DISSECTING EDUCATIONAL DISCOURSE IN INDIA: A TRANSITIVITY ANALYSIS OF EDUCATION MINISTERS’ INTERVIEWS ACROSS DIVERSE MEDIA PLATFORMS (2014-2022)

Abstract

Education is very crucial to the development of a country. In a country like India which has one of the largest youth population (15-29 years) in the world, according to Social Statistics division, Government of India, disquisition on education discourse doesn’t fall out of context. Like other dominant discourses, the education-discourse has been a matter of scrutiny, reforms and changes majorly in the form of education policies. For long, the education policies are deliberated upon and scrutinized by various social, electronic media as well as by analysts and specialists. However, there is a paucity of linguistic study on the education discourse of India. This doctoral thesis is a descriptive study of discourse of political actors in India where their discourse is analysed using Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) approach. The analytical framework for the study is ‘transitivity analysis’, a framework within SFL delineated by MAK Halliday. The term ‘transitivity’ has been discussed extensively in different grammatical theories and approaches and has received different treatment in the various formalist and functionalist approaches to the study of language. However, the Transitivity discussed in Halliday’s SFL is pronouncedly different from the transitivity as approached in some of the other theoretical and applied domains of linguistics. SFL claims that it captures the functional aspect of language i.e. language in use. In this study, the transitivity analysis is used in a much broader sense and acts as a ‘toolkit’ to analyse different discourses. This thesis pursues the study of Transitivity analysis of education discourse by choosing sample texts from the interviews of different Education Ministers, Government of India who are responsible for the policies on the matters of education in the country. Transitivity analysis helps to demonstrate patterns and structures in clauses which further allows data to express itself both qualitatively and quantitatively. The data for the present study is taken from 9 interviews (interviews in formal interview settings & Education Conclaves) of three Ministers of Education- Smriti Irani, Prakash Javadekar, and Dharmendra Pradhan. Ministry of Education (MoE), (earlier MHRD), being one of the most important ministries in India, deals with the overall education of the country, right from primary education to the university education. Thus, it seemed congruous to take data from the speeches of the Minsters of Education, because these Education Ministers are officially on a responsible position and are accountable for any discourse that is being delivered concerning education sector of the country. The spoken data was manually transcribed. Data from interviews and portions (only that which pertained to education), of a few media conclaves were taken up, keeping in mind the quality, nature as well as the quantity of the content such interviews provide. ix The data is analysed in three parts- first of which is Data Tagging; the second is Data Tabulation and the third part is Data Description. Data tagging in linguistics is tagging the data set based on linguistic features. Grammatical categories are mapped onto the constituents of the clause/ sentence according to the requirement(s) of the data set. Transitivity analysis is applied first at the clausal level by initially identifying the clausal boundaries and further it is classified on the basis of transitivity roles, by identifying the process, process type, participants and circumstances in a clause. Processes are the core element of the analysis of clauses in the transitivity system. It becomes the fundamental basis for the analysis and categorization of clauses in a discourse. These are realised by verbal groups headed by the verb. The six processes in transitivity system are- Material, Mental, Relational, Verbal, Behavioural and Existential. Seven Discourses have been taken up for the data tagging using transitivity analysis as a tool. The tabulated data is visually clear hence easier to interpret and there’s hardly any scope of oversight of any data. Each clause from each discourse has been numbered for the ease referring to the clauses back and forth. Data description also shows the patterns and timing of utterance of particular clause of each minister. For instance- two prominent usages of relative clause were observed- relational clause is either the first or second clause in almost all the interviews and second- relational clause was used in abundance to shy away from certain topics or to evade questions. Apart from showing ‘doing’ or ‘happenings’, material clauses are used for narration and sharing anecdotes in the discourse. Both Existential and Relational clauses are used to set or to change the context etc. Data tagging also helps to find the preference of clause structure of each minister. Circumstances play major role in adding the additional information. Quantitative data analysis showed the frequency of occurrence of each process type in the data. It showed that the material process dominates the discourse of all the three ministers. Behavioural clause is negligible in the data. Smriti Irani uses mental and verbal clauses oftener than Prakash Javadekar and Dharmendra Pradhan but uses relational clauses less than them. In the discourse of both Pradhan and Javadekar, the relational process is the second most dominant discourse. The frequency of occurrence of verbal and mental clauses in Javadekar’s discourse is very low and almost at par. The use of material and relational clauses is lowest in the discourse of Pradhan. Data shows that Smriti Irani displays similar inclination towards cognitive functions, establishing communication and attributing characteristics to the entity or identifying the relationship between the entities. Javadekar on the other hand is focusing most on ‘doing’ or ‘happenings’ in x education discourse. Frequency of occurrence of material, mental and relational processes is almost equal in the speech of all the three ministers. The researcher believes that this thesis may be a stepping stone for further researches and studies in this domain. This descriptive study, therefore, is one among the few of its kind, that can lay the foundation for the further explorations in this domain. In most of the states and UTs, NEP has been rolled out, it will be very pertinent to look at the impact of NEP and discourse around it on Indian education in a few years from now. For any such study this research might be of primary help.