Fairclough and Swaziland news

For this assignment, I chose an article from the Times of Swaziland on a call from a member of Parliament to create political parties for Swaziland. The article can be found at "the Times of Swaziland" - http://www.times.co.sz/index.php?news=2013. Using Fairclough’s analysis of media, I found instances of presupposition, nominalizations, and foregrounding throughout the article.

It was very easy to pick out what was presupposed in the text because, as someone who is unfamiliar with the Swaziland government, certain things in the article did not make sense to me. The writer presupposed that the reader knows that there is both a king and a Parliament with elected members who are not part of political parties. However, it was somewhat confusing because the writer mentions already formed political parties when it would appear from the text that these parties are illegal. The writer references groups such as the African United Democratic Party, the Tinkhundla system, and the Southern African Development Community without explaining what these organizations do or what their legal status is. He presupposes that the readers are familiar with these groups. There is also a presupposition that the reader will be familiar with Swaziland geography. MPs are identified by the region that they are from such as “Ludzeludze” and “Lobamba.” I am unsure whether these are cities, regions, states or some other politically divided territory, but the Swaziland reader and writer evidently know what these mean.

Along with presupposition, the writer also makes use of what Fairclough terms “nominalizations.” Especially after the second headline in bold, the writer becomes vague and uses groups to become actors. For example, “Following a call by political parties for the new Parliament to enact legislation that would allow political parties to take part in the countries governance, the Times spoke to some MPs to hear what their views on the subject were.” Here, political parties are doing the action of “calling” for the Parliament to do something. Both political parties and Parliament are used here as an agent and patient, respectively. However, these are groups of people and cannot act or be acted upon in these sense that the author uses. He nominalizes these groups and makes something abstract seem to be concrete. This sentence has another nominalization when the author talks about “the Times” speaking to the MPs. The Times is a newspaper, an inanimate object, and cannot act on its own. The writer uses the “Times” as an agent when it is actually an abstract idea and not a concrete actor like a writer.

As an outsider reading the Swaziland news, I was also aware that the writer foregrounds the views of those who want political parties and does not include any information about the king or other politicians who do not want political parties. It can be assumed that these people exist considering that the politicians in the article are protesting and demanding the use of political parties. They must be protesting against the system that is already in place and everyone does not agree with the proposed change or else there would be no protest. Nearly the first page of the article is dominated by a politician named Khumalo who appears to be a leader in the fight for political parties. After the second bold headline, the article includes mostly nominalizations and vague language about those who also support political parties. The last two MPs who were interviewed both said that they would consult the people on the issue and had not made up their minds about whether or not to have political parties in Swaziland. No where in the entire article are the opinions of those that support the current system attention. Clearly, the writer is foregrounding the issue of political parties and is supporting the movement. The obvious absence of the one side of the story allows the writer to foreground the side that he supports.

Presuppositions, nominalizations, and foregrounding are all techniques that the Swaziland writer uses to give his side of the argument. Whether or not the writer consciously intends to support the political parties is unclear. However, his representation of the events favors one side over the other.