Asking for help

[Mohamad Zaki Hussein]

Dear friends,

I have some questions regarding the difficulties I found on my thesis.
As I have already stated in my introduction letter, my thesis is about
workers' action representation in the Indonesian mass media: case study
on news about workers' action regarding the minimum wages regulation in
daily Kompas 2002. I'm working on my thesis with the analytical
framework of critical discourse analysis, especially the one which was
formulated by Norman Fairclough. Here are my questions:

1. In Fairclough book, Media Discourse, he said that "information focus"
is in the final position in a clause. What I want to ask is in the case
that there are words/phrases with brackets in the final position of a
clause, like in this example: "they are demanding wages increase (from
US$50 to US$100)," which one is the "information focus"? Is it only the
words in the brackets or the words "wages increase" without the words in
the brackets, or the words "wages increase (from US$50 to US$100)" (the
words "wages increase" + the words in the brackets)?

2. The second question is almost similar with the first question, but
this time the case is aposition. So in the case that there is an
aposition in the final position of a clause, like in this example: "They
conduct demonstration in the Ahmad Yani street, Bogor" (Bogor is the
region where Ahmad Yani street exists), which one is the "information
focus"? Is it only "Bogor" or "Ahmad Yani street, Bogor"? Or maybe it is
only "Ahmad Yani street" without "Bogor"?

3. The third questions are about implicitness and its relations with
theme and 'information focus' (in the Hallidayan terms). In Norman's
book, Discourse and Social Change, he touched on the existence of
'implicit theme.' When he explained these examples: "Tell the midwife
anything that you feel is important. Write down in advance the things
you want to ask or say," he said that the theme of those sentences are
"you", which is an implicit theme. He said like this: "'You' is the agen
of 'want'....We might say it is also an implicit theme in the
imperatives 'tell' and 'write down'. (pp. 178). I just wonder since
according to Matthiessen and Halliday the
function of theme is to "sets up a local environment, providing a point
of departure by references to which the listener interprets the
message," then is it possible that 'the point of departure' is something
which is implicit (not explicit) in the text, a 'presupposition'? And
how is it in the case of 'information focus'? Since 'information focus'
is the place of the 'new information', then is it possible that the
'information focus' is something which is not explicit in text,
something which is implicit, a 'presupposition'? If the answer is 'yes'
then how could a 'new information' be presupposed (I think this seems to
be a bit illogical, since 'new information' is not a commonsensical
thing, it is the opposition of the 'given information', but maybe I'm
wrong)?

4. The fourth question is about transitivity and its relation to
implicitness. If we could said that in the actional processes (material
processes) "there is always an Actor" (Matthiessen and Halliday, 1997),
then in an elliptical sentence such as "Tell the midwife anything that
you feel is important (the example from Norman's Discourse and Social
Change, pp. 178), there is always an "implicit actor." So in the above
example the sentence should be like this: "(You) Tell the midwife
anything that you feel is important." Now what I want to ask is whether
the same logic also applied to "Goal", "Recipient" (for the case of
"benefactive processes"), "Verbiage" (in the case of verbal processes)
and "Phenomenon" (in the case of mental processes)? For instance, in the
sentence "they demanded wages increase in
the mass strike yesterday." Must we said that there is an 'implicit
recipient' there in the sentence, which is 'the employer'? Must we said
that the complete sentence is: "they demanded wages increase (to the
employer) in the mass strike yesterday"? Must we consider "the employer"
as an "implicit recipient" and not as the "absence of recipient"
(Fairclough in Media Discourse differentiated the degrees of presence,
in which a 'presupposition', an 'implicit meaning' is different from the
'absence from text')?

I think that's all for now. Thank you very much.

Best regards,
Zaki