by Lorraine Luo
Social institutions are all around people’s lives and they have the immense power to control and shape how people talk and think in particular ways. The government is one of the most significant social institutions and the governmental language discourses reflect the institutional power relations between the participants and in turn are shaped by the power control (Mayr, 2008).
The outburst of the COVID-19 epidemic is one of the hottest topics recently world-wide. Hong Kong had been through a tough time defeating this disease and the chief executive made her official statement through her website on January 25th, 2020 to report the government’s recent control measures, to explain the current situations, and to encourage the citizens to stay strong together fighting the decease.
(Article link: https://www.ceo.gov.hk/eng/pdf/article20200225.pdf)
(Picture source: Youtube.com)
Through the Critical Discourse Analysis on this text, it can be discovered that the textual elements are carefully designed: formal expressions and precise grammar such as “we dare not underestimate its severity” (line 9, page 1), “accorded top priority” (line 1-2, page 4) and a variety of subordinate clauses are applied in this decent governmental official article. These textual factors present how the governmental chief pays attention to her manners of speaking/writing in order to perform appropriately as the chief leader. Also, the discursive variables in the CDA of this article suggest that the institutional language discourses apply nominalizations (“Multiple measures are taken…”, line 12, page 1) to mitigate the agents of the activities/issues and this is a typical official manner of speaking since the governmental spokespersons need to avoid giving out too many details of the administrative information which are confidential. Apart from that, Carrie Lam in the last paragraph of this article encourages the citizens using a direct quotation from an expert who dedicated himself to the battle against the epidemic. This is another discursive practice of intertextuality to increase this article’s authenticity and the power of persuasion. Last but not least, Carrie Lam in this article is reporting on behalf of the HKSAR and she takes the role as the representative of the government in the stance-taking analysis. Therefore, she speaks in a formal and official tone and this indicates the power distance between the participants (the government and the citizens).
What’s more, the information content in this article has been filtered and carefully chosen before announcing it to the public. This governmental statement did not include any negative information about any mistakes or their dereliction of duty in the fight against the disease. For example, in this article, Carrie Lam reports the effective control measures that the HKSAR government has taken but did not mention their negligence of not carrying out a timely overseas entrance restriction in early February which resulted in the rapid growth of imported infection cases.
We can see from this article that the governmental announcement carefully designs its language use and the information content. They report the important relevant events but do not provide much in detail; they pay attention to their tone and use official and less emotional expressions; they manipulate and filtrate the information to report the ones that are in favor of them. It can be concluded that, power controls and shapes how the language is used in institutional contexts and the linguistic properties of the institutional language reflect the power relations and distance between the participants in the social hierarchical structure. This mutual influence between power and language can be found not only in the institutional discourses but also in many other types of contexts such as in the social media languages, in the legalese, etc. Power influences the language use to control and rule how people think and talk. We need to consider this effect before accepting the information from another agent in order to explore the truth, the unbiased facts and the authenticity.
Language Culture and Society in Hong Kong (and beyond) 
Your article has highlighted some features of institutional language with reference to the Chief Execute’s statement on the COVID-19. It is true that a statement issued by the government would not include negative information as the audience of the statement is the general public. It is important for the government to highlight achievement instead of failure so to gain trust and support from the public. Also, these statement would not exhaust readers by including too much administrative details as some audience might not be able to understand. It usually paints a general picture for the public. I share your view that quoting an expert enhances the power of persuasion. After all, what’s more persuasive than a doctor who have fought the battle against SARS and other pandemic? 🙂
LikeLike
Thank you for your reply!
Indeed! I also feel relieved when I saw Dr.Yuen’s words and I agree it’s reasonable for the institutional speeches to not include negative information in case the public might panic. It’s my personal view that maybe it can and should be presented and explained to the citizens when the government made mistakes 😀
LikeLike
A very interesting and clear post. After reading this post, I understand more about the relationship between power and language in social institution aspect. There is no doubt that the official statement depends on power, stance and so on. I think we can keep the dialectical and critical attitude towards this kind of speeches.
LikeLike