Gricean and Transitivity Analysis of Implicature & Ideology in Prince Khalid bin Bandar’s Discourse: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Abstract

This study investigates the discourse of the Saudi ambassador Khalid bin Bandar to the U.K, on the Oxford Union interview, focusing on his diplomatic language, i.e. his language choices and construction used functionally as a tool for power and ideology and the generated implicature. The purpose of this study is: (1) to explore pragmatically how Grice's (1975) Cooperative Principle (CP) conversational maxims are observed, flouted, or opted out of in the interview, (2) to identify the Transitivity system processes within Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (2014) in which the participants are involved among these roles of the four CP maxims, and (3) to highlight the elements of CDA that are employed in the discourse, aligning with Saudi Arabia's diplomatic goals. The main research approach adopted in this study is Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), combining Grice’s CP and Transitivity system, examining how various processes encode agency, responsibility, and ideological positioning. The main findings reveal that the Quantity maxim is largely observed to provide informative responses that are realized by material and relational processes which are mainly used for foregrounding Saudi Arabia’s achievements. However, the same construction is expressed and observed materially for backgrounding responsibility for contentious issues through passivisation and nominalization or for obscuring statements, that align with Fairclough's (2015) views of power and language. Furthermore, the ambassador occasionally opts out of or flouts the Quality and Relation maxims when addressing politically sensitive issues. By integrating these findings of macro and micro-linguistic theories within the CDA frameworks, the study explicates how pragmatic and grammatical choices are integrated to reinforce ideological representations and provides insights of power, persuasion and constructing good image politically like any other previous diplomats. This study concluded with some recommendations for further research, especially those relevant to integrating Gricean pragmatics, SFL, within CDA approach in unpacking the ideological functions of any political discourse.