Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/16351
Title: Rhetorical and represented agency in the 2006 Thai coup
Contributor(s): Wijeyewardene, Ingrid  (author)orcid 
Publication Date: 2014
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/16351
Abstract: The 2006 coup in Thailand was a significant event in a conflict that continues to be played out on the streets of Bangkok, eight years later. This paper discusses a dual notion of agency - a rhetorical and a represented agency - in three texts produced shortly after the coup in order to better understand the nature of the intervention by different public intellectuals in a political context that is characterised by conflict and in which open discussion of the Thai monarchy or of ideas propagated by the monarchy is severely constrained by the 'lèse majesté' law. We need a dual account of agency if we are to account for intellectuals' deployment of genres of argumentation to engage readers and (simultaneously) to represent participants and events in particular ways to advance their ideological positions while avoiding any perceived criticism of the monarchy or the elite. This dual notion of agency is not new. In SFL, Halliday (1978) distinguishes two levels of field - the social act of the rhetor and the social acts that are represented in the text. Van Leeuwen (1993) uses the SFL concepts of genre to analyse "discourse as practice", and field to analyse "discourse as representation". This paper follows in the same vein by investigating how the writers of the texts act as rhetorical agents through an analysis of the generic structure of the three texts and how they represent various social actors and events through experiential meanings in the texts in order to advance their own arguments.
Publication Type: Conference Publication
Conference Details: ASFLA 2014: Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association Annual National Conference, Sydney, Australia, 29th September - 2nd October, 2014
Source of Publication: ASFLA National Conference 2014 Program & Book of Abstracts, p. 65-65
Publisher: University of New South Wales
Place of Publication: Sydney, Australia
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: 200403 Discourse and Pragmatics
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: 470405 Discourse and pragmatics
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: 950202 Languages and Literacy
970120 Expanding Knowledge in Language, Communication and Culture
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: 130202 Languages and linguistics
280116 Expanding knowledge in language, communication and culture
280114 Expanding knowledge in Indigenous studies
HERDC Category Description: E3 Extract of Scholarly Conference Publication
Publisher/associated links: http://asfla2014.org/conference/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/ProgramFULLDraft_SEPT28.pdf
Appears in Collections:Conference Publication

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