Discourse Genre Analysis of King Rama IX’s Speeches Given in Graduation Ceremony of Universities in Thailand

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the discourse genre of King Rama IX’s Speech at the graduation ceremony of universities in Thailand, using nine of Longacre’s language criteria (1968) and three Person's social criteria (1993).  A qualitative research methodology is applied for the selected specific data from "The Collection of King Rama IX’s Speech during 1950-2005" of the Government Pension Fund (2007). There are 3 data selection criteria which are 1) selected the information of King Rama IX’s speech given to the universities in Thailand both in Bangkok and the region 2) selected the information of King Rama IX’s speech which appeared in the year with the highest amount of data was 1977 and 3) selected the information of King Rama IX’s speech; bestowed on the state universities, excluding the open universities and the institutes of technology, totaling 19 from 10 universities. According to the analysis of King Rama IX’s speech based on the language criteria, the discourse of King Rama IX’s speech was classified as a "hortatory genre". The language forms indicator was found 1,940 times in the data, arranging from highest to lowest as follows: 1) indicative clause criteria 703 times 36.24% 2) inter-paragraph linkage criteria 642 times 33.09% 3) person orientation criteria 211 times  10.88% 4) chronological orientation criteria 185 times 9.54% 5) series of moral criteria 69 times 3.55% 6) imperative clause criteria 59 times 3.05% 7) series of reason criteria 50 times 2.57% 8) direct quotation criteria 21 times 1.08%. For the analysis of social criteria of Person, K. (1993), it is found that the hortatory discourse of King Rama IX’s speech was classified as a "mitigated hortatory" because of the highest presence of non-command language forms, 36 times, representing 61.02%.