A micro structure as a discursive strategy on racism in “Hotel Rwanda”

ABSTRACT

This research reflects the application of critical discourse analysis to the movie entitled “Hotel Rwanda” which was directed by Terry George and Keir Pearson. In this study, I have adopted the van Dijk social cognition’s theory which concentrates on the micro structure to analyze the lexical style as one of the important elements of micro structure which is applied as the discursive strategy of the characters to express the racism and discrimination. This research gives rich description and interpretation about the lexical style which can reveal the real phenomena happened in the Central Africa.

This research is descriptive qualitative because the data are in the forms of utterances. The data are analyzed in the following steps: First, describing the context of lexical style or lexical choice used by the characters to understand what the speaker means by their utterances, such as explaining the contexts that influence to produce the discourse including (a) discourse participant, the background of who produce the discourse, such as social class, ethnic, religion, etc (b) particular social setting, such as place, time, speaker and hearer position (c) history places discourse in specific social context which cannot be understood without concerning the attached context. Second, interpreting how discursive strategy on lexical style used by the characters based on the contexts. Third, discussing the data findings. The last step is drawing the conclusion to answer the research problem systematically.

The analysis revealed some findings covering the formulated research question. It is found that the word selection has a certain meaning and purposely represents the Hutu’s power and domination to Tutsi minority. They used noun, verb, and adjective which contain ideology the speakers intend to marginalize, dominate, and underestimate the lower status people or the minority.

Based on the findings mentioned above, it is suggested to the next researchers to fill the gap of this research by analyzing other elements of micro structure such as presupposition, metaphor, rhetoric, etc using van Dijk social cognition’s theory.