Cilindro hidráulico

Speech function in this study is used in a nearly similar way to speech act (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1979), who referred to speech acts as doing things with words. According to Searle (1979, p. 18), uttering utterances does not only mean saying something meaningful, but also mean accomplishing a number of social actions, especially when performed by people who have power, expertise or knowledge to make a speech function. Speech function is not a refinement of speech act (Fairclough, 2003).

109 As was introduced in Chapter 1, the current study refers to SFL for part of its analytical framework; the analyst uses the term speech function (Halliday, 2004; Fairclough, 2003) as a more appropriate term for the slight modification of Searle‘s speech acts. The analysis of the speech function seems to be more practical, because it can reveal the author‘s social belief, value systems, evaluations, and goals which can be explicitly or implicitly constructed in a discourse.

The adjustment does not attempt to override the contribution of the speech act theory to the analysis of discourse. Speech function is more linguistic-driven while speech act is more philosophically oriented. Speech act is more appropriate for pragmatics and conversational analysis while speech function is more practical for CDA, because CDA takes into consideration evaluation aspects, such as the uses of evaluative adjectives (see examples in the paragraph below) in analyzing texts (Fairclough, 2003).

When describing clauses as exchanges, Halliday (2004, p. 108) classifies ‗primary speech functions‘ into four: offer, command, statement and question. In relation to this, Fairclough (2003, p. 109) points out that these speech functions could be elaborated and differentiated for doing CDA. Statements, for example, can be elaborated in terms of Statements of fact or ‗realis‘ statements (statements about what is, was, or has been the case e.g. global economy is facing the financial crisis); ‗Irrealis‘ statements (prediction and hypothetical statements e.g. global economy reduces poverty) and Evaluations e.g. free trade is a good economic practice).

When speech functions such as statements are made, they have to be described in terms of social conditions of the participants, namely, their beliefs, institutions and goals that have social implication (van Dijk, 1998b). Speech functions, such as commands and statements presuppose the existence of power relations. For example, when an author in

110 the media or forum advises the leaders of the financial institutions, it implies that the author has power that can control the beliefs and attitudes of the bankers, managers and possibly the common people too. This suggests that the social relations are not only based on power but they are also ideologically grounded.

In the current work, we are concerned with the speech functions made by authorities, such as a leader of state and a leading economist. That is, we examine the linguistic performances in which subjects are empowered to make serious truth claims, because of their knowledge, power, institution location and mode of discourse. For example, statements about the prospects of global economy can be performed only by suitably qualified economists and political elites who present plausible theories and evidence to justify their arguments.

If we want to refer again to the KLM text as a case, traditionally we can observe that the press release performs the speech act of commissive (Searle, 1979). But politically, the KLM virtually performs a speech function, which strategically states that the KLM is not to be blamed for having destroyed the squirrels.

Performing a speech function is frequently contingent on power, knowledge and authority. For example, a politician or head of state is well-known and cunning in making populist statements. He will order his ministers, spoke-persons, and think-tanks to make statements for him when dealing with less crucial matters that could reduce his reputation. But when it is for the sake of his personal and group vested interest, he will make them himself. President Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia, for instance, when announcing the hike of fuel price, had his Minister of Finance do it. On the other hand, when reducing its price, he did it himself (the researcher‘s own observation).

111 Making a speech function is concerned not only with a locutionary act (Searle, 1979), that is, producing an utterance in some language but also with the accomplishment of language functions, for example, to represent or evaluate a social issue. Since the discursive construction of global economy is part of social life, speech function constitutes one of the most fruitful and prolific analytical tools to be examined. The analysis of speech function will help the analyst reveal the opaque relationship between language use and power in discourse.

4.3.5 Vocabulary

What we mean by vocabulary is the power of lexicalization, that is, the use of words to express norms, beliefs and values (van Dijk, 1998b). The relationship between words and their meanings is not always one-to-one but one-to-many, that is, a single word may have multiple meanings (Fairclough, 2001). A word also has meaning potential and its relationship with other words can come in the form of synonym, antonym and collocation (Fairclough, 2003; Halliday, 2004). Lexicalization is believed to be the most direct way of producing an ideological effect.

Text producers are free to choose words related to social interests, expressing norms, values, beliefs or knowledge. They may use metaphors, for example, labor is a ―resource‖. The metaphor equates human work with natural resource, which may leads one to perceive it as the cheaper the better (Lakoff and Johnston, 1980). In the personal advertisements we often find language of sexism. Women often describe themselves as ‗petite‘, or ‗full-figured.‘ A man may describe himself as ‗attractive‘, ‗fun‘ and ‗fit.‘ In economic discourse, the vocabulary ‗labor skills‘ is often used to mean human capital and ‗governance‘ to signify diminished government. In brief, vocabulary is conceived as the major dimension of discourse meaning through which ideology is produced,

112 controlled and reproduced. Vocabulary is included as one of the analytical tools in this research, because ―The word is the fundamental object of the study of ideologies‖ (Vološinov, 1973, p. 15). Since vocabulary is the most direct way of inculcating ideology (van Dijk, 1998a), the current work pays extra attention to this linguistic feature in the analysis of the discourse of global economy. Language and political economy constitute each other. The analysis of vocabulary assists the analyst to uncover the perspective of one‘s political economy since the latter is inculcated in the former and vice versa. For the sake of analysis of the selected texts, the extracts for lexical items are identified through the icon ‗Find‘ available from the Microsoft Word program. The items are tallied manually and then their occurrences are calculated by a system of percentage in accordance with the number of total words in the data base of the strategic texts on global economy.