Systemic Functional Political Discourse Analysis

<p><em>Systemic Functional Political Discourse Analysis: A Text-based Study</em> is the first book which takes a comprehensive systemic functional perspective on political discourse to provide a complete integrated exhaustive systemic and functional description and analysis. Based on the political discourses of the Umbrella Movement – the largest public protest in the history of Hong Kong which occupies a unique political situation in the world: a post-colonial society like many other Asian societies and yet unlike the others it is a Special Administrative Region of China. Though it enjoys a high degree of autonomy under the principle of ‘One Country Two Systems’ it is still confined to being part of the ‘One Country’. The book demonstrates how a systemic functional approach can provide a comprehensive thorough and insightful analysis of the political discourse from four co-related and complementary approaches: contextual discourse semantic lexicogrammatical and historical. Apart from a thorough discussion of various systemic functional conceptions it provides examples of various analyses from a SF perspective including contextual parameters registerial analysis semantic discourse analysis appraisal analysis and discusses important issues in political discourse including negotiation of self-identity association of language power and institutional role and expression of ‘evidentiality’ and ‘subjectivity’. It is written not only for those who are interested in Hong Kong politics in general and political discourse in Hong Kong in particular but also for those who work on political discourse analysis and those who apply SFL to various other discourses such as mass media discourse medical discourse teaching discourse etc. Last but not least this book is also intended to provide a theoretical framework in discourse analysis from the systemic functional perspective for those who work in Cantonese and in other languages.</p>