Evaluative utterances in colonial news-discourse: A case study in the Times of Morocco

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to analyse selected news texts on Morocco published in the Times of Morocco toward the end of the nineteenth century. The key question in my thesis is whether linguistics can contribute in a significant way to the analysis of the language of colonial discourse as evidenced in the Times of Morocco. It is an intriguing fact that a field which undertakes to study the language of colonial discourse has generally been insensitive to linguistics, a discipline that has as its main object the study of language. It is equally intriguing that linguists have generally been insensitive to the language of colonial discourse since they have generally overlooked the wider theoretical context in witch the notion of language and discourse are generally used in the field of colonial discourse analysis. Thus, the main hypothesis of this thesis is that there is a gap between linguistically based approaches to discourse analysis and the very notion of discourse as used and presupposed in colonial discourse analysis. My argument is that is possible to develop a critical approach that is sensitive to both of thes approaches. The proposed approach is one that pays a detailed and close attention to the subtle working of language in texts while at the same time retaining the wider theoretical context in which the notion of language and discourse is used in colonial discourse analysis. This thesis undertakes to demonstrate how language works in news texts from the Times of Morocco. The focus is on how value judgments are expressed in evaluative utterances. My working assumption is that utterances carry not only referential content but also, and more significantly, evaluative attitudes that frame and determine how referential content is understood and interpreted. Thus, in the course of the case study, various modes of evaluative utterances are uncovered and analysed in the minutest detail. I also demonstrate that the use of particular modes or forms of evaluative utterances seems to be not only a function of the evaluative attitudes expressed in those utterances but also a function of the target of evaluation. Thus, various modes of explicit and implicit, positive or negative, modes of evaluative utterances are identified. Particularly, significant are the workings of implicit evaluative utterances which are more subtle to detect and analyse. Implicit evaluative utterances take on different masks and covers: they may instantiated in ironical utterances, they may be beguiled with seemingly explicit positive utterances, or they may be revealed in the way the reporting speech permeates and assimilates reported speech into its text and context.