Aung San Suu Kyi’s ideological construction in English-speaking broadcast media : a case study

Abstract

Aung San Suu Kyi, the current State Counsellor of Myanmar, is an enigmatic political figure. There have been studies on her political thoughts from the political science perspective. This multidisciplinary study draws positioning theory from psychology as the theoretical framework and the appraisal system under Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) as one of the analytical tools to uncover Aung San Suu Kyi’s ideological construction in multimodal broadcast interviews. The analysis is methodologically triangulated with an audience analysis which together with the textual analysis generate both quantitative and qualitative accounts of Aung San Suu Kyi’s lexicogrammatical choices and their implications of her ‘doing identity’ in public discourse. Some of the salient features found in Aung San Suu Kyi’s utterances are her emphasis on morality, sense of superiority, independent-mindedness and entitlement to leadership. The textual evidence suggests that she has innate positivity towards the military and that her understanding of the vulnerable among the decade-long oppressed people of Myanmar seems to be unsubstantial. The audience analysis gives a richer depiction of Aung San Suu Kyi’s presentation of self in relations to others. Both textual and audience analyses indicate Aung San Suu Kyi’s politician identity in her discursive strategies of coercion and resistance, (de)legitimisation and (mis)representation.