A critical discourse analysis of Sen. Santiago’s speech: “Navigating the crimes of the plunder mastermindâ€

Abstract

Abstract

This paper is analytical in nature as it explored the discourse of Sen. Miriam Santiago in her privilege speech on December 4, 2013. Her privilege speech entitled “Navigating the Minds of the Plunder Mastermind†brings a sample of the kind of public speaker and leader that Sen. Santiago is. A study on this area draws importance in the fact that being a public speaker and the nation’s leader, her opinions has great political and national impact.  The researcher used the Critical Discourse Analysis both as a methodology and as a theoretical background. This study followed a principled eclecticism approach to Critical Discourse Analysis as it provided answer to three general questions as follow; (a) What are the linguistic patterns that can be gleaned from the text?; (b) What are the discursive patterns that can be gleaned from the text?; and (c) What are the ideological patterns that can be gleaned from the text? The process of analysis involved a three-dimensional model involving the linguistic, discursive, and ideological aspects. The primary activity of this study is the close analysis of written texts that are deemed to be politically or culturally influential to a given society. However, the text analytic activity is not done in isolation; rather, the researcher accounted the larger context in which the text is located. The flow starts with a text. A text is assumed to be the product of discursive practices, including production, distribution, and interpretation, which themselves are embedded in a complex mosaic of social practices. To put this in another way, the meaning of a text derives not just from the words on the page but also from how those words are used in a particular social context. CDA unites and determines the relationship between these three levels of analysis. Wrapping them all, the researcher presents thematic patterns found in each speech.  These thematic patterns include moral and spiritual decadence. This explains how these speakers looked at corruption and what linguistic patterns shows ideological stand on the speeches. The final output of this research is the corpus of words, phrases and expressions used in this speech of Sen. Santiago and build up from there a set of recommendations gleaned from the findings of this study.