CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ON
LANGUAGE AND POWER IN ELT CLASSROOM
(An Ethnography Study at STKIP PGRI Bangkalan Madura)
A THESIS
By
ANDRI DONAL
(S891302001)
Submitted to the Graduate School Sebelas Maret University as a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Master of English Education
ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
GRADUATE PROGRAM
FACULTY OF TEACHERS TRAINING AND EDUCATION
SEBELAS MARET UNIVERSITY
SURAKARTA
2014
LEGITIMATION OF THE EXAMINERS
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ON
LANGUAGE AND POWER IN ELT CLASSROOM
(An Ethnography Study at STKIP PGRI Bangkalan Madura)
by:
Andri Donal
S891302001
This thesis has been examined by the Board of Thesis Examiners of English Education Department of Graduate School of Sebelas Maret University
ABSTRACT
Andri Donal. S891302001. 2014. Critical Discourse Analysis on Language and Power in ELT Classroom (An Ethnograpy Study at STKIP Bangkalan, Madura). First Consultant: Prof. Dr. Joko Nurkamto, M.Pd. Second Consultant: Dr. Sumardi, M.Hum. A thesis. Surakarta: English Education Department. Graduate Program of Teacher training and education Faculty, Sebelas Maret University, Surakarta.
The objectives of the research are: (1) To describe the power in language represented in the speech acts, (2) To explore the effects of power in language done by teachers toward students’ learning attitude. The research was carried out at STKIP Bangkalan Madura. It was conducted from January to August 2014. The subject of the research is the English teachers’ of STKIP Bangkalan, Madura. It is an ethnograpy study research. The ethnography study data are collected through document analysis, observation, interview, and questionnaire. The data are analyzed using qualitative data analysis technique proposed by James Spradley which covers domain analysis, taxonomy analysis, componential analysis, and theme analysis and this data also analyzed by using critical discourse analysis approach proposed by Norman Fairclough which covers description, interpretation and explanation.
The research findings show that; (1) In the classroom, a teacher represents power in language into some speech acts forms, including: directive, assertive and expressive speech acts forms. The directive speech acts have students do something; the assertive speech act are the teacher’s argument to make students agree or believe with teacher’s idea. The last is the expressive speech acts, they are the teacher’s psychological states about the students such as pleasure and displeasure expressions, (2) The application of teacher’s power in speech acts forms can influence students’ learning attitude, as follows: a). The teacher’s status influences the students’ perspective in responding teacher’s command; b). Students are enjoyful in doing teacher’s request; c). Teacher assumed that teacher’s prohibition acts are the forms of training for students to be more discipline; d). Students consider that the teacher’s permission acts have less negative effect to them; e). The teacher’s advice influences their learning attitude towards positive side because it can increase their motivation and add their knowledge, information and experience; f). Students tend to be afraid in facing the fierce teacher’s questions; g). The teacher’s intervention is a must when there are different arguments among students; h). The students will be happy if the teacher appreciates their arguments; i). The teacher’s pleasure expression will trigger students to be more active in the classroom. It also can increase students’ motivation because the students assume it is as the form of teacher’s appreciation to them; j). The displeasure expression has the high restriction of illocutionary power because it can decrease students’ learning motivation.
Therefore, in teaching learning process, a teacher should create the humanistic teaching where a teacher should consider the negative effects from implementing the powers in language in ELT classroom.
Keywords: power and language, speech acts, critical discourse analysis, learning attitude, ethnography study
MOTTO
“And if you should count the favors of Allah , you could not enumerate them. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful.”
(An Nahl: 18)
DEDICATION
With deep profound love, this research is devoted to:
My beloved parents; BapakYuskar and Mama Andriani,
Without your love, prayers, and support I would not be the person I am today.
My beloved wife Andriana, SST and My beloved son Alkhalifi Andriando,
Thanks for your prayers, support, patient and sacrifice and being great motivators
and inspirators in accomplishing this thesis.
My beloved big family: My sister Afrida Santi and her husband, my brothers:
Doni Asmon, Ade Romi Irawan and Anton Hilman and their wife, and my
nephew and niece.
Thanks for your prayers and supports.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Alhamdulillahirabbil’alamin. Praise to ALLAH SWT who has given His
blessing to the writer so that he can accomplish this thesis. In addition, his thesis can
never be accomplished without the help of others during the process of writing.
Therefore, he would like to express his deepest gratitude and appreciation to:
1. The Dean of Teachers Training and Education Faculty of Sebelas Maret
University.
2. The Head of the English Education Department of Graduate Program.
3. Prof. Dr. Joko Nurkamto, M. Pd., the first consultant, for all his guidance, advice,
and encouragement during completion of this thesis.
4. Dr. Sumardi, M. Hum., the second consultant, for his guidance, advice, and
encouragement during the writing process of this thesis.
5. The Head of English Department of STKIP PGRI Bangkalan, Madura who has
allowed him to carry out the research in his institution.
6. All English teachers of STKIP PGRI Bangkalan Madura, especially who have
become informants of this thesis.
7. Students of STKIP PGRI Bangkalan, Madura.
8. All friends, especially Doni Alfaruqy, Chairuddin, Arif Choirul Bashir, Farouk
Sumarli and everyone who helped the writer in accomplishing the thesis.
The writer hopes and accepts gratefully every comment and suggestion.
Hopefully, this thesis will be useful for the readers.
Surakarta, August 2014
Andri Donal
CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHOD...………
1. Power Forms in Language Represented in The Speech Acts in STKIP Bangkalan Madura... 2. The Implication of Power in Language Manifestation by
Teachers Toward Students’ Learning Attitude………….
LIST OF TABLES
Table 3.1
Table 4.1
Time Setting of the study...……….
Research Findings... 52
65
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 3.1 Technique of analyzing the data adapted from Bradley ……… 61
Figure 3.2 Research Procedure ………...……… 62
LIST OF APPENDICES
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4
Appendix 5
Appendix 6
Appendix 7
Transcript of interview with teacher... 140
Transcript of interview with student... 146
Field Note... 149
Kontrak Perkuliahan... 156
Silabus Mata Kuliah... 158
Surat Keterangan Penelitian... 160
Photograph Documentation... 161
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
Humans use language to communicate with others. Generally, the use of
spoken language in communication is more often performed than written
language. It is similar to what happenes in the classroom when interactions
between teachers and students occur. This type of learning activity in the
classroom that involves the interaction of teachers and students is one form of
language uses for social roles. In the context of classroom learning, language has
role as interactional function. Brown and Yule (1996: 14) describe the function of
language becomes transactional function and interactional functions.
Transactional function is a function to reveal the contents, while the interactional
function is a function of language in social relations and personal attitudes.
Related to the use of language in certain professions and institutions,
Maher and Rokos (in Santoso, 2002: 4) presents three main characteristics of the
use of language. First, there is an imbalance in power relations or mutual power
between the participants involved, ie between speaker and listener. The imbalance
allows participants utilizing language that has the power to dominate the speaking.
Second, there is a fixed set of language patterns. Third, there is the exchange of
conversations that tend to reinforce a professional identity that is determined by
the context.
1
Learning interaction is one form of oral discourse interactional function.
Learning discourse is characterized by its existing mutual interaction between
teachers and students. Interactional discourse is characterized by a reciprocal
response from the speaker and listener (Yowono, 2005: 94). This opinion is in line
with Hawthorn (in Mills, 1997: 5) who states that discourse is a linguistic
communication between the transaction of speakers and addressees, an
interpersonal activity whose form is determined by its social purpose.
In the context of classroom activities, the relationship of teachers and
students affects the learning effectiveness. Teacher-student relationship is
reflected in the use of language in the learning interaction. Essentially, the way of
teachers’ interaction to students reflects the teacher’s view to their students’
position. Teachers can look at the student based on the concept of a
superior-subordinate relation, the concept as a students’ motivator and facilitator or the
concept of as a students’ partner. It is the realization of a system of thought and
belief of a teacher. In other words, the use of language by teacher can influence
the students’ view both to teacher and to the subject.
In the classroom, a teacher has role not only as the knowledge source, but
also as the controller of teaching learning process. Teacher controls all the
activities in the classroom in order to reach the goal of learning. Teacher also
evaluates the teaching learning process to know how far students’ understanding
to the lesson. Teacher can be as an assesor to state right or not the students’
in the classroom. From the explanation above, it can be inferred that teacher has
more power and authority than that of students in the classroom.
Right now, most schools in Indonesia apply the communicative approach
in teaching English. Students are expected have the ablility to develop their
communicative competence in real situation. According to Shastri (2010: 4)
communicative competence refers to the knowledge of how to use the language
and the capacity to produce infinite number of sentences. In addition,
communicative competence also refers to the capacity of using language
according to the purpose. The purpose can be in the forms of making request,
complaint, order, apology etc. This leads to the knowledge of the functions of the
language. It means that students are expected not only master the English
grammar, but also communicate by using English correctly in a particular context.
Because of that, the students should be given more time to be active in the
classroom than that of teacher. The teacher should be able as a facilitator and
motivator for students. However, in application, most of the classrooms in
Indonesia are still teacher-centered orientation. Teacher still dominates the
teaching learning process. It means that the application of communicative
approach in Indonesia still does not run well.
This is the example of the application of power in language by a teacher in
the classroom.
(Utterance context in the class when a teacher gives chance to the students
to answer the question)
(1) Teacher : Sandi, try to answer the question no. 9!
(2) Sandi : {Students look afraid} (context)
(4) Teacher : That’s ok if you make mistake.
(5) Sandi : gerund is ....verb sir. (the voice becomes slow and weak)
(6) Other students laugh hearing the student’s answer, because the answer
is wrong and the voice becomes slow and weak (context).
(7) Teacher : Ok, no problem with your answer. The most important
thing is that you can answer.
(8) Teacher : Now, the man who laughs loudly. Answer the next
question.
From the conversation above, it can be seen that teacher dominates the class and
the teacher shows his power by using the imperative sentence.
The concept of power according to Fairclough (1995: 1) is conceptualized
both in terms of asymmetries between participants in discourse events, and in
terms of unequal capacity to control how texts are produced, distributed, and
consumed (and hence the shapes of texts) in particular sociocultural contexts. A
range of properties of texts is regarded as potentially ideological, including
features of vocabulary and metaphors, grammar, presuppositions and implicatures,
politeness conventions, speech-exchange (turn-taking) systems, generic structure,
and style. Van Dijk (2001: 300) says that power involves control from member of
a people group to others in form of action, so the power group can limit the
freedom of other group that will influence their mind. It implies that the people
who have power can control the behaviour of people who under control.
Moreover, Brown and Gilman (1960: 255) say that the power can be in the
forms of physics, prosperity, age, sex, or institutional role. Similarly, according to
by someone because he or she is admired and many people wants to be like him or
her), and the expert power (the power which is gotten by someone because of his
or her knowledge or skills). In the context of teacher in the classroom, a teacher
has legitimate power and expert power because the teacher has the higher social
status than that of students and the teacher is assumed as the source of knowledge.
If the teacher is admired by students, it means that a teacher also has referent
power.
The form of teacher’s power in the classroom can be seen from the
teacher’s expression both explicitely and implicitely. It can be in the forms of
warning, instruction, question, argumentation and etc. In other words, some of
teachers’ expressions are known containing the power manifestation after
analyzed deeply, for example when a teacher says “listen to me”. This sentence is
not only a common argument from a teacher that students must give attention to
teacher. However, according to Fairclough (1989: 125) if the sentence above is
analyzed based on the context and linguistics elements such as the relationship
between speaker and listener, transivity, modus, modality and active-passive, that
sentence is probably the form of power owned by teacher to students.
Linguistic elements can be used to know how a sentence has power
manifestation the speaker’s speech acts. One of approaches which uses linguistic
elements to know the power manifestation is critical discourse analysis (CDA).
Critical discourse analysis approach is not only to describe the use of language in
a discourse, but also to correlate between the use of language and the power
language is an important factor to see the power imbalance in a society.
According to Fairclough (1989: 109-111) critical discourse analysis has three
dimensions that have to be analized. They are text, discourse practice and
sociocultural practice. Analysis in text dimension is a descriptive analysis to know
how power is manifested in text through vocabulary, grammar, and
textual-structure. The result of analysis in this dimension will be interpreted in the
discourse practice dimension. Then, the analysis is continued by finding the
explanation in the sociocultural practice dimension.
Suharyo and Irianto (2009: 26) in their research argue that the
manifestation of power in classroom has some functions: (1). Teacher can manage
or control the classroom. (2). It will force students to pay attention, trust, and obey
toward the teacher’s instruction. (3). In order to make students believe with
teacher’s talk. (4). Students respects to teacher. and (5). It is to differentiate
between the teacher’s and students’ status.
Right now, the research about the use of power in language in the English
teaching classroom especially in Indonesia is still rare. While according to
Fairclough, the expert of critical discourse analysis, that in classroom, there is a
form of power that can be revealed by using critical discourse analysis. Because
of that, the researcher is interested in conducting a reseach about the use of power
and langauge in the English language Teaching (ELT) classroom and knowing
B. Problem Statements
This study seeks to explore two main issues:
1. How is power in language represented in the speech acts forms?
2. To what extents are the effects of power in language on students’ learning
attitude?
C. The Objectives of the Study
The objectives of the study are:
1. To describe the power in language represented in the speech acts.
2. To explore the effects of power in language done by teachers on students’
learning attitude.
D. The Significance of the Study
Right now, the study or research about the language and power in
organization, social and politic aspect has been popular. However, the study about
the relationship between language and power in education view is rare especially
in English Language Teaching (ELT) classroom. In fact, the phenomena of using
power in classroom cannot be avoided as long as there are interactions between
teacher and students. The perception of power in classroom perspective is how
the influence of teacher’s acts or expressions toward the students’ learning
attitude. The researcher expects by conducting this research, it can give
contribution:
1. To Teacher
The result of this research is expected to give input to teachers on how to
use power to develop students’ potential maximally. Teachers can involve
students actively in deciding teaching material and learning model. In the
learning process, teachers must be able to create enjoyable learning
atmosphere by increasing the quality of communication between teachers and
students in the classroom. The good communication between teachers and
students can create the good atmosphere for students in learning English. So, it
is expected that the objective of language learning can be achieved. About
how deep teachers’ acts to their students, so it will make them become aware
on their students.
2. To Students
This research is expected to give information to students about the positive
effects of power manifestation by teachers in the classroom. In addition, it is
expected students’ consciousness about the application of students center
learning will be emerged. Students must actively involve in teaching learning
process.
3. To Other Researchers
The research about the manifestation of power in language in ELT classroom
is still rare, so the researcher expects the result of this research will be the
CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
A. Concept of Research
The concept of this research is to analyze the implementation of power in
using language by a teacher in the classroom. It is to show that the perspective of
language is not only in the form of language, but also it can be seen from the
fuction of language. In this context, the language is as the form of power
manifestation. The form of power can be known from the teacher’s utterances in
the classroom. The utterances are the form of speaker’s speech acts. To identify
the power manisfestation from the teacher’s speech acts, it needs to be analyzed.
To analyze it, reseracher uses the critical discourse analysis. The researcher uses
the teory of critical discourse analysis from Norman fairclough.
1. Critical Discourse Analysis
a. The Nature of Critical Discourse Analysis
In daily activities, humans cannot be separated from language because
language is used as a tool of communication. In a communication, there is an
interaction between speakers and hearers. In this interaction, there is a tendency of
unequal power relationship between speakers and hearers. It can be seen from
how someone dominates in a conversation or someone can controll the other’s
talk. One way to study this uneqality in language use is critical discourse analysis.
According to Van Dijk (2001: 352) critical discourse analysis is a type of
discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse,
9
dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in
the social and political context. Bukhari and Xiaoyang (2013: 9) define Critical
Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a field that is used to analyze the written and spoken
texts to explore the discursive sources of power, dominance inequality and bias.
With such dissident research, critical discourse analysts take explicit position, and
thus want to understand, expose, and ultimately resist social inequality.
Kristina (2013: 24) mentions the term critical refers to an attempt to
reveal, identify and explain implicit and explicit relation and association between
language, power and ideology. According to Van Dijk (1998a) Critical Discourse
Analysis is a field that is concerned with studying and analyzing written and
spoken texts to reveal the discursive sources of power, dominance, inequality and
bias. It examines how these discursive sources are maintained and reproduced
within specific social, political and historical contexts. In a similar vein,
Fairclough (1993: 135) defines Critical Discourse Analysis as discourse analysis
which aims to systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and
determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider
social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such
practices, events and texts arise out of and are ideologically shaped by relations of
power and struggles over power; and to explore how the opacity of these
relationships between discourse and society is itself a factor securing power and
hegemony.
Critical Discourse Analysis can effectively be applied for exploring the
is supported by Huckin et al., (2012) who say that Critical Discourse Analysis is
useful to investigate the relationships between the teaching, learning and
curriculum, and school and community role as well as ideologies and power (basic
factor for educational policies) and their impacts on the classroom process and
teaching – learning activity. Kristina (2013: 23) says Critical Discourse Analysis
explores the unequal or hierarchical power among participants in a spoken and
written interaction. Likewise, Critical Discourse Analysis focuses on revealing
explicit and implicit socio-political domination, which includes social change,
power abuse, ideological imposition, and social injustice by critically analyzing
language as social action. From the definitions above, it can be concluded that
critical discourse analysis is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily
studies about the the way of social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are
enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the educational, social and
political context.
b. The Approaches of Critical Discourse Analysis
There are several approaches to critical discourse analysis with different
components and framework. Van Dijk (1998) puts a stronger emphasis on the
study of relationship between discourse, power, dominance and social inequality.
The second approcah is deliverd by Ruth Wodak. Wodak (1996) focuses her study
on the issues of racism, sexims, and anti-semitism by explicating critically at the
historical dimension of discourse. Wodak and Meyer (2001) cover three steps in
1. Describing the content or specific topic of a discourse.
2. Investigating discursive and argumentative strategies used.
3. Analyzing the realizations of particular written linguistics meanings in a
specific context.
Next approach is explained by Norman Fairclough. Fairclough (1989: 20)
views language as a form of social practice and proposes a multi-dimensional
framework for exploring discourse by employing three separates form of analysis,
namely analysis of discourse (description phase), analysis of discourse practice
(process of text production, distribution and consumption) which is commonly
referred to as interpretation phase and analysis of discursive events as instance of
socio-cultural practice (explanation phase). Fairclough (1995: 11) adds that
analysis of discourse practice includes analysis of social structure will of course
do badly on Schegloffs criteria for analytical relevance, including social class,
power (in a social structural rather than a situational sense) and ideology.
In this research, the researcher will focus on the critical discourse analysis
from the Norman fairclough. Fairclough (1998) argues that Critical Discourse
Analysis has offered educational researchers ways of investigating language use
within social contexts. By questioning the taken-for-grantedness of language and
enabling explorations of how texts represent the world in particular ways
according to particular interests, Critical Discourse Analysis provides
opportunities to consider the relationships between discourse and society, between
As mentioned above, Fairclough developed the approach of critical
discourse analysis as the the development of critical language study in Langauge
and Power in 1989. Fairclough says that as the goal of critical analysis, discourse
can be seen from three dimensions of discourse. They are: (1) Text in the form of
oral and written. (2) discourse practice; the process of producing and interpreting
the text. (3) Sociocultural practice; the context of society, institution and culture
that determine the meaning and form of a discourse. Briefly, those three
dimensions can be seen in the figure below.
Figure 1. The Picture of CDA Dimension (page 98)
From the figure above it can be seen that the first dimension is the description
analysis step to identify how power is manifested in text. The second dimension is
the link to correlate the text and sociocultural practice. Interpretation is done to
the text in discourse practice. Next, the explanation about the reason how power is
implemented by linking the analysis with sociocultural practice. Sociocultural
practice can be seen from environtment, institution, and society. Text
Discourse Practice
2. The Nature of Langauge
a. Definition of Language
Humans need language to utter their expressions, needs, desires, and etc.
Language is very important for human being to communicate with others.
Definition of language is very various. Brown (2000: 5) defines language as a
system of arbitrary conventionalized vocal, written, gesture symbols that enables
members of a given community to communicate intelligibly with one another.
According to Thomas and Wareing (2005: 5) language is as a systematic way of
combining smaller units into larger units for the purpose of communication. For
example, when a speaker combines the sounds of language (phonemes) to form
words (lexical items) according to the ‘rules’ of the speaker’s language. Those
lexical items can be combined to make grammatical structures, again according to
the syntactic ‘rules’ of speaker’s language. Todd (1995: 6) defines language as a
set of signals by which human beings communicate. Moreover, Schiffrin (2005:
2) defines language as the ‘verbalization of thought’ and is neither straight
forward to process nor to break down into manageable pieces. It means that
language is an integral part of cognitive development in form of verbalisation of
thought or a finite set of elements. Language is one of the greatest graces owned
by humans that acquired since childhood. Besides acquiring language, humans
can also produce and develop their language. By having language, humans can
interact with other.
Todd (1995: 6) points out about language. First, human language is not
result that it is not limited in time and space. Secondly, each language is both
arbitrary and systematic. It means that none of languages behave in exactly the
same way yet each language has its own set of rules. The last is that there are no
primitive or inferior languages. It means that, although people live in the most
primitive conditions but all languages appear to be equally complex and all are
absolutely adequate to the needs of their users.
In addition Fairclough (1989: 22) says that language as a form of social
practice. There are three implication from this definition. First, It can be implied
that language is a part of society. Second, language is a social process. The last is
that language is a socially conditioned process. It is different with Coultas (2003:
5) who says that language can reflects the speaker’s personality, beliefs, attitudes
and values. According to Harmer (1991: 4) language is an intesely political issues
since it is bound up with identity and power. It can be concluded that language has
relationship with society and it can be used as the reflection of speaker’s
personality, beliefs, attitudes, identity and power.
b. Functions of Langauge
Language is an integral part of human’s existence. Human needs language
for a variety of purposes of administration, commerce, education and
communication. It is natural and beneficial to use mother language for the
purposes of education and communication. Many experts have diffrent
argumentation about the function of language. Brown and Yule (1996: 14)
functions. Transactional function is a function to reveal the contents, while the
interactional function is a function of language in social relations and personal
attitudes. Besides as a communication tool, language is also used as power tool.
Moreover Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999) assume that individuals and groups
use language to achieve a variety of social purposes and considers the relationship
between everyday social practices (social events) and society (social structures).
Thomas and Wareing (2005: 8) describe the functions of language into
two; referential function and affective impact. These two functions are the ones
most clearly associated with power. The referential function is the one associated
with what objects and ideas are called and how events are described (i.e. how we
represent the world around us and the effects of those representations on the way
we think. The affective function of language is concerned with who is ‘allowed’
to say what to whom, which is deeply tied up with power and social status. By
selecting one as appropriate and not another, someone will exploite the affective
aspect of language and show the sensitiveness to the power or social relationship
between speaker and the person who is addressed. For example, saying ‘I think
it’s time you wash your hair’ will be an acceptable comment from a parent to a
young child, but it will not usually be acceptable from employees to their boss.
Here are more examples:
(a) Put that bunch of flowers on the table.
(b) Please put that bunch of flowers on the table.
(d) If you wouldn’t mind awfully, do you think you might put that bunch
flowers on the table.
Halliday in Brown and Yule (1996: 251) outlines seven functions of
language. They are:
a. The instrumental function. Language is to manipulate the environtment, to
cause certain events to happen. For examples: “This court finds you
guilty” and “Don’t touch the stove”. Those sentences are communicative
acts that have a specific perlocutionary force; they bring about a particular
condition.
b. The regulatory function. Language is as the control of events. For
example: “Upon good behaviour, you will be eligible for parole in ten
months”. The regulations of encounters among people- appropval,
disapproval, behaviour control, setting laws and rules- are all regulatory
features of language.
c. The representational function. Language is to make statements, convey
facts and knowledge, explain, or report that is to represent reality as one
sees it. For example: “The sun is hot” and “ the president gave a speech
last night”.
d. The interactional function. Language is to ensure social maintenance.
e. The personal function. The language is to express feelings, emotions, and
f. The heuristics function. Language is to acquire knowledge, to learn about
the environtment. Heuristics functions are coveyed in the form of
questions that will lead to answer.
g. The imaginative function. Language is to create imaginary systemsor
ideas. Through the imaginative dimensions of language, someone is free to
go beyond the real world to soar the heights of the beauty of language
itself.
3. The Nature of Power
a. The Definition of Power
The main topic of critical discourse analysis is about the power
manifestation by someone or institution to another one. Talking about power, it
cannot be separated from the way of someone to dominate or to controll the
others, and the other ones struggle to maintain their position. The practice of
power manifestation can be seen in the dialogue between a doctor and patient,
teacher and students, boss and workers, government and citizens, the mass media
and audiences, and so forth.
According to Fairclough (1995: 1), power is conceptualized both in terms
of asymmetries between participants in discourse events, and in terms of unequal
capacity to control how texts are produced, distributed and consumed (and hence
the shapes of texts) in particular sociocultural contexts. A range of properties of
texts is regarded as potentially ideological, including features of vocabulary and
speech-exchange (tum-taking) systems, generic structure, and style. Van Dijk
(2001: 300) says that power involves control from member of a people group to
others in form of action, so the power group can limit the freedom of other group
that will influence their mind. It means that the people who have power can
control the behaviour of people who under control.
Moreover, Brown and Gilman (1960) say that the power can be in form of
physics, prosperity, age, sex, or institutional role. According to Thomas (1995:
127), there are three kinds of power; legitimate power (the power which comes
from role, age, or status), referent power (the power which is gained by someone
because he or she is admired and many people wants to be like him or her), and
the expert power (the power which is got by someone because of his or her
knowledge or skills). In the context of teacher in the classroom, a teacher has
legitimate power and expert power because he or she has social status higher than
students and he or she is as the source of knowledge. If he or she is admired by his
or her students, it can be said that a teacher also has referent power.
b. Analyzing of Power Through Critical Discourse Analysis
The understanding of language necessarily entails some understanding not
only of the world, but also of the conversational ‘context’ of an utterance.
Fairclough (1989) says that the power and ideology can be revealed from the
language used. Theory and practice used to see the relationship between language
and society is started from description analysis and continued to interpretation
1). Description
In the stage of description, all data in the form of utterance is analyzed
based on vocabulary, grammar, and textual structure. In addition Fairclough
(1989) describes the vocabulary analysis involves experimential value, relational
values, and expressive values. Experimential value is related to classification
schemes, idealogical words, rewording and overwording, meaning relations
(synonymy, hyponymy, and antonymy), and metaphors. Relational values is
related to euphemistics expression and formal and informal words. The last is
expressive values which is related to positive and negative evaluation.
In grammatical analysis, the concept involves three aspects; experimential
value, relational values, and expressive value. First, the experimential value is
related to the type of process and participant predominate, normalizations, active
or passive sentences, and positive or negative sentences. Fairclough (1989) argues
that this concept is used to express the form of power. While the form of active
and passive sentences is related to the stress of voice in expressing. The passive
sentence is used because the speaker does not know the subject or does not want
to describe the subject. Someone who has power tends to use active sentence by
placing him or her as the subject, for example by saying “I want you to work in
pairs”. To guise the power expression, someone can use passive sentence, for
example by saying “Working in pairs is a must”.
The second value of grammar is relational values. This value is related to
how grammar codes the both sides relation between social relationship. The
question, and imperative). This values are used to identify the relationship
between members, for example where someone who has power can freely use
imperative modes. In the context of in the classroom a teacher can say “Do the
exercise!” to the students. Another example is the using of declarative modes in
modality relational value by a teacher to students in the classroom by saying “You
have to do the exercise”. The last is expressive value. It can be seen from the use
of expressive modality. For example is if a teacher as a source of knowledge can
say “I don’t think cheating is good”. Students may assumes that it is a kind of
teacher’s ideology about the prohibitation of cheating.
The last step of description stage is textual structure analysis which
involves interactional conventions and larger-scale structure. Interactional
conventions involve the way of participants controls the turns of others. There are
four devices used for this; interruption, enforcing explicitness, controlling topic,
and formulation.
2). Interpretation
The next stage used in finding the relationship between language and
society is the interpretation stage. It is related to how text is linked by the
discourse process (discourse practice dimension). Fairclough (1989: 141) says that
interpretation are generated through a combination of what is in the text and what
is ‘in’ the interpreter. The focus of context interpretation is the relationship
between situational context and discourse type. Text interpretaion will be
analyzed based on four levels of interpretation domains. They are surface of
Surface of utterance is related to the process by which interpreters convert strings
of sounds or marks on paper into recognizable words, phrases, and sentences.
Meaning of utterance is related to how utterance represents the semantics and
pragmatics aspects. Local coherence is used to see the coherence relation which
tie together the parts of a whole text. The text structure and point is to see the
structure and point of a text.
3). Explanation
The last stage is the explanation of the relationship between interaction
and social context. The objective of the stage of explanation is to portray a
discourse as part of a social process, as a social practice, showing how it is
determined by social structure, and what reproductive effects discourses can
cumulatively have on those structures, sustaining them or changing them. It
means that explanation is a matter of seeing a discourse as a part of process of
social struggle, within a matrix of relation of power. In this stage, the result of
interpratation will be matched with the result of respondents’ interview about
teacher profile to know their ideology.
4. The Nature of Speech Act
a. Definition of Speech Acts
According to Searle, to understand language one must understand the
speaker’s intention. Since language is intentional behavior, it should be treated
like a form of action. Thus, Searle refers to statements as speech acts. The speech
an intention (Searle 1969). Speech acts are the underlying actions performed when
someone speaks. Some examples are: inform command, promise, refuse, etc.
Recognizing the speech act that is being performed in the production of an
utterance is important because it is the speech act that to some extent tells what
the speaker intends someone to do with the propositional content of what he says.
It is suitable with the definition of speech acts given by Yule (2006: 118) who
defines speech acts as the action performed by a speaker with an utterance.
Normally when a speaker produces an utterance, he expects that his
communicative intention will be recognized by the hearer. For example in the
situation of a work where a boss has a great deal of power, says “you’re fired” to
his employee. The boss’s utterance of the expression is more than just a statement.
The utterance can be used to perform the act of ending the employment.
Yule (1996: 48) says that the action performed by producing an utterance
will consist of three related acts. They are a locutionary act, illocutionary act, and
perlucotionary act. Locutionary act is the basic act of utterance, or producing a
meaningful linguistic expression. Illocutionary act is performed via the
communicative force of an utterance. Perlucotionary act is an utterance with a
function without intending it to have an effect. Another expert, Leech (1983: 199)
briefly defines them as:
locutionary act:performing an act of saying something
illocutionary act:performing an act in saying something
Moreover he explains that locutionary act is the basic act of utterance, or
producing meaningful linguistic expression. The locutionary act can be viewed as
a mere uttering of some words in certain language, while the illocutionary and
perlocutionary acts convey a more complicated message for the hearer. An
illocutionary act communicates the speaker’s intentions behind the locution and a
perlocutionary act reveals the effect the speaker wants to exercise over the hearer.
b. The Classification of Speech Acts
Yule (1996: 53) classifies speech acts into five types: declarations,
representatives, expressives, directives, and commissives.
1. Declarations are those kinds of speech acts that change the world via their
utterance.
a. Priest: I now pronounce you husband and wife.
b. Referee: You’re out!
2. Representatives are those kinds of speech acts that state what the speaker
believes to be the case or not. It involves statements of fact, assersations,
conclusions, and descriptions. For examples:
a. The earth is flat.
b. It was a warm sunny day.
3. Expressives are those kinds of speech acts that state what speaker feels. They
express the psychological states and can be statements of pleasure, pain, likes,
For examples:
a. I’m really sorry!
b. Congratulations!
4. Directives are those kinds of speech acts that the speakers use to get someone
else to do something. They express what the speakers want. They can be in
form of commands, orders, requests, and suggestions. For examples:
a. Could you lend me a pencil, please?
b. Don’t touch that!
5. Commissives are those kinds of speech acts that speakers use to commit
themselves to some future action. They express what the speaker intends.
They are promises, threats, refusals, and pledges. For examples:
a. I’ll be back.
b. I’m going to get it right next time.
Schiffrin (2005: 2) infers the speech act from three properties; the
content of utterence, the force or mood of the utterence and the position of the
utterance within a conversation.
1. The content of the utterance means the proposition expressed by the utterance.
Defining what that is is not always easy. For example when a speaker says
“Shut the door”. It means the speaker wants someone “Bring it about that, by
some (future) action, the proposition ‘The door is shut’ becomes true in the
context of the physical world”. Of course it also uses background knowledge
assumed for simplicity’s sake that this is possible to do – although not
necessarily unambiguously so.
2.The force or mood of the utterance: This is achieved by what it is called as
descriptive, prescriptive and requestive markers, which roughly correspond to
the traditional mood types declarative, imperative and interrogative.
3. The position of the utterance within a conversation. The placing of an utterance
in a conversation is important because the same content can be interpreted as
different speech acts depending upon its position relative to other utterances in
the same context. This inevitably affects the understanding of the function of
the utterance.
For example, take the following hypothetical conversation:
(1) A: The door is shut. (assert)
(2) B: The door is not shut. (disagree)
(3a) A: The door is not shut. (concede)
(3b) A: The door is shut. (insist)
This is a very crude example of how exactly the same utterance, even uttered
in the space of a couple of turns, must be interpreted as performing quite different
functions in the conversation. Obviously no-one actually ever speaks with the
content fully specified in this way, this is just intended to be representative; if this
conversation were to take place, it would be realized in a much more natural
manner. However, it is clear that the only way one can attribute different speech
act meanings to the same utterance (or the same propositional content of an
comes in the dialogue. For example if on the performance of (3a) we only
consider the preceding utterance, then the act would be deemed one of agreement
rather than concession. Without some method of retaining where we are in the
dialogue, we would be unable to interpret the current speech act satisfactorily.
Sinclair and Coulthard (1992) develop utterance into 14 acts; marker,
statement, elicitation, check, directive, informative. Moreover they say that the
structure of speech in the classroom mostly is started by the teacher. Teacher
initiation can be divided into two; dependence speech and independence speech.
Independence speech can be in form of teacher elicit, teacher inform, teacher
direct, and teacher check. Teacher elicit is speech delivered by a teacher to direct
students to one topic to know whether students remember or know about the topic
or not. Elicit can be done not only in pre-teaching but also during the teaching.
Teacher explanation is an utterance which is used by a teacher to give the fact,
opinion or information to the students. Directive is an utterance to make students
do something. Check is the utterance used by a teacher to check whether students
understand, do, or finish the work given by a teacher. Dependence speech happen
in the form of reinitiation, listing, repeat, and reinforcement. They happen depend
on teacher elicit, direct. While the students’ initiative can be divided into two;
pupil elicit and pupil inform. The example of students’ elicit is when studets have
difficulty and they make questions. And the example of students’ inform is when
students give information related to the topic.
Verschueren (1999: 24) argues that all speech acts in any language
1. Assertives: expressing a belief, making words fit the world, and
commiting the speaker to the truth of what is asserted.
2. Directives: expressing a wish, making the world fit the words, and
counting as an attempt to get the hearer to do something.
3. Commissives: expressing an intention, making the world fit the words and
counting as a commitment for speaker to engage in a future course of
action.
4. Expressives: Expressing a variety of psychological states, and simply
counting as expressions of a psychological state.
5. Declarations: Not expressing any psychological state, making both the
words fit the world and the world fit the words, and the point of which is
to bring about a change in (institutional) reality.
In this study, the researcher uses only three categories of speech acts to
know teacher’s power manifestation in language classroom. It is suitable with
Jumadi (2005: 9) who says that the speech acts that can represent the power
manifestation of the teacher in the classroom are directives, assertives, and
expressives.
5. The Nature of English Language Teaching
a. Theories of English Language Teaching
The position of English in Indonesia is as foreign language means that
English is not used as a means of communication by Indonesian people but it is
subject in school especially in the English lesson class. To make students have
English ability, improving the role of English language teaching is very important.
Widdowson (1991: 3) defines language teaching as a research activity whereby
experimental techniques of instruction are designed to correspond with
hypothetical principles of pedagogy. Richards and Rodgers (2002: 18) view the
general principles and theories of language teaching are how languages are
learned, how knowledge of language is presented and organized in memory, or
how language itself is structured. While Brown (1987) argues that teaching cannot
be defined on its own, it must be include learning. Language teaching is activities
which are intended to bring about language learning (Stern, 1996: 21). It means
that English language teaching is a set of activities generated from the principles
and theories of language teaching involving how English is learned which is
intended to improve students’ English skills and enriching their knowledge about
English language
Moreover, Richards and Rodgers (2002: 20) say that at least there are
three different theoritical views of language teaching. They are the structural
view, the fuctional view, and the interactional view. The structural view states that
language is the system of structurally related elements for the coding of meaning.
The target of language learning is seen to be the mastery of elements of linguistic
system such as phonological units, grammatical units, grammatical operations,
and lexical items.
The second view is the functional view where this view claims that
the focus of language teaching should be on the semantic and communicative
aspects rather than grammatical aspect and leads to a specification and
organization of language content by categories of meaning and function rather
than by elements of structure and grammar. The focus of teaching language
according to functional view is on the communicative process involving
negotiating meaning, sending and receiving messages and expressing values. It is
suitable with the main function of language as the communication tool. In other
words, we can say that the great idea from the functional view is that the goal of
learning language essentially is how to make the learners have the communicative
competences.
Richards (2006: 3) sees communicative competences as understanding
how to use language for a range of different purposes and functions,
understanding how to adjust language depending on the setting (socio-linguistics),
knowing how to produce and understand different types of texts such as
interviews and conversations for instance, as well as having the ability to continue
communication in spite of one’s limitations in the language through the use of
different strategies. It can be concluded that after learning a language, the learners
are assumed that they are able to communicate well with others, know the content
of reading text, handle the job interviews, and etc rather than how to answer the
grammar test.
The third view is the interactional view. This view sees language as a
social interaction between individuals. Areas of language teaching of this view
include interactional analysis, conversation analysis, and ethnomethodology.
In the teaching learning process, designing of teaching goal is important.
Meanwhile, the goal of language teaching should be planned. Cook (2002) makes
an open-ended list of the goals of language teaching that includes:
1. Self-development. The student becomes in some way a 'better' person through
learning another language. This goal is unrelated to the fact that some people
actually use the second language, as in the group-related dynamics of
Community Language Learning.
2. A method of training new cognitive processes. By learning another language,
students acquire methods of learning or new perspectives on themselves and
their societies.
3. A way-in to the mother-tongue.The students' awareness of their first language
is enhanced by learning a second language.
4. An entrée to another culture. Students can come to understand other groups in
the world and to appreciate the music and art of other cultures.
5. A form of religious observance. For many people a second language is part of
their religion, whether Hebrew for the Jewish religion, Arabic for Muslims, or
indeed English for Christians in some parts of the world.
6. A means of communicating with those who speak another language. We all
need to cope with people from other parts of the world, whether for business
7. The promotion of intercultural understanding and peace. For some the highest
goals of language teaching are to foster negotiation rather than war or
changes in the society outside the classroom.
Richards (2006: 2) proposes the goals of language teaching as
communicative language teaching. The purpose of communicative language
teaching is teaching of language competence including the following aspects of
language knowledge:
1). Knowing how to use language for a range of different purposes and
functions.
2). Knowing how to vary the use of language according to the setting and the
participants. For example, knowing when to use formal and informal
speech.
3). Knowing how to produce and understand different types of texts. for
examples, narratives, reports, interviews, and conversations)
4). Knowing how to maintain communication despite having limitations in
one’s language knowledge. For example through using different kinds of
communication strategies.
Indeed, the goals of communicative approach can be reached if the
students have much more opportunity to produce utterances in the classroom.
Teacher should be able to facilitate students to increase their English ability.
Teacher is also expected able to motivate students in order to increase their
self-confidence to speak English. However, in the reality teacher still has power to
b. Power manifestation in ELT Classroom
Humans learn other languages for their existance. However, learning a
second language i.e. English is definitely more difficult than acquiring the mother
tongue. The setting of learning between first and second language learning is also
different. In acquiring first language, learners usually acquire their language
spontaneously and naturally. It is different from the learning of second language
where the setting is in the classroom with formal situation. The learner does not
get individual attention. The atmosphere is not child friendly like their home. The
exposure to the language is for a limited period of time 30 to 45 minutes or an
hour a day in comparison to 24 hours of language filled atmosphere at home. The
learner does not have any opportunity to use the language outside the class. Even
in the class there is a very little opportunity to use the language. It is more of a
passive reception of the language in the classroom than the actual production of it.
Another factor that can influence the success of learning of second language is the
teacher. Sometimes the teacher is not proficient in language and the learner has a
poor role model to imitate. In addition, learning is very much seen as under the
control of the teacher. Teacher still dominates the classroom. In other words,
teacher has shown his or her power to the classroom. Meanwhile, Harmer (1990:
52) says that a teacher is a major factor in the continuance of a student’s
motivation.
Teacher has the important role in the success of teaching learning process.
The duty of teacher is not only to share the knowledge, but also how to motivate
behaviour can directly influence students’ continuing participation in the
classroom.
(1). Goals and goal setting. Motivation is closely bound up with a person’s desire
to achieve a goal. Crookes and Lehner (1998) specify that should be carefully
considered as goals in the teaching of ESL and EFL. As such, three goals
must be considered: (a) Simultaneous development of English communicative
abilities (b) Application of knowledge to develop a critical awareness of the
world (c) Ability to act on knowledge and awareness to improve matters.
(2). Learning environtment. Although teacher may not be able to choose the actual
classroom, a teacher still can do a lot about the classroom physical
appearance and the emotional atmosphere of lesson. Both of these can have a
powerful effect on the initial and continuing motivation of students.
(3). Interesting classes. Teacher needs to provide students with a variety of
subjects and exercise to keep them engaged.
However, in the reality the participation of students in teaching learning
process is still low. One factor makes students’ participation in the classroom low
is the teacher’s dominance in the classroom. Teacher’s dominance means the
teacher has performanced the power manifestation in the classroom. The forms of
teacher’s power manifestation can be seen from teacher’s speech acts. As has
mentioned earlier that there are five speech acts that can represent teacher’s power
in language in the classroom. Here are speech acts forms which can represent
1. The representation of power in directive speech act.
Directive act potentially represent the power in language use. Power
illocutionary speech act requires that someone is doing something in
accordance with the intent of speaker’s utterances. In realization, the use of
speech acts presentes the speaker’s power.
a. Representation of power in command form
As one type of directive speech acts, command has certain
characteristics. In expressing a particular speech, speaker wants the
listener do what the speaker expresses. In the context of classroom, the
form of command can occur when teachers provide guidance on learning
programs, such as the direction of the learning materials that students will
learn in a semester, the evaluation system will be implemented, as well as
textbooks and worksheets to prepare students. In other words, when giving
directions concerning matters that are considered urgent, teachers tend to
use direct commands that present the dominant power.
However, viewed from the context of the classroom discourse, this
phenomenon associated with the dominating culture that is still widely
used in the learning system in Indonesian school. In a culture of learning
that is dominating, school rules, learning materials, evaluation systems,
and textbooks tend to be determined by the school or the teacher.
b. Representation of power in request form
Besides the command, the teachers and students are also using the
lower levels of restriction so that power also tends to be more humanistic
represented. In classroom discourse, besides using order acts, a teacher
also used request acts to his students. Fairclough (1998: 55) says that there
is a close relationship between request and power. In addition Fairclough
(1998:55) devides request acts into two; direct request and indirect request.
Direct requests mark the power relationship explicitly and usually in
imperative form. For example a boss request to his secretary: “Type this
letter for me by 5 o’clock”. On the other hands, indirect requests mark the
power relationship more or less implicit. In addition indirect requests can
be more or less indirect, and they typically expressed grammatically in
questions of various degrees of elaborateness and corresponding
indirectness. For example: (1) Can you type this letter for me by 5
o’clock?, (2) Could I possibly ask you to type this letter for me by 5
o’clock?. There are also other ways of indirectly requesting, for instance in
this sentence: I would like to have the letter in the 5 o’clock post.
However, compared with order acts, request acts have lower levels of
restriction so that power also tends to be more humanistic represented.
c. Representation of power in prohibition form
The form of prohibitation equals to command but in form of negative
command. For example, a teacher prohibits students to not come late. If
there is a students breaks the teacher’s rule, there will be a punishment
from a teacher. Al-Saaidi, Al-Shaibani & Al-Husseini (2013) classify the
in semantic level, and Prohibition in pragmatic level. According to the
syntactic point of view, there are various ways in which prohibition can be
achieved. These ways are as follows:
1. Imperative sentence
The imperative can be used to forbid an action. According to Jawad
quoted by Al-Saaidi, Al-Shaibani & Al-Husseini (2013), the basic
difference between a ‘command’ and a ‘prohibition’ is that the former
indicates instructing the addressee to do something whereas the latter
indicates instructing the addressee NOT [author’s emphasis] to do a
given thing. Thus, it could be claimed that a ‘prohibition’ is a kind of a
negative ‘command’. For examples: keep clean!, Don’t open your
book!
2. Declarative sentence
Allan (1986) confirmed that a declarative sentence can be used in
performing any subcategory of speech act including prohibition to
denote an actualization of the illocutionary act. This is done either
through clauses containing a performative verb, or through the
meaning of the predicates in such sentences as the followings:
Example 1: I forbid you to speak to him. [Clause containing a
performative verb]
