A Study Of Discursive Hegemony: A Functional Linguistics Approach

Hegemony has been extensively expounded from the political, cultural and social aspects and gets few studies in the aspect of language partly because language does not get enough attention from the scholars in those aspects. This thesis attempts to study discursive hegemony within the theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Discursive hegemony refers to a kind of power that can be uncovered through analysis of form-meaning of discourse.This thesis probes within the linguistic theory (SFL) discursive hegemony by means of constructing three patterns: representational, interactional, and articulatory ones which are useful to respectively explore manipulation, persuasion, and articulation. We argue that manipulation, persuasion and articulation are classified here as forms of discursive hegemony, but all three lack certain generic characteristics because they have interwoven together and do not have clear-cut boundary. The analytical model of SFL has the same idea; the ideational, interpersonal and textual functions consist of three orientations to language, which exist simultaneously in every levels of language. Any text can be regarded as simultaneously interweaving ideational, interpersonal, and textual function. The three metafunctions are realized with their own subsystems referred to earlier and in turn these subsystems (transitivity, voice, modality, appraisal, thematic structure, information structure, and media) are composed of multi-parameters for linguistic analyses. Therefore multi-level linguistic theory of SFL seeing language a social semiotic is appliable to explore discursive hegemony implied in discourse.The thesis is composed of seven chapters. The first chapter is a general introduction to the thesis, encompassing the concept of discursive hegemony, rationale of the thesis, research procedure and methodology, aim and significance, and the organization of the thesis. Chapter 2 gives a literature review of discursive hegemony and argues that SFL is appliable to debating upon discursive hegemony with detailed exposition of social approach to language within the linguistic theory. Chapter 3 presents the SFL theoretical framework and Fairclough's CDA model. Chapter 4, 5 and 6 mainly deal with the three specifications of discursive hegemony respectively from the three perspectives of social action, role structure and symbolic structure. We argue that the three variables of register (field, tenor and mode) within the contextual theory of SFL contribute to discussion of discursive hegemony from the linguistic perspective. Chapter 4 constructs the representational model of hegemony (manipulation), in terms of field of discourse, transitivity system, and discourse (as representation), which is practical to uncover the way of how the discursive hegemony exists in the content of text, and means that discourse may be the representation of dominant forces to channel the direction of social and cultural changes which is influencing the contemporary society. Chapter 5 shows the interactional pattern of discursive hegemony from the perspective of the enactment of social roles and relations, in which tenor, modality and appraisal, and discourse (as identification) are used to explore persuasion as one form of hegemony. Chapter 6 brings forth the articulatory pattern of discursive hegemony, which signifies the organization of hegemonic discourse or the way of how discursive hegemony is symbolically articulated in discourse, from the perspective of textual function and the intertextual context theory (intertextuality). Chapter 7 summarizes the thesis, displaying the findings of the present study within the theory of SFL. And the limitations of the thesis will also be pointed out in order to show the further research on this topic.The thesis is a tentative attempt to explore discursive hegemony within the framework of linguistic theory, which hopes that the theoretical and practical significance of the three patterns of discursive hegemony can provide the inspirations and novel insights in the academic fields of researching hegemony including critical discourse analysis, cultural study, and social sciences.