexts where they were published. The two articles

that I have chosen to be presented and discussed in my

research are drawn from different journals, one is a native

English Journal is called New York Times and the other is a

journalcalled Al-Ahram Weekly. It is published in Egypt state in

English.

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Article One:

Opponents of Egypts Leader Call for Boycott of Charter Vote

The political crisis overEgypts draft constitution hardened on both sides on Sunday, as the opposition

signaled that it had given up hope that it could defeat the draft charter at the polls to safeguard balloting

in a planned referendum on the new charter and his opponents called for more protests and a boycott to

undermine the vote. Thousands of demonstrators streamed toward the presidential palace for a fifth

night of protests against Mr. Morsi and the proposed charter, and the president, a former leader of

theMuslim Brotherhood, formally issued an order asking the military to protect such vital

institutions and to secure the vote.

With the decision to boycott the referendum, the opposition signaled that it had given up hope that it

could defeat the draft charter at the polls, and had opted instead to try to undermine the referendums

legitimacy.

The call for new protests with major demonstrations expected at the presidential palace again on

Tuesday and Friday ensures that questions about Egypts national unity and stability will continue

to overshadow debate about the specific contents of the charter. Although international experts who

have studied the draft say it is hardly more religious than Egypts old constitution, opponents say it

fails to adequately protect individual rights from being constricted by a future Islamist majority in

Parliament.

Over the past two weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have poured into the streets to oppose the

charter, crowds have attacked 28 Muslim Brotherhood offices and the groups headquarters, and at

least seven people have died in clashes between Islamist and secular political factions. The opposition

rejects lending legitimacy to a referendum that will definitely lead to more sedition and division, said

Sameh Ashour, a spokesman for a coalition that calls itself the National Salvation Front. Holding a

referendum in a state of seething and chaos, Mr. Ashour said, amounted to a reckless and flagrant

absence of responsibility, risking driving the country into violent confrontations that endanger its

national security.

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http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/egypt/index.html?inline=nyt-geohttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/egypt/index.html?inline=nyt-geohttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/muslim_brotherhood_egypt/index.html?inline=nyt-orghttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/muslim_brotherhood_egypt/index.html?inline=nyt-orghttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/muslim_brotherhood_egypt/index.html?inline=nyt-orghttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/m/muslim_brotherhood_egypt/index.html?inline=nyt-orghttp://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/egypt/index.html?inline=nyt-geo

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Article Two:

Presidential trials and errors

Mohamed Morsi started this year as head of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), the political

arm of the long-persecuted-but-popular Muslim Brotherhood. By the spring he was the back-

up presidential candidate for the FJP and the Brotherhood. On 30 June, he was sworn in as

the first-ever freely elected president in Egypts history. This week, as 2012 comes to an end,

he is occupying a barricaded presidential palace whose back door is being kept ready for a

possibly speedy exit.

I really feel very sorry that I voted for him. It was a big mistake. He cheated us, said May, a

doctor in her late 20s. Queuing up to participate in the referendum over the controversial draft

constitution at one of the Heliopolis polling stations last Saturday, this veiled but carefully

manicured lady said that it had been three hours since she had taken up her place in a long

queue to vote no to the constitution.This is the least I could do to make up for the mistake

of voting for anyone from the Muslim Brotherhood, she said.

As she shared her frustration with other voters in-waiting, May received a call on her

IPhone4. After a brief conversation marked with big smiles, contained laughter and a quick

recitation of the Quranic verse in which the Almighty promises to defeat those who dont

keep their promises, May hung up and announced the great news that her sister had said on

behalf of her husband who had just come home. They got [Brotherhood leader] Khairat Al-

Shater. They really gave him what he deserves [in terms of insults], she said to the queries of

other voters..

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Task Two:

Through this task, tenor, field and mode of the articles will be

discussed. As I have shown up that field is the subject matter. Its

function is identified as experiential. While tenor is identified as

an element to explore the social distance between the speakers,

the writer/speaker's persona, and the degree of familiarity.

Both of the two writers used different types of conjunctions as a

cohesive tool to help the reader to understand information

through the two articles easily.

Both of the two writers used different types of nominal group.

Some of them are modified nominal group as a cohesive tool to

help the reader to understand information through the two

articles easily.

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The TenorA.1 Writer Persona power expertise or authority

Tenor relate to the roles and relationships of those involved

in communication. The text is non interactive text as there is only

one communicator. The writer presents himself as more

authorities as the author present himself as having some degree

of knowledge in a topic area which is of broad interest to society

in general. The writer presents himself as the provider of

information to an audience which presumably is interested but

lucks knowledge. It is of course a vary generalized expertise,

which would be possessed by virtually all mass media news

agencies.

The first text considers a factual news report about the struggle

inside Egypt and the calling for Boycott to guard the process of

vote. We observe that there are only two instance of evaluating

language The political crisis over Egypts draft constitution hardened on both sides,. Even

such evaluation can be classed as factual as after more meeting as

President Mohamed Morsi prepared to deploy the army to safeguard balloting . The view

contained in the text is being very publicity communicated to the

society as a whole. The text considers reporting more than

commentating which associated with demarcated journalist roles.

Now we arrived to understand the social distance inside text

which lies beyond the relation between giver and receiver. Thetext show relatively and formal relation between the writer and

audience as there are some grammatical structure show it such

the opposition signaled that it had given up hope that it could defeat the draft charter at the polls " such

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dialectical forms are also suggestive of informality and some

degree of closeness.

In Text (1) the writer presenting himself as having some degree of

knowledge in the topic area, he is a an information provider to anaudience whose presumably interested in the topic. The writerusage of meaning relating to obligation or necessity in sentenceslike" Mohamed Morsi started this year as head of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP)". Itindicates that the writer has given himself the some level ofauthorities to describe the anti government in Egypt.

On the other hand, we may find that the writer In Text (2)

presents himself as having some degree of knowledge in the topic

area; he presents himself as an information provider to an

audience which presumably is interested and gives sufficient

knowledge. This is very clear from the first sentence in the

article where he says " Mohamed Morsi started this year as head of the Freedom and

Justice Party (FJP), On 30 June, he was sworn in as the first-ever freely elected president in Egypts

history. This week, as 2012 comes to an end, he is occupying a barricaded presidential palace whose

back door is being kept ready for a possibly speedy exit. " The writer provided new

information to his audience. However, the writer usage ofevaluating language likes " Egypts history", " Muslim Brotherhood ", " Brotherhood leader]

Khairat Al-Shater ". The writer usage of words like "civilian" gives clear

indication that he is giving an opinion along with he is giving the

chance for readers of his article to make their own statements.

Both the two articles are same but the main different is that the

writer in text 1 gives himself the authority to make statements

and give directions.

A.2 Social distance (degree of familiarity or connection)

It's clear that both writers are using the impersonal style,

since both writers are writing a mass audience. Both texts clearly

show that there is no real relationship between the writer and his

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audience, since both texts were written to a mass, essentially

unknown. The common occurrences between the two texts were

the using of noun phrases. The two articles full with classifiers

noun rather than describer or epithets noun. The two articles vary

in structure of information in their clauses.

A.The FiledB.1 Semitic Domain

The subject matter (or matters) with which the text is

concerned, known often as the semantic domain, can usually be

identified by the relatively simple means of organizing the text's

nouns and verbs (and sometimes adjectives and adverbs) into the

different topic and subtopic areas from which they are drawn.

(Course Book 2 , P31). Since both texts talk about the same

subject matters (Egypt Presidential trials and errors), we can

therefore say that the filed of the two texts is same.

B.2 Specialization and assumptions of expert knowledge

Since both texts were released in newspapers for a mass of

audience, both texts have little or no assumption of special

expertise language. Both writers tried to use terms of everyday

language which they assume that they share with the audience.

B.The ModeC.1 Interactivity

Both texts didn't use the interactivity style of language. Even

though the writers could have used an interactive style in their

text for example in the sentence " After a brief conversation marked with big smiles, contained

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laughter and a quick recitation of the Quranic verse in which the Almighty promises " the writer of text 2

could placed the phrase clothes by "Quranic verse in which the

Almighty promises " to create more interactivity. But both writers

have preferred to use non-interactive style.

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C.2 Spontaneity

Since lexical density is one primary determiner of density of

informational packaging, therefore we will calculate the lexical

densities of an approximately 70 words of each text and thendetermine whether the text is spontaneity or not. Because the

first article which is written by native English writer, so it seem to

be high density 86% because the thickness of information

occurred which mean that this text is equal tense for the form of

academic registure, while as the second text written by non

native "Arabic" writer, so it less density because uses many

quotes which seem to be conversation register , the article less

density 75%. and text is less dense than the academic register as

the writer is writing to mass audience rather than experts in the

field of political.

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References:

Book 2 (Getting Inside English: Interpreting Texts).

Section 18 on page 41 in the course guides booklet.

Longman

Article one from Kuwait newspaper:

(http://kuwaittimesnewspaperkw.com)

Article two from British newspaper ::

(http://THEINDEPENDENTuk.com)

E-Library; Lynne Young and Claire Harrison , 2003, Systemic functional linguistics and

critical discourse analysis [electronic resource] : studies in social change,

http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/u4807013, accessed 2010 December 22.

Word count: (1,500).

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http://kuwaittimesnewspaperkw.com/http://theindependentuk.com/http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/u4807013http://kuwaittimesnewspaperkw.com/http://theindependentuk.com/http://search.lib.virginia.edu/catalog/u4807013