Language, Identity and Ideology: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Sunflower Student Movement

Speaker: Liao Pei-Yu

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Abstract

The research aims to explore the identity and ideology of the younger generation in Taiwan. By analysing the discourse of Sunflower Student Movement, I intend to investigate the relation among language, identity and ideology.

On 18 March 2014, Sunflower Student Movement broke out. Students occupied the congress for 24 days. The discourse of Sunflower Student Movement reveals people’s attitude toward their identity, also formed the ideology of the public. In the research, I collect various kinds of digital discourse data to analyse the word frequency as well as semantic prosody, and then observe the correlation and connection between words, attempting to assemble and interpret the identity and ideology that demonstrated in the movement. Furthermore, I will inspect the discourse by employing Critical Discourse Analysis to explore the function of language, as well as its role plays in the social structure.

The research is a corpus study. I utilise computational tool to tackle statistical data, and then proceed qualitative analysis. By applying a mix method to analyse discourse, I aim to explore the identity of the younger generation as well as the ideology of Taiwan society during the movement.

Speaker's Bio

Liao Pei-Yu is a PhD student in Linguistics department, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics from SOAS University of London. Her research thesis focuses on the discourse of Sunflower Student Movement to explore the identity and ideology of the younger generation in Taiwan. Her research interests include semantics, pragmatics, language and society of Taiwan, Critical Discourse Analysis, sociolinguistics and second language teaching.

Organiser: Centre of Taiwan Studies

Contact email: jl91@soas.ac.uk