CHANGE OF IDEOLOGIES OF MACAO IN THE POST-HANDOVER PERIOD: A CORPUS-BASED DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF MACAO`S POLICY ADDRESSES

Abstract

Policy addresses are important governmental documents that convey the government`s policies and publicize the government`s work plan set for the coming year, and at the same time, carry important information about social and economic developments. This paper studies the policy addresses of Macao SAR in the post-handover period from 2000 to 2017. It aims at investigating how the linguistic configurations reflect the ideologies constructed by the government in the post-handover period. With a corpus-assisted methodology, this paper applies discourse analysis to the investigation of the policy addresses given by the two chief executives of the four different terms of the Macao SAR government. The analysis shows that the diction in the policy addresses reflects the changes in the development of Macao and in the relationship between the government and the audience in the investigated period. It is argued that a corpus-assisted investigation can reveal how discourse is shaped by social practice and how discourse is used to help construct ideologies.

施政報告為澳門重要的政府文件，用以展示政府來年的工作計劃，同時，亦傳遞關於社會及經濟發展的重要資訊。本文調查澳門主權回歸以後，特區政府由二零零零年至二零一七年間頒布的施政報告，旨在分析施政報告中的語言建構及其所反映政府於此時間所建構的社會意識形態。本文結合基於語料庫的研究方法，對特區政府成立以來，由兩名行政長官管治的四屆政府（合共十七年）的施政報告作話語分析。結果顯示施政報告的語言建構反映了在調查時期，澳門的社會發展變化，以及社會與政府的關係變化，以此說明基於語料庫的研究方法有助反映如何利用話語，於特定社會環境，建構特定社會意識形態。