Discourse Analysis on Mark Zuckerberg’s Testimony to U.S. Congress
Discourse refers to language use, either in the form of a text or speech. Discourse cannot be described by a text or speech only because of its interconnectedness with historical, socio-political and cultural variables. Discourse analysis can reveal how aspects of ideology, social power and discourse are produced through language. Newspaper articles use discourse in their everyday articles, with different purposes in mind. Some are meant to educate, entertain, warn, inform or report to the audience what is going on. Washington Post, like many national newspapers, reported in Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony to the Congress in April 2018. This paper will do a discourse analysis on five articles that were written by Washington Post during this period.
One of the articles, titled “Read Mark Zuckerberg’s Testimony to Congress, annotated” looked at Zuckerberg’s testimony in full. In the article, Zuckerberg looks at the advantages Facebook has had over the years. He also notes that Facebook hasn’t protected its users’ privacy as it should have. He goes onto discuss what happened and what they are doing to fix the problem. The second article is titled “Transcript of Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate hearing”. This article is written in direct speech. The speaker is shown at the start of each speech. In this article, all the conversations are done one on one and are reported the way they were. The third article is titled “Facebook’s Zuckerberg just survived 10 hours of questioning by Congress.” This article was posted on April 11th, 2018. The fourth article is titled, “Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faces another request to testify- in Europe.” This article looks at the EU’s data policy and the EU’s request for Zuckerberg to testify before the European Parliament. The fifth article is titled “Mark Zuckerberg’s Senate hearing, in 3 minutes.” It included a YouTube video and was posted on April 10th.
These articles’ selection was quite simple. The available articles posted by Washington Post on the selected time period were quite a few. Therefore, the time period limited the choice of sampling the articles, since the ones available were less than seven. The content determined the articles that will be chosen since many of them were posted on the same date but different issues. Some articles on the same issue were posted on an earlier date, for instance, in March, while others were posted in as late as December. All the articles selected looked at Mark Zuckerberg’s experience at with the Congress. The articles were posted from 10th April 2018 to 11th April 2018. Some of them show what happened through a reported speech while others show what happened through direct speech.
This discourse analysis looks at the social aspects, power relations, ideological work, historical aspects and the linguistic features of the articles. Systematic functional grammar is a very important tool in discourse analysis. It argues that language has three metafunctions namely textual function, interpersonal function and ideational function. The present analysis will focus on ideational function and textual function. The ideational function is represented by a system of transitivity which involves circumstances, processes and participants. Discourse analysis can look at flouting and violation of maxims and politeness and face.
The five articles use the ideation and textual function differently, because of the format they use to present the speech. In the reported speech, the article tries to remain as objective as possible, avoiding any sentences that might show the side the author is on. They simply report what took place. However, one of the articles, titled “Facebook’s Zuckerberg just survived 10 hours of questioning by Congress” doesn’t just report. It shows how hard it must have been for Zuckerberg to survive the questioning by Senate. The author seems to have created such a heading to rouse his audiences’ attention. The headings of the articles try to get the readers to read what is written. Another article, titled, “Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg faces another request to testify- in Europe” captures the reader’s attention by showing how serious the case is, now that Mark Zuckerberg will face a European parliament and probably because his company hasn’t observed EU’s privacy policies. The articles that use reported speech are worded in such a way that the author will want to read till the end. They use interactive language which is less formal.
Two articles are in direct speech. All the other articles get their content from the transcript, which was posted on April 10th. The articles that use direct speech show what everyone said in the form of a sentence, instead of explaining what took place. The communication in these two articles is highly formal. The senators don’t use first names. Titles are also used in every address made. They have gathered facts about what they are asking Zuckerberg about. They try to make the conversation humorous by comparing the huge number of Facebook users with the US population and their home State’s population. Another instance of humour is when the chairman tries to warn the speakers to observe time strictly.
Additionally, the conversations rarely violate or flout maxims. They try to make the conversation as simple as possible. They take turns in speaking to the CEO, waiting for him to answer the questions first. At some point, the members of the committee start interrupting the speaker, who gets frustrated by the interruptions.
The four maxims of comparative principle are present in direct speech. The speakers avoid flouting the maxims as well as pragmatic meaning. The maxim of quality, quantity, relation and manner are expressed in their literal meanings. The speakers avoid violating maxims as much as they can since they intend all the speakers to understand them. The transcript shows that the conversation is full of power, distance and weight of imposition. The senators are questioning Mark Zuckerberg, whom they are not familiar with hence the positive power, distance and weight of imposition.
In summation, Washington Post articles on Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony with the Senate attempt to report the conversation the way it took place while attracting their reader’s attention. The articles that use reported speech to relay the event try to report it the way it took place, though the reporter’s views get in the way through the way they word their articles. The direct speech used in two articles shows what exactly was said during the meeting. These articles show that the speakers avoided flouting and violating maxims as much as they could.