4. Critical Discourse Analysis
Critical Discourse Analysis:
Rebuilding America’s Defences (2000).
Macroscopic Analysis
It must be first made clear that the text, included in Appendix 1, has been copied from an Adobe Acrobat PDF document and converted into the standard word processor format. The text has also been broken down into numbered paragraphs and sentences due to the large size of the extract and for the purpose of clear analysis and reference. For this reason, references to the text will be displayed as such: (23:106), meaning paragraph 23, sentence number 106 in the extract from the PNAC document included in Appendix 1. Apart from these editorial decisions, the text has not been altered in any other way.
The ‘principal author’ is named as Thomas Donnelly[1], who was then a ‘research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (AEI)’ and who has been a ‘Director at the Lockheed Martin Corporation on strategic communications and initiatives’ since he left the PNAC. The Lockheed Martin Corporation is the dominant player in the military industrial complex and of course one of the corporations that makes substantial profits in technological warfare by providing weaponry and defence technologies to the U.S. Department of Defence. The corporations substantial economic growth demonstrates this:
(G-Stock.com, May 2007)
The exponential rise in profits since the publication of the PNAC document, and the subsequent continuation since the beginning of the ‘War on Terror’, clearly shows that, for certain agencies such as LMC, war is extremely profitable and beneficial. It also shows in the case of Thomas Donnelly that the path between the state and the corporate sector is well trodden. Donnelly proposed in the PNAC document that is essential that the Department of Defence invests in new military technologies in order to face the challenges of the future and maintain its super-power status; then, soon after, Donnelly switched to the corporation that will provide those technologies. He has been both the consumer and the producer. In terms of the text he is writing for an audience that he is already familiar with, if not even personally affiliated with at some level. In any case, this clearly shows that the ‘principal author’ in 2000 had a vested interest in making the groups argument as lucid as possible due to the overdetermined clash between public interests and economic interests, with the latter being the determinant.
However, the site of authorship has further complexities as the ‘principal author’, along with the entire group, does not accept responsibility for the content of the document. There is a disclaimer at the end of the text which avoids any authorial responsibility:
‘The report is a product solely of the Project for the New American Century and does not necessarily represent the views of the project participants or their affiliated institutions.’ (PNAC, 2000: 90)
This is much the same as media agencies and corporations operate as individual entities, representative of collectives, but always acting in singular. In all case this is achieved, in part, through discourse. The group’s title is a noun-phrase that has been nominalised, – a ‘project’ is a process – imbued with the cultural, symbolic and social capital of the group itself, and inevitably, upon inference, personified as an individual entity. The name of the group is also a categorical assertion making it seem imperative. The use of ‘new’ modifies the noun-phrase and adds a sense of freshness, although, as the historical record has shown, the ideology of the group is predominantly old rather than new. This approach is similar to the ‘new’ Labour revival in Britain under the Blair regime, with discourse being used to elevate the patchwork quilt of old ideologies. So, in this case, the process of production is not fully known and is quite ambiguous. Thomas Donnelly is cited as the ‘principal author’ but there is no indication as to the level of involvement of other members of the group and no insight into the editorial process.
The text has generic interdiscursive elements: the document employs various discourse types ranging from the dominant discourse types which are to be expected, such as political rhetoric, economics, the discourse of the military and the discourse of the media. These discourse types can be further divided into two groups: those that are dominant and appear most frequently and those that only appear occasionally. The most dominant discourse types which, for example, appear in a high frequency in the first paragraph is the discourse of economics, globalisation and the marketplace: namely the discourse of capitalism. For instance, phrases such as ‘guarantor’ (1:1), ‘potential’ (1:1) and ‘competition’ (1:3) appear often throughout the document.
The genre is that of a government white-paper aimed at increasing the United State’s defence budget and exercising their military advantage, although, given that the article is also distributed electronically through their website, it also belongs to the genre of hypertext, although the content is not fully hypertextual as it is fixed. However, the text also employs various discourse types that do not usually appear with this genre, such as the discourse of religion. For instance, they appeal for the need to formulate ‘divine ways to control the international commons of space and cyberspace’ (8:36). Overall, the interaction between these discourse types is superfluous. They weave themselves in and out of the text using ‘intertextual chains’ (Fairclough, 1992:129) seemingly dependent on one another.
The tenor is formal, authoritative and official which creates a sense of authenticity. This is demonstrated in the complex syntactical configurations and the high frequency of non-modal statements. The rhetorical mode also reflects this sentiment: it is persuasive, and aggressive, whilst seeking to be informative.
The activity type follows a simple, linear structure and as a printed text it is obviously less dynamic than a spoken text. There are two subject positions although they are extremely ambiguous. There is the author, in this case Donnelly, who represents the various participants, and there is the reader, or readers, as the latter role may be occupied by numerous individuals at any one time, especially given the documents widespread circulation on the internet.
The delivery is well structured. It functions through repetition: the main points are introduced, repeated, expanded upon, repeated, then expanded upon again, and so forth. The entire document never deviates from its ‘four core missions’. The text’s structural integrity is clear as it is consistent throughout, although there are occasions were reported speech is used, and, given that this is infrequent, it can be considered as deviant to the internal consistency of the text. Although, this point will be returned to.
Microscopic Analysis
The text contains images throughout and in the chapter we have focused on there are several images interspersed with the text. They are used in a sensationalist manner to enhance their argument. For instance, the discussion of nuclear arsenals contains an image of a Chinese military parade complete with fully loaded missile carriers.
As already mentioned, any overt form of intertextuality, in the form of references or citations, is rare in this text except for the instances were reported speech is used. This occurs in 9:38 and 17:74-77. In both casers the speakers are representatives from the former administration with liberal views on the level of funding provided to the U.S. military. The infrequency of reported speech indicates that a reply is not allowed to be given – the argument is not balanced. The speakers are misrepresented and used only so that their arguments can be countered and their errors exposed. There are many social-actors who are not named and backgrounded. Even the American public are barely mentioned and this signals that the consideration of their well-being is not high on the agenda. The well-being of the global population is even more arbitrary.
The ‘United States’ is personified in the extract. This positions the United States into the role of the ‘client’ or the consumer. This occurs in much the same way as the ‘American people’ are personified as one homogeneous mass. In respect of this and of particular interest is the frequency with which popular slogans, phrases, nations and individuals appear in the text, given the benefit of hindsight with regards to the ‘War on Terror’. For instance, Saddam Hussein appears 3 times in the extract and 6 times throughout the entire document and Iraq appears 5 times in the extract and 19 times overall. Similarly, ‘weapons of mass destruction’ appears 5 times in the extract and 7 times throughout the entire text. Also of interest, ‘terrorism’ or ‘terrorist’ appears twice in the extract and 7 times throughout the entire document. Of particular interest is the syntactical arrangement of some of these noun phrases.
The text occasionally deviates into the realm of metaphor, and against the background of the predominantly ‘sterile’ and formal mode and tenor, these novel metaphors are vividly foregrounded. One such metaphor is ‘balance of terror’ which gives the impression of Manichean duality as though the world is balanced between the good and the evil. This collocates with the use of ‘complex and chaotic’ in 13:63. Another such metaphor that occurs several times is ‘process of transformation’ and this an extremely ambivalent term that could mean any number of things especially as it is used in different contexts.
The text makes various glaring presuppositions and ‘common sense’ assumptions both about their role in the world and about the world itself. These presuppositions are implicitly ideological. As Gramsci’s concept of hegemony clarifies: what is mistaken as ‘common sense’ is often implicitly ideological, as the process of naturalisation embeds the ideology within the existing social order and so it becomes hegemonised. Hegemony in the individual is what Bourdieu labels ‘habitus’; so, in this sense, hegemony is the social whereas habitus is the psychological. At the level of discourse this often leads to implicit presupposition based on the flawed cognition of reality. For instance, in (P13:61-63) the adjective ‘superior’, appears three times in reference to the United States. The forces the readers to presuppose that all others are inferior and it can be argued that this superiority complex is reminiscent of National Socialism, eugenics and the notion of a super-race.
The majority of the extract is non-modal as the statements are categorical assertions. However, the narrative does occasionally deviate from this neutral mode. For instance, the modal auxiliary ‘must’ appears 26 times throughout the extract. It appears in paragraph 3 exactly three times in close succession, as follows:
(3:12) ‘America must defend its homeland’.
(3:15) ‘[U.S.] must counteract the effects of the proliferation of ballistic missiles’.
(3:16) ‘this must have priority’.
This indicates epistemic modality (Fairclough, 2003:167) and functions as imparting a statement of intentions. The epistemic modal system reflects the ‘author’s commitment to the truth’ and their ‘representation of reality’ and is often marked by the use of auxiliary verbs. In the PNAC text this creates the sense of obligation and commitment to the statements. The deontic modal system reflects ‘obligation to the statement’ (Fairclough, 2003:168) and this is also apparent. It can be argued that it overlaps with the epistemic system.
These statements are also ‘enunciative modalities’. Fairclough (1992:43) describes ‘eenunciative modalities’ as ‘types of discursive activity such as describing, forming hypotheses, formulating regulations, teaching, and so forth, each of which has its own associated subject positions’. These modalities are also further contrasted against the high frequency of non-modal statements and the interaction between the two somewhat clarifies the overall intention. Foucault (1972: 98) argues that ‘ there can be no statement that in one way or another does not reactualise others’. Fairclough (1992:46) calls these reactualisations ‘interdiscursive relations’, which ‘can be differentiated according to whether they belong to fields of presence, concomitance or memory’. This interaction between the modal and the non-modal occurs because the interdiscursive relations within the extract belong to the fields of presence and concomitance. Foucault (1972:57-58) defines a field of presence as ‘all statements formulated elsewhere and taken up in discourse, acknowledged to be truthful, involving exact description, well founded reasoning, when necessary presuppositions’, as well as ‘those that are criticised, discussed, judged…rejected or excluded.’, either explicitly or implicitly.’ Foucault defines a field of concomitance as consisting of ‘statements from different discursive formations, and is linked to the issue of relationships between discursive formations’.
So, if we consider the examples above from paragraph 3, we see that the epistemic markers are used to emphasise which goals ‘must’ be achieved and, conversely, categorical assertions are used when explaining how these goals can be achieved. It is akin to a problem-solution formulation: the aims are imperative because problematic deficiencies exist and so the solution is absolute as these deficiencies have been expressed with commitment (epistemic) and they have created a sense of obligation (deontic) to the solution with the initial problematic portrayal of what is to be achieved. The interdiscursive relations facilitate this exchange. This corresponds to the dual nature of the text: the statements are positioned accordingly and function in the role of both producer and consumer. It is also perhaps this commitment to the conflict-resolution and to the proposition that the text makes the need for American hegemony unavoidable, desirable and beneficial – as though there is no alternative.
[1] Wikipedia, 2006. Thomas Donnelly.
Leave a Reply