A Critical Discourse Study of Decision Making during the Drafting Process of UNSC Resolutions: Textual Travels and Recontextualization of the Representation of the Syrian Conflict
Quite recently, attention has been paid to studying United Nations Security Council (UNSC) practices by analysing the language that is used in its resolutions to show how countries are unequally treated by the Security Council (SC) Gruenberg (2009) and how vague language can be used as a politica...
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| Format: | Dissertation |
| Sprache: | Englisch |
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Philipps-Universität Marburg
2019
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| Zusammenfassung: | Quite recently, attention has been paid to studying United Nations Security Council (UNSC)
practices by analysing the language that is used in its resolutions to show how countries are
unequally treated by the Security Council (SC) Gruenberg (2009) and how vague language
can be used as a political strategy to fulfil particular objectives (Scotto di Carlo, 2013).
However, the reasons why drafters opt for a particular formulation when issuing resolutions
and the way how they agree on it is not researched. For a better understanding of these
variables, the current study opens up a new research setting that can contribute to the
aforementioned studies by analysing the drafting process of UNSC resolutions.
The present study is a critical discourse analysis of the drafting process of two UNSC
resolutions concerning the recent Syrian conflict. The data analysed in the current thesis is
composed of 13 texts: two resolutions (Res 2042 and Res 2043) and eleven drafts that were
issued during 2011 and 2012 concerning the Syrian conflict. The SC issued its first
resolutions about the Syrian conflict in April 2012, which is a year after the outbreak of the
first demonstrations in Syria. During this long period, the SC witnessed heated discussions
between its member states on the formulation of the resolution that should be adopted about
the Syrian uprising. Meanwhile, two drafts were vetoed by the Russian Federation and China.
Indeed, there was a split in the SC concerning the Syrian conflict. The Russian Federation
and China often disagreed with the remaining member states on the formulation of drafts in
general and on specific issues such as assigning responsibility and regime change.
The drafting process of UNSC resolutions is then a new research field to explore how an
ideological struggle in the council is handled. It aims to testify two assumptions: (1) member
states use language to impose their attitudes and views but (2) they may also opt for vague
and mitigated representations to avoid the use of veto and reach consensus. In other words,
the present study attempts to test the following hypothesis: when there is an ideological
struggle, drastic and ideological words or representations in drafts (e.g. the SC demands)
change into being indirect and less forceful in resolutions (e.g. the SC calls for) in order to
reach a consensus and take corporate decisions. The current research work answers the
following questions: how are the issues, on which member states disagreed, linguistically
represented in drafts and in what way are they transformed to reach consensus? How can
texts with supposedly different representations of the conflict end up in one resolution that
should satisfy all member states of the council?
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To test the hypothesis and answer the aforementioned inquiries, the present thesis compares
the representations of the conflict that are proposed by the different state members of the
council during the drafting process. To show ´what happens´ to the representations in drafts, I
adopt the notion of ´textual travels´ which is based on the process of recontextualization
(Heffer, Rock & Conley, 2013) i.e. how texts or textual fragments are (re)produced and
modified in subsequent drafts in relation to their preceding ones. Moreover, the Discourse
Historical Approach (DHA) (Wodak 1999, 2001) lends itself easily as the theoretical
qualitative framework to this study. It is seen as a group of approaches that are based on
interdisciplinarity (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001). It is useful to understand the content and the
discursive strategies deployed in drafts and resolutions in relation to the political and
historical contexts.
The ideological attitudes of member states are supposed to be reflected in the language they
use to represent social actors as well as their (re)actions. Three major elements of the
representations are then analysed: (1) social actors that are involved in the conflict, (2) their
actions and (3) the reaction of the SC. A number of linguistic tools and frameworks from
different fields are integrated in the current study to investigate the aforementioned
parameters.
To study how social actors are represented in texts, an adaptation of the Social Actors
Network proposed by Van Leeuwen (2008) is used as it provides different choices from
which a draftsman can choose to refer to social actors (e.g. whether they are present or
absent, and if they are referred to in specific or general terms and in a personalized or
impersonalized way, etc.). To further show how social actors as well as their actions are
(re)conceptualized, the construal operations of profiling, focus and schematization from
Cognitive Grammar are also employed. These conceptual operations are apt tools to conduct
critical discourse studies since they can “in certain discursive contexts, be seen to function
ideologically by bringing into effect different types of discursive strategy” (Hart, 2014, p.
110).
The representation of the reaction of the SC is examined by studying the usage of directives
that are often used in UNSC resolutions to address the participants (mainly the aggressor and
the UN team). To measure the reaction of the SC (i.e. what degree of force is used when
addressing the aggressor), directives are categorized intro three groups in terms of their force
of imposition (i.e. weak-middle-strong) according to the semantic analysis proposed by
Vanderveken (1990) and the classification suggested by Dontcheva-Navratilova (2009).
All the aforementioned tools provide ´Grammars´ of recontextualization or
(re)conceptualization to examine the three elements of representations. More importantly,
they are supposed to reveal how nomination, predication, intensification and mitigation
strategies (that are part of the DHA) are employed by drafters when representing the conflict.
The exclusion, inclusion, suppression and backgrounding of groups of social actors vary from
one draft to another as some suppressed social actors become totally excluded in subsequent
drafts while others become less included at the end of the drafting process. The analysis
shows a significant divergence between the different documents in terms of the
representational choices that are opted for to refer to the group of social actors. Indeed, less
lexical referential expressions are used in the last drafts and resolutions to represent both
groups, especially the Syrian People. Moreover, anylsing the textual travels of the
representations of these groups reveal how indetermined personalization and
impersonalization are sometimes used as substitutions for the personalized determined
representations. Such mitigation strategies are also noticed through the use of neutral or
vague lexical terms (unspecification) and the backgrounding of social actors.
The analysis of the construal operations of profiling and focus reveals that a difference in the
representations of social actors exists between drafts and resolutions. Indeed, both
participants (i.e. agent and patient) are more foregrounded in the first drafts than at the end of
the process. Indeed, drafters tend to background the patient more frequently at the end of the
drafting process than at its beginning. Moreover, the instances that background the patient at
the end of the drafting process are recontextualized versions of some instances from the first,
second, fourth, eighth and ninth drafts. For example, in the latter, drafters refer to the use of
force against its people (SD01) and civilians (SD04, SD08, SD09V) while the expression use
of weapons is opted for in SD10, SD11R, ResI and ResII which does not include a linguistic
representation of the patient.
Moreover, actions are analysed according to the construal operation of schematization:
whether the conflict is conceptualized in terms of ACTION, FORCE or MOTION schemas.
The analysis shows that the three types of schemas are used by drafters in the material.
However, while the patterns of ACTION and FORCE schemas decrease at the end of the
drafting process, MOTION schemas, which reduce the intensity of the event being
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conceptualized, become more present. More importantly, other lexical expressions such as
the empty vessels (violence and violation) remain present in the last drafts and the adopted
resolutions as they are often employed to replace image schematic conceptualization from
preceding drafts.
Indeed, the analysis about the reaction of the SC shows how directives with strong force of
imposition are replaced by ones that have a weak degree of imposition or other predications,
such as reaffirms its full support. Reducing the degree of imposition with which the measures
are introduced is a discursive strategy that is used to mitigate the representation in order to
reach consensus. Directives with a middle force of imposition such as requests and invites are
used in the material to always address social actors that belong to the UN Team. This finding
further confirms Dontcheva-Navratilova´s assertion (2009) that directives are used as a
politeness strategy to regulate the relationship between participants.
The findings reveal a significant divergence between the drafts proposed by the the Russian
Federation, on one hand, and the ones introduced by the remaining member states, on the
other hand. This confirms what is stated in the lieterature review about the opposing attitudes
that existed in the council concerning the Syrian conflict. For instance, unlike in the first two
drafts, which represent Syrian Authorities as Aggressors, the Russian Federation refers to
Syrian Authorities as Victims in SD03R. In addition, the Syrian People, who are
conceptualized mainly as Victims and Helpers in few cases, are represented as a problem in
the third draft. In other words, the Russian Federations beleieves that Syrian opposition and
the Syrian authorities should discuss the ways of reforming the Syrian society. Such
transformations shows how member states can use language to impose their agenda and fulfil
their interests. Moreover, the deletion of the explicit reference to Syrian authorities in SD03R
shows how Russian Federation attempts to impose its attitude and show its rejection of the
representations in the preceding drafts.
Briefly, all of the findings concerning the textual travels of the representations illustrate how
the process of darfting Syrian resolutions is characterized by an interesting process of
recontextualization. Some transformations are supposed to be made to fulfil some strategies
(either to intensify or mitigate representations) or interests. For example, to avoid re-invoking
the negative image of the Syrian Authorities, which leads to its delegetimization, in the
reader´s mental representation, drafters either background its identity or use all inclusive
terms such as all parties to refer to it. Another possible explanation is that drafters change
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specific and determined references by vague formulations to make the text open for various
interpretations which will satisfy all the needs of member states.
In addition, the findings show how the drafting process of UNSC resolutions is an interesting
research setting where drafters compete to impose their representations of the conflict which
stands for personal beliefs, socially shared attitudes and knowledge. Moreover, the current
study highlights the role of language in this diplomatic setting as it can be a powerful tool
used by diplomats to impose their decisions or to mitigate their representations of the conflict
to reach compromise. Furthermore, what is particularly interesting about the current work is
that it conducts a critical discourse study of decision-making during the drafting process by
addressing various factors such as the ideological struggle, textual travels and the role of veto
that tend to remain hidden when only analyzing the final resolutions. |
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| DOI: | 10.17192/z2023.0239 |