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