Analysing Language For Socio-Cultural Purposes

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF COLOMBIA
ENGLISH FILOLOGY DEPARTMENT
GRAMMAR II
PROF. LEONARDO VARELA
JUNE 19th 2012.




ANALYSING LANGUAGE FOR SOCIO-CULTURAL PURPOSES



Discourse Analysis from a socio-cultural perspective:


This is an excerpt analysis from the speech given by Muammar Gaddafi at the opening of the sixty-fourth session of the United Nations General Assembly, onSeptember 23rd, 2009.

Context

Muammar Gaddafi was leader of the Libyan revolution from 1969 until his assassination on late 2011. Gaddafi, chairman of the African Union for one-year period, was in charge of the Libyan presidency for the sixty-fourth session of the United Nations General Assembly in 2009. He gave a 96-minutes speech at the UN headquarters, New York City, in which he stronglycriticized the UN participative system, the Security Council structure as well as its decisions, and issues related with world peace and security.

He began his intervention recalling upon the history of the UN Charter’s proclamation which gave birth to the UN as international institution; likewise he highlighted the importance the Charter preamble had in the adherence of most nations and how thosearticles in the Charter are not reflected anymore by the signing superpowers. He emphasized the original foundational role the UN as the world community had against injustice, wars, crimes against humanity and alike. In summary, the UN is an institution committed with maintaining world peace and security. He had a constant and deep pace in his discourse throughout the first part of it, though heintensified his critics and tone as he approached to the many wars fought because of the superpowers’ interests or omissions.

Gaddafi’s discourse comprises a wide range of topics. A great deal of criticism can be found surrounding the capitalist system and its greed which he made responsible for so many massacres and wars.

Because the speech was closed and one-timed it makes evident that therecannot be any responses or replies to anything Gaddafi states. Therefore we can conclude that the discourse genre is mostly a politically dissuasive discourse, indicative of statements of truths and persuasive in emotional and logical grounds. There was no intervention of any other speaker or member from the audience. Nevertheless, the shared background information prompted some features ofinterpersonal background. Another aspect of this discourse was the usage of a formal language and emphatic expressions which inhibited the use of ellipsis.

-Situational context

• In lines 3 and 4 we can locate people deixis: ‘the President of the Assembly, Mr. Ali Abdussalam Treki, and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will produce…”
• This stretch has the time deixis in lines 6 and 24 in the formof the adverb ‘now’.
• In line 13 is found future time deixis and an exophoric reference: “doomsday or the end of the world”. Because the audience easily identifies the word “doomsday” meaning the last day of the world, Gaddafi uses both time and exophoric reference to express the urgent need for change in the Security Council.


-Background knowledge context

Cultural

The speechcultural background is the United Nations' issues as international interest topic. The UN internal details, issues and information are private for the general public, but at different degrees, accessible to the membership in general, top officials, academics and alike.

• The first line exemplifies general cultural background: ‘The General Assembly is the Congress and Parliament of the world, theleader of the world’. This statement assumes the audience recognizes the world-wide power the General Assembly has as the main policymaking and representative organ of the 193 states constituents of the United Nations.
• In the stretch consisting of lines 7 to 10, there are certain assumptions in the shared cultural background related to the information in these lines: “we...